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A SERIES OF LETTERS FROM ABSTAINING CLERGYMEN.

feel your footing firm: so did they. "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall." The Bible warns you that wine is a mocker. The warning applies with greatly augmented force to us. I implore the reader to observe that the caution to the sober, to beware of the deceiving, insnaring power of strong drink, is not the alarm of an enthusiast, but the Word of God.

A deceiver is in the midst of us. He has many strongholds in our streets: he has free access to our homes. His victims are many; and his treatment of them is merciless. Like the old serpent, he fastens his chains always by guile, never by violence. His professions are friendly, and his approaches slow. He touches the taste, and pleases it: he is, therefore, invited to return. Every time he is admitted to the tongue he sends along the nerves to the brain an influence, as secret as the electric current along the wire, and as sure. The effect is distinctly felt each time, but it seems to go off soon: it does not all go off, however. Something remains, invisible, it may be, as the effects of light at first on the photographer's plate, but real, and ready to come out with awful distinctness at a succeeding stage. When the brain is frequently exposed to the comings and goings of these impressions, silent and secret as rays of light penetrating the camera, it acquires imperceptibly the susceptibility which an accident any day may develop into an incurable disease. Considering the power of this deceiver,-considering the number around us who are deceived thereby,considering the wondrous delicacy and susceptibility of the human brain,-considering that in this life the soul can reither learn nor act except through the brain, as its organ,- considering that strong drink goes by a secret postern direct into the presencechamber of the soul-considering the satanic malig. nity with which it holds the struggling victim,-considering how few of those who have fallen into this pit have ever risen again, and how tenderly God's Word warns us not to venture near its slippery brim,surely it is the part of wisdom to lean hard over to the safer side. Brother! your immortal soul is embodied in flesh. You have in that body only one organ through which the soul can act, either in getting from God or serving him. That organ is refined and delicate beyond the power of words to express. If its eye is dimmed and its feeling blunted, your soul has lost its only avenue of access to the Saviour. As you hope to see God, beware of those mists that cloud the vision of the soul.

--

As you

hope to feel a Redeemer's love softly embracing you in a dying hour, beware of those drops that have turned so many hearts into stone.

A Series of Letters from Abstaining Clergymen.

No. VI

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LEAGUE JOURNAL.

Dear Sir-You ask for a testimony, as the result of experience, to the benefits of temperance, in the sense of total abstinence from intoxicating liquors as beverages. I have no hesitation in giving it. When a mere boy I became a member of the Old Temperance Society. I never regretted doing so. On the contrary, I am thankful that my attention was called thus early to the evils resulting from the drinking habits of the community. When I began to preach I became a total abstainer.

Total abstinence was very helpful to me in the early days of my ministry. It delivered me from the necessity of partaking in any case of these drinks

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myself, and more especially of seeming to countenance or encourage drinking habits in others. My predecessor at Faughanvale - the Rev. Marshall Moore, sen.-had labored earnestly in this cause. Many and great were the difficulties he had to surmount, but by the blessing of God they were overcome. It was a privilege and a pleasure to me to help on the good work begun by him, and when called away from that parish, I rejoiced in the appointment of a successor who held the same principle. I would have regarded it as a grievous calamity to the neighborhood, and a great injury to religion, had it been otherwise. What a pity that the quiet and peaceful scenes of that valley should ever be disturbed by the demon of strong drink. When at one or two intervals I have ceased for a time the practice of total abstinence, it has been at the request, the entreaty, of medical men. They may sometimes have had truth and right upon their side, but I very much question it. My experience in that matter is just this:-When of an evening, after exhausting labor, I have, upon their advice, taken intoxicating drink as a stimulant, I have had the feeling of rest sooner than I would otherwise have had it, but I am satisfied that the next day I was more fatigued and less fit for work of any kind than if I had waited for natural rest, and taken nourishing food or drink. I believe it to be a mischievous delusion to suppose that such liquors give strength. They have medicinal value doubtless, but it is in rare cases, and I believe more drunkards are made as the result of habits formed in consequence of medical prescriptions than any of us are aware.

