ions are
nutritious.

Having thus explained the chemistry of this subject, I would, secondly,
address these men as a _physician_. I mean merely, that I wish to
present before them the views of the most distinguished and impartial
physicians concerning ardent spirits. It is important, then, to remark,
that physicians have decided that alcohol is a powerful _poison_. And
how do they prove this? Simply by comparing its effects with those of
other poisons--particularly the poisons derived, as alcohol is, from
vegetables--such as henbane, poison hemlock, prussic acid, thorn-apples,
deadly nightshade, foxglove, poison sumach, oil of tobacco, and the
essence of opium. These poisons, taken in different quantities,
according to their strength, produce nausea, dizziness, exhilaration of
spirits with subsequent debility, and even total insensibility; in other
cases, delirium and death; and alcohol does the same. These poisons
weaken the stomach, impair the memory and all the powers of the mind,
and sometimes bring on palsy, apoplexy, and other violent disorders; and
so does alcohol. Do you say that ardent spirits, as they are commonly
drank, do not produce these effects except in a very slight degree?
Neither do these substances, when much weakened by mixture with other
things. Even rum and brandy, of the first proof, contain only about
fifty parts of alcohol in the hundred; and even the _high wines_, as
they are called, are by no means pure alcohol; yet less than an ounce of
proof spirits, given to a rabbit, killed it in less than an hour. Three
quarters of an ounce of alcohol, introduced into the stomach of a large
and robust dog, killed him in three and a half hours. In larger
quantities, as almost every one knows, this same substance has proved
immediately fatal to men. Do you say that many drink spirits for years,
and are not destroyed; and do you hence inquire how they can be
poisonous? So I reply, not a few take small quantities of other poisons
every day for years, and continue alive. A horse, indeed, may take the
eighth part of an ounce of arsenic every day, and yet be thriving. But
how many are there, do you suppose, who habitually drink ardent spirits,
and yet suffer no bad effects from it? Have they no stomach complaints,
no nervous maladies, no headaches? Do they live to a great age? Not one
out of a hundred of those who daily drink ardent spirits, escapes
uninjured; though their sickness and premature decay, resultin