The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alcohol and the Human Brain, by Joseph Cook
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Title: Alcohol and the Human Brain
Author: Joseph Cook
Release Date: March 30, 2013 [EBook #42435]
Language: English
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ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN BRAIN.
BY
REV. JOSEPH COOK.
NEW YORK:
National Temperance Society and Publication House,
58 READE STREET.
1879.
ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN BRAIN.
BY REV. JOSEPH COOK.
Cassio's language in Othello is to-day adopted by cool physiological
science: "O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal
away their brains! That we should, with joy, revel, pleasure and
applause, transform ourselves into beasts! To be now a sensible man, by
and by a fool, and presently a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is
unbless'd, and the ingredient is the devil."--Shakespeare, _Othello_,
Act II., Scene iii.
Central in all the discussion of the influence of intoxicating drink
upon the human brain is the fact that albuminous substances are hardened
by alcohol. I take the white of an egg, and, as you see, turn it out in
a fluid condition into a goblet. The liquid is a viscous, glue-like
substance, largely composed of albumen. It is made up of pretty nearly
the same chemical ingredients that constitute a large part of the brain
and the nervous system, and of many other tissues of the body. Forty per
cent of the matter in the corpuscles of the blood is albumen. I am about
to drench this white of an egg with alcohol. I have never performed this
experiment before, and it may not succeed, but so certain am I that it
will, that I purpose never to put the bottle to my lips and introduce
into my system a fiend to steal away my brain. Edmund Burke, when he
heard William Pitt say in Parliament that England would stand till the
day of judgment, rose and replied; "What I fear is the day of _no_
judgment." When Booth was about to assassinate Lincoln, his courage
failed him, and he rushed away from the theater for an instant into the
nearest restaurant and called for brandy. Harden the brain by drenching
it in alcohol and you harden the moral nature.
If you will fasten your attention on the single fact, that alcohol
hardens this albuminous substance with which I place it in contact, you
will have in that single strategic circumstance an explanation of most
of its ravages upon the blood and nerves and brain. I beg you to notice
that the white of an egg in the goblet does not become hardened by
exposure to the air. I have allowed it to remain exposed for a time, in
order that you may see that there is no legerdemain in this experiment.
[Laughter.] I now pour alcohol upon this albuminous fluid, and if the
result here is what it has been in other cases, I shall pretty soon be
able to show you a very good example of what coagulated albumen is in
the nervous system and blood corpuscles. You will find this white of an
egg gradually so hardened that you can take it out without a fork. I
notice already that a mysterious change in it has begun. A strange
thickening shoots through the fluid mass. This is your moderate
drunkard that I am stirring up now. There is your tippler, a piece of
him, [holding up a portion of the coagulated mass upon the glass
pestle]. The coagulation of the substance of the brain and of the
nervous system goes on. I am stirring up a hard drinker now. The
infinitely subtle laws of chemistry take their course. Here is a man
[holding up a part of the coagulated mass] whose brain is so leathery
that he is a beast, and kicks his wife to death. I am stirring up in
this goblet now the brain of a hardened sot. On this prongless glass
rod, I hold up the large part of the white of an egg which you saw
poured into this glass as a fluid. Here is your man [holding up a larger
mass] who has benumbed his conscience and his reason both, and has begun
to be dangerous to society from the effects of a diseased brain.
Wherever alcohol touches this albuminous substance, it hardens it, and
it does so by absorbing and fixing the water it contains. I dip out of
the goblet now your man in delirium tremens. Here is what was once a
fluid, rolling easily to right and left, and now you have the leathery
brain and the hard heart.
Distortions of blood discs taken from the veins of drunkards have been
shown to you here by the stereopticon and the best microscope in the
United States. All the amazing alterations you saw in the shape, color,
and contents of the blood discs are produced by the affinity of alcohol
for the water in the albuminous portion of the globules.