On the whole, I am thankful to be able to say that my bodily and mental, my moral and spiritual health are greatly promoted by total abstinence. I would not, even as regards myself, for any consideration, be a daily partaker of intoxicating liquors as beverages; and, as regards others, I could not be content to lose the power which total abstinence gives me in dealing with them for their good. I would thus, I believe, be neglecting a likely means of influence and usefulness, and raising up hinderances in my own path in seeking the advancement of the glorious Gospel of the blessed God. How can a Christian man, when there is no necessity for it in any law of God or of his own constitution, go on using Sabbath-made liquor, and share the responsibility of the murders, and adulteries, and thefts-the pauperism, lunacy, and crime-the destruction of God's good grain and the waste of God's money-the scandals to the Church and the ruin to the world that are associated with the making, and selling, and buying, and drinking to excess of intoxicating liquors ?-Truly yours, Lurgan. L. E. BERKELEY.

Psalm of Temperance.

UPRIGHT was man, and happy too,

'Ere sin's dark ways he tried; Pure were his joys, his wants were few, And easily supplied.

Then of his simple wholesome food

He temperately partook,

And drank, and found the beverage good, Clear water from the brook.

Now satisfied, no more with these

The gifts of God he slights,

And tries unnumbered schemes to please His grovelling appetites.

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The grain for food designed he takes,

While thousands pine unfed,

And thence the poisonous liquor makes Instead of wholesome bread.

Man, give thy vain inventions o'er,

Thy folly they betray;
Pervert the gifts of God no more,

Nor cast those gifts away.

The cooling springs, the fruitful fields, For thy support are lent,

While earth for thee its increase yields,

Be thankful and content.

The Bible Wine Question.

By Rev. E. Nott, D.D., President of Union College. "BUT if the ultimate appeal for the decision of the question is to the Bible, how can it be considered any longer an open question: for in that case, what room is there even for debate ? Is it to be denied that wine is spoken of in the Bible, in terms of commendation; that it is employed as a symbol of mercy ; that it was offered in sacrifice; that it was distributed to the guests at the Passover, at the Supper of our Lord, and at the marriage in Cana of Galilee ?"

No, this is not to be denied. As little, however, is it to be denied, that wine is also spoken of in terms of reprobation; that it is employed as a symbol of wrath, forbidden to Nazarites, forbidden to Kings: that to look upon it even, is forbidden, and that it is declared that they who are deceived thereby are not wise. What shall we say to this? Can the same thing in the same state, be good and bad, a symbol of wrath and a symbol of mercy, a thing to be sought after, and a thing to be avoided? Certainly not! And is the Bible then inconsistent with itself? No, it is not, and this seeming inconsistency will vanish, and the Bible will not only be, but will appear to be, in harmony with itself, in harmony with history, with science, and with the providence of God, if, on examination, it shall be found that the kinds or states of vinous beverages referred to under the name of wine, were as unlike in their nature or effects, as were those mercies and judgments for which the same were respectively employed as symbols, or as were those terms of praise or dispraise by which the same were respectively indicated.

No less than nine words are employed in the Hebrew Bible to express the different kinds of vinous substance or beverage formerly in use; all of which products or preparations are expressed in our Eng. lish version by the single term "WINE," or by that term in connection with some other word expressive of quality. The term wine, therefore, as used in our English Bible, is to be regarded as a generic term; comprehending different kinds of beverage, and of very different qualities; some of which kinds were good, some bad; some to be used frequently and freely, some seldom and sparingly; and some

These words are, Yayin, a generic term, comprehending wine of all kinds. Tirosh, denoting the fruit of the vine in the cluster, in the solid form of grapes, or grape-juice expressed, i.e., new wine. Ausis, the fresh juice of the grape, and even of other fruit. Sobhe, inspissated wine, corresponding to the Latin sapa, and the Greek syraum and hepsema. Hhamar, unmingled wine, or wine red, thick, turbid. Mesech, mixed wine, whether with water or with drugs. Shemarim, lees of wine, and once preserves or jellies. Eshishah, cooked wine, or grape cake. Shechar, "sweet drink," from the palm or other trees, but not from the vine.

to be utterly and at all times avoided. By a mere comparison of the passages in which the term Wine occurs, this will be rendered probable. For it were difficult to believe that the wine by which Noah was dishonored; by which Lot was defiled; the wine which caused prophets to err in judgment, and priests to stumble and fall; the wine which occasions woe and sorrow, and wounds without cause; wine which deceives; wine which Solomon styles a mocker, and which is alluded to by One who is greater than Solomon, as a symbol of wrath; it were difficult to believe that this wine-the wine mingled by harlots, and sought by libertines-WAS THE VERY WINE which Wisdom mingles; to which Wisdom invites; wine which priests offered in sacrifice; evangelists dispensed at communion-tables, and which, making glad the heart of man, was a fit emblem of the mercies of God.

