ld have removed the difficulty, and the man been well. And
many a man who was never intoxicated, when visited with a fever, might
be raised up as well as not, were it not for that state of the system
which daily moderate drinking occasions, who now, in spite of all that
can be done, sinks down and dies."

Nor are we to admit for a moment the popular reasoning, as applicable
here, "that the abuse of a thing is no argument against its use;" for,
in the language of the late Secretary of the College of Physicians and
Surgeons of Philadelphia, Samuel Emlen, M. D., "All use of ardent
spirits," _i. e._ as a drink, "is an abuse. They are mischievous under
all circumstances." Their tendency, says Dr. Frank, when used even
moderately, is to induce disease, premature old age, and death. And Dr.
Trotter states, that no cause of disease has so wide a range, or so
large a share, as the use of spirituous liquors.

Dr. Harris states, that the _moderate_ use of spirituous liquors has
destroyed many who were never drunk; and Dr. Kirk gives it as his
opinion, that men who were never considered intemperate, by daily
drinking have often shortened life more than twenty years; and that the
respectable use of this poison kills more men than even drunkenness. Dr.
Wilson gives it as his opinion, that the use of spirit in large cities
causes more diseases than confined air, unwholesome exhalations, and the
combined influence of all other evils.

Dr. Cheyne, of Dublin, Ireland, after thirty years' practice and
observation, gives it as his opinion, that should ten young men begin at
twenty-one years of age to use but one glass of two ounces a day, and
never increase the quantity, nine out of ten would shorten life more
than ten years. But should moderate drinkers shorten life only five
years, and drunkards only ten, and should there be but four moderate
drinkers to one drunkard, it would in thirty years cut off in the United
States 32,400,000 years of human life. An aged physician in Maryland
states, that when the fever breaks out there, the men who do not use
ardent spirit are not half as likely as other men to have it; and that
if they do have it, they are ten times as likely to recover. In the
island of Key West, on the coast of Florida, after a great mortality, it
was found that every person who had died had been in the habit of using
ardent spirit. The quantity used was afterwards diminished more than
nine-tenths, and the inhabitants became