Alcohol is not found as a constituent principle in nature. Go search creation through: "Examine all the structures and fluids of that being whom alone God has taught to laugh or weep, and of all the tribes of animated existence that 'roam the wood, or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,'-you find it not. Look through all the vegetable kingdom; analyze the alimentary grains, the nutritious seeds, the esculent roots and the luscious fruits; it is not there. Then go down to the mineral regions; search through all the strata of earth, and explore the depths of old ocean; it is not there. Nature throughout all her domain of things, animate and inanimate, has not produced it. Whence comes it then? Human art, led on by the solicitation of depraved instincts, has produced it—not by any process of growth and development, but by a process of destruction and retrogradation. Many persons, even at this day, think alcohol is a constituent of vegetable matter. I read not long since, in a work evincing much greater metaphysical than chemical knowledge, that alcohol existed naturally in sugar, from which it was merely separated by fermentation and distillation; and this was given as a reason why it is so natural for us to love it. Natural! There never was a man, or animal, that did not find it disgusting in every shape and abhorrent to every sense, unless his or its nature had become changed from its pure and pristine condition. This error has had a most disastrous effect on the popular mind.

"Let us try to understand this matter. There are among those vegetables which the beneficent Creator

has caused to grow for our sustenance, various proximate principles which are nutritious; as water, sugar, starch, gum, gluten, fibrine, albumen, and others, which are called in dietetic works, alimentary principles. Now so long as these proximate principles maintain their natural state, or chemical condition, so long are they salutary food and drink, but no longer. They are all composed, mainly, of certain proportions of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, which constitute their primitive or ultimate elements. If the proportions of these ultimate elements become changed in any way, the whole nature of the substance is altered, and the most healthful aliment may thus be converted into the most virulent poison. To illustrate: the air we breathe is composed of about one part of oxygen, to three of nitrogen; but by combining a greater proportion of oxygen, we make aqua fortis, a powerfully corrosive liquid that will decompose the animal structures like fire. Water is composed of definite proportions of oxygen and hydrogen; but unite those elements other proportions, and there is water no longer. A sound potato is wholesome food; but when it rots, its organic state or chemical constitution is changed: it is no longer food, and if you eat it you will get poisoned. The juice of an apple, or grape, is salutary drink; but let those juices rot, change their natural state, or in other words ferment, and they are nature's beverage no longer.

in

any

"Now in making alcohol, the nutrient vegetable principles undergo fermentation. And what is fermentation? In plain language it is simply—a rot

ting process. The proximate, organic, vegetable principles putrefy, become decomposed, and are physiologically destroyed; but being subjected to certain circumstances of air, temperature and moisture, some of their ultimate elements, set free by the process of decomposition, recombine in new forms and produce new substances, one of which is alcohol. The fermentation of leavened bread converts a portion of the sugar into carbonic acid gas, and if the fermentation is carried too far, the gluten is destroyed and acetic acid developed-or, as the women say, their bread is sour. Hence fermentation in the best of bread diminishes its nutritive qualities. If food ferments in the stomach, instead of digesting, various acid, acrid and irritating compounds are formed, as the dyspeptic well knows-greatly to his cost! and all fermentation, whether panary, saccharine, vinous, acetic, or putrefactive, is simply the transformation of matter from its organic or proximate, to its ultimate or elementary conditions, in different stages of the process of retrogradation and destruction.

"Thus we see that alcohol, so far from being a product of growth and organic formation, is exactly the contrary-a result of decay and destruction; and it has, clearly, no more place among man's beverages than arsenic has among his foods. The virus of the rattlesnake, when taken into the human stomach, has a pleasant, nervine and exhilarating effect, and is, in fact, thus used, a less deadly poison than alcohol. But if this virus be inserted under the skin, it proves rapidly destructive. Alcohol inserted

under the skin produces only a slight inflammation, but if swallowed, its destructive influence over the whole nervous system is rapid and powerful. Now one is just as veritable a poison as the other, yet each operates in its own peculiar way. Such is alcohol in itself considered, and such the analysis of its ravages on man.

“But dram drinkers should notice another thing. The alcoholic beverages of commerce are even worse than the alcohol itself. They do not get the alcoholic poison pure; but it is further drugged with still other poisons. Read a part of the long catalogue of pernicious agents in common use; namely, -Essential Oils, Cocculus Indicus, Logwood, Brazil Wood, Alum, Green Vitriol, Oil of Vitriol, Capsicum, Opium, Tobacco, Aloes, Bitter Oranges, Henbane, Nux Vomica, Sugar of Lead, Oil of Bitter Almonds, India Berry, Poke Berries, Elder Berries, Poison Hemlock, Guinea Pepper, Laurel Water, Prussic Acid, Dragon's Blood, Lamb's Blood, Gum Benzoin, Red Sanders, Burnt Sugar, Salt of Tartar, and so on. Here are some of the most deadly vegetable and mineral agents in the world, with which nearly all the liquors, wines, ales and beers in the world, and often cider, are drugged and adulterated. A late work on chemistry enumerates forty-six articles commonly used in making · beer alone; and almost every species of the light and sweet wines, such as ladies sometimes think delectable, is extensively adulterated."

That these articles do enter into the composition of the "fine old ports," "clarets," "home-brewed

ales," and "genuine spirits," offered to a gullible public, is certain, even by the testimony of men employed in the preparation of alcoholic beverages. One of these men, having named various articles employed in the preparation of porter, such as cocculus indicus, capsicum, powdered copperas and alum, says: -"However pernicious or disagreeable these may appear, I have always found them to be requisite in the brewing of porter; and they must be used by those who wish to continue the taste, flavor, and appearance of the beer. The intoxicating qualities of porter are to be ascribed to the drugs intermixed with it. It is evident some porter is more heady than others, and it arises from a greater or less quantity of stupifying ingredients."* And it is the deliberate opinion of competent judges, that not one glass of wine of any description in this country finds its way down the throat of the drinker, but it carries with it more or less of the drugs previously named.

Alcohol is injurious to every part of the human constitution. If you consult medical records to learn the effect which alcohol has on the human system, you there learn that it inflames the coats of the stomach, disorders the liver, excites the blood vessels, poisons the blood, vitiates the secretions, renders the bland juices of the body acrid and irritating, paralyzes the nerves, hardens the brain, produces dropsy, dyspepsia, jaundice, marasmus, consumption, gout, rheumatism, eruptions, tumors, carbuncles, leads to imbecility, insanity, and delirium tremens,

* Bacchus, page 286.