There is a wine of some sort spoken of very fre quently in the Bible, with express DISAPPROBATION, or in connexion with drunken feasts, or as an emblem of temporal and eternal judgment. And there is also a wine spoken of, perhaps as frequently, with express That wines of such different qualities,

APPROBATION.

and presented in such different aspects, and even in such frightful contrast, were one and the same article, in one and the same state, would seem, even though history had been silent, quite incredible. How much more so now, that in place of silence, history, both sacred and profane, hath spoken; and spoken, not of their identity, but of their known and marked dis similarity. It is not to be denied that the Bible makes a distinction in the kinds of Wine of which it speaks. I allude not to wine as medicine, but as a beverage. Wine as beverage, was, in the language of the Bible, either good or bad. By good wine, I mean wine that in the use is beneficial to the bodies or the souls of men. By bad wine, I mean wine which is injurious to the one or the other, or both. Wine which (when used, not excessively, but moderately as beverage) is injurious either to the physical intellectual, or moral constitution of man, is bad wine. It is with this distinction between wines that this discussion is concerned-a distinction recognised in those terms of praise or dispraise in which the Bible alludes to different kinds of wine, as either actually existing in the concrete, or as assumed to exist in the abstract. The truth of this will be appa. rent, by a comparison of a few out of many passages that might have been selected.

TEXTS IN WHICH GOOD WINE IS SPOKEN OF.

Gen. xxvii. 28; Gen. xlix. 11; Gen. xlviii. 33; Num. xxviii. 12; Deut. xiv. 25, 26; Psalm civ. 15; Zech. ix. 17; Prov. ix. 1, 4, 5; Cant. v. 1; Isaiah xxvii. 2; Deut. vii. 13; Mark xiv. 25; Luke xxii. 18; 1 Cor. x. 16; Isaiah lxv. 8; Micah vi. 15.

TEXTS IN WHICH BAD WINE IS ALLUDED TO.

Deut. xxxii. 33; Amos ii. 6, 8; Mark xv. 23; Prov. xx. 1 ; Prov. xxiii. 20, 30, 31, 32; Isaiah v. 22; Psalm lxxv. 8; Psalm 1x. 3; Jer. xxv. 15; Jer. li. 7; Rev. xiv. 10.

The above are samples merely of passages in which wines are distinguished according to their qualities, among which are good and bad; wine a blessing, and wine a curse; wine to be presented at sacrifice, and wine that might not be drank in the house of the Lord; wine occasioning joy and gladness, and wine producing woe and sorrow; wine of which guests were to drink abundantly, and wine not to be drunk at all; wine the emblem of heavenly joy, and wine the symbol of destruction; wine signifying the blood of Christ, and wine a mocker. In the view of texts like these, though ignorant of the fact that different

ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION.

kinds of wine exist now, who could doubt of their existence formerly?—or believe that wines presented in such frequent or fearful contrast, or referred to respectively in such marked terms of praise or dispraise, were, after all, one and the same article in the same state?

Here, then, on this broad distinction between good and bad wine, recognised in the sacred writings, we take our stand. And be it remembered, it is not against the moderate use, in ordinary times, of good healthful wine, but against the use of bad, deleterious wine, which the Bible reprobates and employs as an emblem of wrath, that we array ourselves. The only wine we abjure, is wine abjured by the Bible, abjured by reason; wine, which in the use as a beverage, enervates and diseases the body, depraves and crazes the mind; in one word, Wine containing not only POISON, but containing it in sufficient quantity, when used as beverage, to disturb the healthy action of the system and such are the wines generally in use in this country. Nor is it material to the question now at issue, whether that poison be generated by fermentation, or superadded by drugging. Such wine will be found to receive as little advocacy from revelation as reason; nor will the drinker of such wine (as the light of truth advances) be able ultimately to find protection under the mere shelter of a name.Lectures on Biblical Temperance, page, 48.

