ARTIFICIAL STIMULANTS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 316, 16 October 1875, Page 3

ARTIFICIAL STIMULANTS.

Nothing is more common in life than to see a man with excellent motives, objects, »nd views, although possessed of a ready capacity to make his meaning and purposes clear, yet hopelessly misunderstood. Perhaps, the next common thing in life is * to see a cause good in itself, overlaid, smothered, and put out of sight by intemperate deficiency of knowledge in its advocates. It is hopeful that all good causes live through these difficulties and make their way through such impediments. There has never any cause suffered so much in this way as that which is now making steady progress towards abolishing the most pernicious habit of dram drinking. When the platform told the world that the people spent so many millions sterling annually on tobacco, thus pulling so many tons of solid goldinto smoke, the individual Englishman lighted his pipe, and comforted himself that his little tobacco blast could not stop the absorption of public wealth in this direction. Cui bono ? So it went on for years, moderate respectability congratulated itself and flouted the teetotallers. But there has grown up a movement which is bringing it home to every man’s door that artifical stimulation is a waste of life, that anasthetic indulgences degrade the material of its working machinery. The Society of Arts in London was established for the intelligent artisans and middle classes, with schools of design and technical science annexed. The question of «lcohoiisation, some time ago made prominent by the leading literary and scientific *’ weeklies,” has occupied its recent session. Dr. Benjamin Richardson is of the highest eminence as a physician and toxicologist. This scientific man has ■delivered the' yearly “ Cantor „ lectures upon this subject. He has established five positions beyond all questions. (1) That the alcoholic drinks of the present ■day are nearly fire times stronger than those in use two centuries ago. Good Burgundy of the 17th century was less alcoholised than the stronger beers of the present day. (2) That the transmutation of sugar into alcohol is a process of degradation and therefore an active poison. (3) That the operation of alcohol is by the absorption of the vital fluids. (4) That alcohol does not raise but lowers the temperature of the body. This is shewn by a great variety of experiments. The insensibility of apoplexy is distinguished from that of drunkenness by the temperature in the latter case being lowered. (5) That as alcohol is entirely devoid of nitrogen in any form, it can never be converted into any part of the substance of the living body. [This points to its use as a therapeutic agent being exceptional.] The “wear and tear” of life is strictly descriptive of the cause of death from constant use of alcoholic beverage. The employment of the word “ constant ” is significant of a change in public habit as ■superseding the phrase “ excessive.” It is the nipping and not the surfeit that kills now. When every individual man shall have educated himself sufficiently to know this and feel this, mankind as a body will be no longer chargeable with the weakness of a stupid gratification. The sooner this comes about the better for the unit as well as the lump.— Exchange.