oubt, promotes also the ossification of the
valves of the heart, as well as the development of other organic
affections.

8. _The lungs_ and their functions. Respiration in the inebriate is
generally oppressed and laborious, and especially after eating or
violent exercise; and he is teased with a cough, attended with copious
expectoration, and especially after his recovery from a fit of
intoxication; and these symptoms go on increasing, and unless arrested
in their progress, terminate in consumption.

This affection of the lungs is produced in two ways: first, by the
immediate action of the alcoholic principle upon the highly sensible
membrane which lines the trachea, bronchial vessels, and air-cells of
the lungs, as poured out by the exhalants; and second, by the sympathy
which is called into action between the lungs and other organs already
in a state of disease, and more especially that of the stomach and
liver.

I have met with many cases in the course of my practice, of cough and
difficult breathing, which could be relieved only by regulating the
functions of the stomach, and which soon yielded, on the patient ceasing
to irritate this organ with ardent spirit. I have found the liver still
more frequently the source of this affection; and on restoring the organ
to its healthy condition, by laying aside the use of ardent spirit, all
the pulmonary symptoms have subsided.

On examining the lungs of the drunkard after death, they are frequently
found adhering to the walls of the chest; hepatized, or affected with
tubercles.

But time would fail me, were I to attempt an account of half the
pathology of drunkenness. _Dyspepsia_, _Jaundice_, _Emaciation_,
_Corpulence_, _Dropsy_, _Ulcers_, _Rheumatism_, _Gout_, _Tremors_,
_Palpitation_, _Hysteria_, _Epilepsy_, _Palsy_, _Lethargy_, _Apoplexy_,
_Melancholy_, _Madness_, _Delirium-tremens_, _and premature old age_,
compose but a small part of the catalogue of diseases produced by ardent
spirit. Indeed, there is scarcely a morbid affection to which the human
body is liable, that has not, in one way or another, been produced by
it; there is not a disease but it has aggravated, nor a predisposition
to disease, which it has not called into action; and although its
effects are in some degree modified by age and temperament, by habit and
occupation, by climate and season of the year, and even by the
intoxicating agent itself; yet, the general and ultimate consequences
are the