Alcoholic Medication.

No. IV.

ALCOHOL IN FEVER.

RUSSELL T. TRALL, Esq., M.D.,* of New York, in "The True Temperance Platform," writes as follows:-"The true definition of disease is remedial effort; and on this doctrine that disease is just the contrary to what is taught in medical schools and books, may be predicated the world's redemption, not only from alcoholic poison, but from disease itself. When people understand that disease is a vital struggle in selfdefence an effort to protect and defend the organism-that it is not a thing or entity foreign to the system, but an action of the system itself which seeks its preservation, not its destruction-they will cease to fear it. They will only fear its causes. They will not then send for the physician to stop it, to break it up, to repress or subdue it, to counteract or neutralise it. They will see that such 'cures' are delusive; that they are subjugations of the remedial effort. They will then aim to remove the causes, not to suppress the symptoms; they will seek to aid and assist nature,' not by subduing the vital strength with potent drugs, but by providing her the best conditions and facilities for accomplishing her work of purification. A fever is the simplest form of disease, and the type of all diseases. What is a fever? Simply a process of purification. It is an effort to rid the body of obstructing material-impurities. It is labor unusual and extraordinary; and when the fever has completed its task of purifying the organism, like an army after a long campaign, or a man after a hard day's work, the system is weak and fatigued, and the vital powers want, what? Alcohol? No; rest, REST. The body needs quiet, not stimulation. The alcohol only kindles up a new fever, and occasions a still greater expenditure and waste of vital power. Recollect I have said that stimulation and fever are identical. It is during sleep, when the external

THE TRUE TEMPERANCE PLATFORM, or an Exposition of the Fallacy of Alcoholic Medication. By R. T. Trail, M.D., New York. 162 pp. London: William Tweedie, 337, Strand. A work which ought to be read by everybody.

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senses are in repose, that the vital powers build up and replenish the tissues; and nutrition goes on best when the abnormal disturbance, which we call stimulation, is least. Stimulation and nutrition are antagonistic actions. Medical men have made a disastrous mistake in confounding excitement with strength. The physician who prescribes alcoholic stimulus after a fever, to raise the patient, or during a fever to sustain him, or previous to a fever to prevent it, commits a grave, and, also, a grave-filling error. He imagines that if he withholds stimulus, his patient will run down; but the truth is, the stimulus is one of the things which runs him down. The late Prince Albert was 'kept up' for six days on stimulus, as the story came to us over the waters; and where was he on the seventh? I shall return to his case presently. Now, I have tested this question of stimulation both ways. For many years I gave stimulants to keep my patients up. Many a time has my patient taken one quart of wine, and even brandy, per day. I watched the pulse closely, and as often as it evinced the least tendency to sink, I repeated the dose, and brought the circulation up again, to what? To the normal standard? No; to the fever-standard. I did not then understand, as I now do, that I was only prolonging the fever, and lessening the chances of final recovery. I lost about the usual proportion of cases; but since I have seen the 'error of my ways,' I have treated hundreds of cases of all the forms of fever incident to New York and its vicinity, and, as I have already said, without stimulus of any kind, and without losing one patient. I do not regard the ordinary acute and febrile diseases, of which so many die every day in the year, and whose mortality is about equal to that of all other diseases combined, as intrinsically dangerous, however violent they may be, provided the doctor does no harm. And I regard physicians, as a general rule, as vastly more destructive than fevers, especially the alcoholic respiratory-food' physicians. When I made the statement not long since, during a course of lectures I was delivering in Boston, Massachusetts, that I did not consider the fevers, of which so many were dying all round us, as at all dangerous, when left to themselves, and that I had not, nor had any of my associate physicians lost a case in fifteen years, a venerable gentleman of some three score years and ten, arose in the audience and remarked, 'Sir, your statements are perfectly astonishing! I could only reply, There is nothing more astonishing, on medical subjects, than simple truth and plain common sense.'

