atic cholera, brandy was formerly administered freely to patients
when in the stage of collapse. The effect was injurious, instead of
beneficial. "Again and again," says Prof. G. Johnson, "have I seen a
patient grow colder, and his pulse diminish in volume and power, after a
dose of brandy, and, apparently, as a direct result of the brandy." And
Dr. Pidduck, of London, who used common salt in cholera treatment, says:
"Of eighty-six cases in the stage of collapse, sixteen only proved
fatal, and scarcely one would have died, _if I had been able to prevent
them from taking brandy and laudanum_." Dr. Collenette, of Guernsey,
says: "For more than thirty years I have abandoned the use of all kinds
of alcoholic drinks in my practice, and with such good results, that,
were I sick, _nothing_ would induce _me_ to have resource to them--_they
are but noxious depressants_."

As a non-professional writer, we cannot go beyond the medical testimony
which has been educed, and we now leave it with the reader. We could add
many pages to this testimony, but such cumulative evidence would add but
little to its force with the reader. If he is not yet convinced that
alcohol has no food value, and that, as a medicine, its range is
exceedingly limited, and always of doubtful administration, nothing
further that we might be able to cite or say could have any influence
with him.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GROWTH AND POWER OF APPETITE.

One fact attendant on habitual drinking stands out so prominently that
none can call it in question. It is that of the steady growth of
appetite. There are exceptions, as in the action of nearly every rule;
but the almost invariable result of the habit we have mentioned, is, as
we have said, a steady growth of appetite for the stimulant imbibed.
That this is in consequence of certain morbid changes in the physical
condition produced by the alcohol itself, will hardly be questioned by
any one who has made himself acquainted with the various functional and
organic derangements which invariably follow the continued introduction
of this substance into the body.

But it is to the fact itself, not to its cause, that we now wish to
direct the reader's attention. The man who is satisfied at first with a
single glass of wine at dinner, finds, after awhile, that appetite asks
for a little more; and, in time, a second glass is conceded. The
increase of desire may be very slow, but it goes on surely until, in the
end, a