d when persons are recovering from
various diseases; day by day they regain their strength, and the
port-wine gets all the credit of it, especially since each glass
seems to diffuse a comfortable glow over the whole body. They
forget that the process of recovery would have gone on without
the port, and that hundreds and thousands of people do get well
without it. They often ignore the fact that they are taking real
tonics in addition. They are misled by the sensations which the
alcohol causes; they do not know that it relaxes the
blood-vessels instead of improving their tone; that it exhausts
the heart by making it beat away more rapidly to no profit.
Hence the convalescence is actually more prolonged than it would
otherwise be. Gentle exercise, regulated baths, good food, balmy
sleep, these are the true restoratives of the exhausted system,
and no jugglery with sedatives, such as alcohol, can produce the
desired result.

"It is by its sedative action that alcohol has obtained its
position in public opinion. It will render persons insensible to
various uneasy sensations, and the majority prefer to continue
the bad habits which produce the uneasy sensations, and then to
take them away by a dose or two of some alcoholic liquor, or,
indeed, to take this before the uneasy sensations come on. In
this way they do themselves injury and make themselves
unconscious of it. Dr. Beaumont, who had the opportunity of
examining the interior of Alexis St. Martin's stomach, and of
seeing how digestion went on, was astonished to see how inflamed
the mucous membrane could be without any consciousness of it. He
observed, as a matter of fact, that alcoholic drinks of all
kinds hindered the process of digestion, and produced this
morbid condition of the mucous membrane. The relief, therefore,
which can be obtained by alcohol is delusive and dangerous.

"But some persons say they are afraid to abandon the use of
alcohol because they have been in the habit of taking it for a
long period. This fear is entirely groundless. The alcohol will
be missed for a time, just as a person who has been using
crutches would miss them if thrown away; but they will do better
without both after a little while. There is no kind of
constitution which renders a person unable to do without
alcohol. The prisoners