Alcohol is said to be a stimulant, and, as a stimulant, it is said to support the vital powers. But if a person take several supporting doses of the drug, he becomes very suddenly 'powerfully weak,' utterly prostrate; all at once the stimulant has become a depressant. How is this? The profession cannot understand it. It is one of the mysteries of medical science. Now, in the light of vitality, this subject is as clear as sunshine. What is stimulation? Not, as I have already explained, the action of a poison on the living system, but the action of the living system in its efforts to expel a poison. This is why stimulation is always an exhausting, and never a supporting process. This is why keeping a person up' on stimuli is a sure method of sinking him down. Stimulation, inflammation, and fever, as I have said, are all morbid conditions, and are all occasioned by poisons or impurities of some kind. Pure food, pure water, and pure

air, do not stimulate in the least. Allow me to refer to a single case to illustrate the positions I have advanced-that of the late Prince Consort. A few months ago the whole civilized world was shocked by intelligence of his sudden and unexpected death. Why did he die? In the prime of life, of

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vigorous constitution, temperate and regular in his personal habits, and unusually intelligent on physiological subjects, he had just reached the age when, with a mind well stored with knowledge and discip lined by the experience of youth and early manhood, his best and his truest life should have begun; when he was just prepared for his highest usefulness, and when his family, his country, and humanity peculiarly needed his living presence on the earth. The story came across the waters that the Prince had 'gastric fever.' But why should a strong, hale man die of a little fit of indigestion? It was also stated that the illustrious patient was kept up for six days on stimulus. But where was he on the seventh? We are told that after six days his system 'refused to respond' to the stimulus, and that then he died! Why did his system refuse to respond to the stimulus? I answer, because all his vitality had been stimulated

away.

When I read the announcement of the death of Prince Albert, I was in Washington city. I had gone there to deliver some lectures, and to save, if possible, some of the officers and soldiers of our armies from dying of alcoholic medication, when they had pneumonia, typhod fever, measles, etc. And I have the satisfaction to know that my mission there was not wholly in vain; and I feel something like a presentiment that my mission here will not be entirely fruitless. I stated to a large audience in the Smithsonian Institute-that magnificent temple of science for which we are indebted to the munificent philanthropy of a generous and loyal subject of your good Queen- that our soldiers were dying of grog-rations and grog-medicines faster than they were dying of confederate bullets and rebel bayonets. I said this in the presence of men of science, members of Congress, and military surgeons. And nobody publicly disputed any of the propositions I advanced there, and I think no one will publicly controvert the positions I advocate here. When I read the story of the death of Prince Albert, I exclaimed involuntarily ! 'Oh! this awful delusion; how long, how long, before medical men will understand that stimulation is not nutrition? When will the world learn that stimulus causes disease and waste, instead of imparting health and vitality? I watched the medical journals for an explanation of his case, and for the particulars of the treatment. But I found nothing on the subject except a couple of brief articles in the London Lancet, for February, 1862. From these I learn that on Sunday, December 8, 1861, the Prince Consort, according to the official bulletin of his four distinguished medical advisers, had a 'feverish cold.' On Wednesday and Thursday following, there were no unfavorable symptoms. On Friday he was worse. On Saturday, he died. The death was certified to be of typhoid fever! A remark or two made by the Lancet has more significance than would appear to the careless reader; perhaps more than the writer intended. The Lancet is evidently puzzled for a sa. tisfactory theory of the unexpected death, and resorts to what seems to us as special pleading in the case. It says of typhoid fever: This is a disease which has inevitably proved far more fatal to sufferers of the upper class than to patients of the poorer kind.' Why should a wealthy person be more liable to die of typhoid fever than a poor person? If there is any virtue in superior hygienic conditions, and in the most eminent physicians, the difference should be the other way. In the light of the premises I have advanced, the answer is not difficult. The richer the patient, and the higher his position in life, the greater will be the effort to save him; the more numerous the physicians, and the stronger the medicines; and if alcoholic stimulus be the leading remedy, of course the greater quantity of that. The Prince had four

physicians.

The Lancet remarks again, in allusion to his case-Even the least sanguine had no anticipations of the slowly, but surely increasing debility, resisting all efforts to stay its progress, under which the Prince gradually sunk.' What were these efforts to stay the progress of the 'increasing debility?' Stimulants, of course. I am of opinion that it was the stimulus which occasioned the fatal debility. But, if the untimely death of Prince Albert could be the means, under Providence, of leading the scientific world to a thorough investigation of the nature of alconolic stimulus, and dispel, for ever, from the minds of medical men, this most fatal delusion, that stimulus is a substitute for, or in any way gives strengthalthough I should respond from my inmost soul to that universal wail that went up to Heaven from the national heart of hearts, and which expressed itself in those sweetly tender words of womanly love and sympathy, Oh! the poor Queen;' and while I should pray God to console and comfort her Majesty, still I should almost rejoice that His providence had thus afflicted the Queen, and the nation, and the world-God grant that such terrible lessons be not always lost upon His children.

