though the excitability may be again accumulated, it
never can be brought back to what it was before; and every fresh
debauch will shorten life, probably two or three weeks at least,
besides debilitating the body, and bringing on a variety of
diseases, with premature old age.

Those who drink only a moderate quantity of wine, so as to make them
cheerful, as they call it, but not absolutely to intoxicate, may
imagine that it will do them no harm. The strong and robust may
enjoy the pleasures of the bottle and table with seeming impunity,
and sometimes for many years may not find any bad effects from them;
but depend upon it, if a full diet of animal food be every day
indulged in, with only a moderate portion of wine, its baneful
influence will blast the vigour of the strongest constitution.

While we are eating, water is the best beverage. The custom of
drinking fermented liquors, and particularly wine, during dinner, is
a very pernicious one. The idea that it assists digestion, is false;
those who are acquainted with chemistry know, that food is hardened,
and rendered less digestible by these means, and the stimulus which
wine gives to the stomach is not necessary, excepting to those who
have exhausted the excitability of that organ by the excessive use
of strong liquors. In these. The stomach can scarcely be excited to
any action without the assistance of such a stimulus. If food wants
diluting, water is the best diluent, and will prevent the rising, as
it is called, of strong food, much better than wine or spirits.

Before I finish this subject, I shall say a few words on the
pernicious custom of suffering children to drink wine, or other
fermented liquors. Nothing is more common than to see, even very
young children come to the table after dinner, to drink a glass of
wine. The least quantity produces violent effects on their
accumulated excitability, and by quickly exhausting it, ruins their
constitutions through life, and often renders them habitual
drinkers.

I can scarcely help attributing in some degree the many stomach
complaints we meet with, among young people in the present age, and
which were unknown to our forefathers, to the abominable practice of
suffering children to drink fermented, or spirituous liquors. You
must all have observed how soon children are intoxicated and
inflamed by spirituous liquors; you may judge then, that if these
liquors be only a slow poison to us, they are a very quick one t