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Shade of the immortal bard! I find myself, for the first time, in the land of him who drew the portraiture of human nature to the life, and I am reminded of his testimony concerning that enemy which men take into their months to steal away their brains.' And these fearful words seem almost to be blazoned on the walls before my eyes. 'O, thou invisible spirit of wine! if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil.' And if this thing is devil, as a beverage, is it not doubly devilish as a medicine? Call the maddening draught when it giveth its color in the cup,' fire, fury, fiend, or demon; but devil, and double devil damned, are feeble epithets to express the infernal nature of alcoholic medicine. O, if alcohol must be administered to God's image, for any purpose, give it to the well, and not to the sick. The well man can better resist its effects; he may have time and opportunity to break the spell of the murdering basilisk. But do not take the sick man in his extremity, when life and death are trembling in the balance, and when a feather's weight of adverse influence, though he be in the full maturity of manhood, may extinguish the vital sp. k for ever, as the red lightning flashed from His thunder-throne in the far off clouds, in an instant, blasts the tall pine, or shivers the stalwart oak. Is the Bible right when it declares that 'strong drink is raging? Is that portion of the Bible inspired, which says, of the alcoholic bane, 'at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder?' Does the Bible make an exception in favor of alcoholic medicine in those fearful interrogatories, who hath woe? who hath sorrow?' The time will surely come, it must come, when medical men will wake from this unfortunate and fatal delusion, that alcohol is in any proper sense remedial. And then they will look back through the long vista of centuries of alcoholic medication as upon a dream of horror; as they would survey a battle field covered with the mangled and the dying, where human beings meet on purpose to destroy each other. And they will then see that, when they supposed themselves to be practising the 'Healing Art Divine,' they were really warring on human constitutions, and sending their fellow-beings in droves to premature graves. God will forgive them, for they knew not what they were doing.

Disease, I have said, is just the contrary of what is taught in medical books. It is remedial effort. 'But how,' it ay be objected,' can a remedial effort occasion loss or waste of vital power?" I answer, just as a nation wastes its resources in var. War is

ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION.

remedial effort. It is national disease, although it may be necessary. Disease is an action to cast out impurities. It wastes the vital power, just as a man would expend his strength in ejecting a thief from his premises. If a thief or a mad dog should get into your house, and you should go to work with all your might to expel it, and if, while so engaged, a friend who intended to 'aid and assist' you, should come up behind your back and burn you with a red hot poker, or if he should throw cayenne pepper into your eyes, he would cause you to let the thief or the dog alone, and go to fighting the poker or the pepper. He would arrest your remedial effort in one direction, by inducing it in another. He would thus cure one disease by producing another.' But the thief or the dog would remain. And this is a perfect illustration of the manner in which drugs cure diseases, and in which alcohol 'supports vitality.' Let us return for a moment to the nature and relations of stimulation and fever. What is fever? Simply, as I have said, a process of purification. Fevers are not intrinsically dangerous. Nearly all of the danger results from the erroneous manner in which they are ordinarily medicated. The terrible typhus or typhoid fever, of which so many people are said to be dying continually, is not in itself dangerous. No person can have a fever, unless there are obstructions in his system which ought to be removed; and the fever is the attempt to remove them. So far, therefore, from being dan gerous, it is dangerous not to have a fever, provided the causes exist. There may be circumstances or complications which will render the remedial struggle unsuccessful; but the disease is a remedial effort nevertheless. And when this principle is recognised by the medical profession, we shall very soon have a great, indeed a complete revolution in the manner of treating fevers. No one would allow himself to be stimulated in a fever, or as a restorative process at any time, if he understood the rationale of stimulation. No physician would ever prescribe alcohol as a medicine, if he could explain its modus operandi. No person would ever think of taking alcohol into his system during the presence of a fever, if he knew what a fever was. If he knew the true nature of a fever, he would fear to break it up,' as much as he would fear to break down his constitution. He would be as unwilling to have his fever subdued,' as he would be unwilling to incur a worse chronic disease. And if he understood the manner in which alcohol 6 supports vitality,' or 'develops nervous energy,' he would regard the alcoholic treatment of fever like curing a disease by killing the patient. If a fever is a process of purification, certainly it should not be · suppressed,' 'subdued,'' counteracted,' 'opposed,' nor killed nor cured, in the ordinary sense of these terms. It should be aided, assisted, and regulated. A fever is not a substance, but an action. It is not an entity, but a disturbance. It is not an enemy, but it is defensive war. It is not a thing to be destroyed, but a process to be directed. Medical journals are discussing, to this day, the nature and seat of different fevers. Fevers have no 'seat.' Medical books tell us that fevers 'attack' us; go through' us; 'run their course;' and that some of them are self-limited,' etc.; they set in,' supervene,' etc.; they come in, run out, travel about, locate, emigrate and immigrate, advance, retreat, capture or capitulate, as though they were independant existences, imps, spooks, ghosts, or goblins. How absurd! Did it ever occur to our medical philosophers to imagine where a fever was when no one had it?

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Where was it before it 'attacked' the patient? Where did it go after it had left the patient? In what form, shape, condition, or place, does a fever

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exist outside of the living organism? What has the profession been doing for three thousand years that it has never thought of these things? On the theory that fever is a thing, which must of necessity run a certain course, and which, in the language of Dr. Bigelow, of Boston, derives laws from its own nature,' physicians predicate the use of stimulants. And since the doctrine of the self-limitation of disease has come in vogue, the use of alcoholic stimulants has greatly increased. The tendency of fever is to depress and weaken the patient, and alcohol is given to support vitality'-to 'keep him up,' until the disease has run its course. But once admit the principle, and where are you going to stop? There is no stopping. place this side the grave. Persons are weak and depressed in many ways, and from various causes. Why not resort to alcohol? Well, they do and there's just the mischief. And so the principle is established, that alcohol is a universal panacea. But we do not stop here. If alcohol will cure disease, why will it not prevent disease? If it will make sick folks well, why will it not make well folks better? If it will obviate the effects of debility, why not prevent debility? The logic is sound, and alcohol is employed as a preventive of disease.

HOW CAN THIS VITAL QUESTION BE SETTLED? By experience? Oh, no. We have had quite enough of that. Medical men have seen dissipation and debauchery, vice, crime, pauperism, and misery following in the wake of the alcoholic bane for a period of four thousand years, and still their experience tells them it is a good medicine. They have tested it in all conceivable ways on plants, on animals, and on man, and they have recorded that disease, debility, disorganisation, and death are the invariable results of its contact with living tissue of any kind, animal or vegetable, and yet they regard it as in some way restorative. WHEREIN IS THE DELUSION? It consists in mistaking stimulation for nutrition, excitement or strength, vital expenditure for renewed energy Alcohol is prescribed to a patient after he has had a course of fever, and become weak, emaciated, or during the fever, if it be of low diathesis, because it stimulates. The patient needs just the opposite-rest. WHAT IS STIMULATION? It is itself fever, and nothing else. To administer stimulus after a patient has had a course of fever is to reproduce the fever; and can this be a restorative process? Give a well person what are called moderate doses of alcohol, and he will have the condition of fever. He will be in that state

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of bodily disturbance 'disordered physiology'

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which is termed feverishness. He will have the form of disease to which the term fever has always been applied by medical men. Can the alcoholic fever support vitality or prolong life, or aid and assist nature,' or promote convalescence, or favor nutrition, any more than a miasmatic fever can, or any other fever induced by any other poison? 'medical science' of the world says, Yes. ture and common sense say, No. Which authority shall we accept? Can the cause of fever be the proper remedy for the consequences of fever? Can the poison which occasions fever sustain the organism under a fever occasioned by other poisons, or obviate the debility resulting from other morbific agents? In the light of true science the proposition is simply absurd. If this word stimulation were correctly explained in medical books, or if it were employed in any precise and definite sense, the world would see the fallacy at once, and medical men would no longer perpetrate the monstrous and unparalleled blunder of administering the causes of fever to cure the consequences of fever. They would then see that stimulation is the condition and action which wastes the vital power, instead of a process which supplies

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