I am speaking here in the presence of expert chemists. You say I have no
business to know anything about these topics. Well, the new professor
in Andover on the relations between religion and science has no business
to know them. The new professor at Edinburgh University and in Princeton
has no business to know them. The lectureship at the Union Theological
Seminary in New York has no right to teach on these themes. There is
getting to be a tolerably large company of us who are intending to look
into these matters at the point of the microscope and the scalpel. In a
wiser generation than ours the haughty men who will not speak themselves
of the relations of religion and science, and will not allow others to
speak--veritable dogs in the manger--will be turned as dogs out of the
manger. I speak very strongly, for I have an indignation that can not be
expressed when it is said that men who join hands with physicians, and
are surrounded by experts to teach them the facts, have no right to make
inferences. Men educated and put into professorships to discuss as a
specialty the relation of religion and science have no right to discuss
these themes! We have a right as lawyers to discuss such topics before
juries, when we bring experts in to help us. I bring experts before you
as a jury. I assert the right of Andover, and Princeton, and New Haven,
and Edinburgh, and even of this humble platform to tell you what God
does in the brain, and to exhibit to you the freshest discoveries there
of both His mercy and wrath.
My support of temperance reform I would base upon the following
propositions:
1. Scars in the flesh do not wash out nor grow out, but, in spite of
the change of all the particles of the body, are accurately reproduced
without alteration by the flux of its particles.
Let us begin with an incontrovertible proposition. Everybody knows that
the scars of childhood are retained through life, and that we are buried
with them. But we carry into the grave no particle of the flesh that we
had in youth. All the particles of the body are in flux and are changed
every few years. There is, however, something in us that persists. I am
I; and therefore I am praiseworthy or blameworthy for things I did a
score of years since, although there is not a particle of my body here
now that was here then. The sense of the identity persisting in all the
flux of the particles of the system, proves there is something else in
man besides matter. This is a very unsubstantial consideration, you say;
but the acute and profound German finds in this one fact of the
persistence of the sense of identity in spite of the flux of the
particles of the body, the proof of the separateness of matter and mind.
Something reproduces these scars as the system throws off and changes
its particles. That something must have been affected by the scarring.
There is a strange connection between scars and the immaterial portion
of us. It is a mysterious fact, right before us daily, and absolutely
incontrovertible, that something in that part of us which does not
change reproduces these scars. Newton, when the apple fell on his
head--according to the fable, for I suppose that story is not
history--found in it the law of the universe; and so in the simple fact
that scars will not wash out or grow out, although the particles of the
flesh are all changed, we find two colossal propositions; the one is
that there is somewhat in us that does not change, and is not matter;
the other is, that this somewhat is connected mysteriously with the
inerasability of scars, which, therefore, may be said to exist in some
sense in the spiritual as well as in the material substance of which we
are made.
2. It is as true of scars on the brain and nervous system as of those on
any less important parts of the body, that they will not wash out, nor
grow out.
3. Scars on the brain or nervous system may be made by physical or
mental habits, and are the basis of the self-propagative power of
habits.
4. When the scars or grooves in which a habit runs are made deep, the
habit becomes automatic or self-acting and perhaps involuntary.
5. The grooves worn or scars made by good and bad habits may be
inherited.
Physical identity of parent and offspring, spiritual identity of parent
and offspring--these mysteries we have discussed here; and this two-fold
identity is concerned in the transmission of the thirst for drink. When
the drunkard who has had an inflamed stomach, is the father of a child
that brings into the world with it an inflamed stomach, you have a case
of the transmission of alcoholic scars.
6. While self-control lasts, a bad habit is a vice; when self-control is
lost, a bad habit is a disease.
7. When a bad habit becomes a disease, the treatment of it belongs to
physicians; while it is a vice, the treatment of it belongs to the
Church.
8. In probably nine cases out of ten, among the physical difficulties
produced by the use of alcohol, and not inherited, the trouble is a vice
and not a disease.
9. Alcohol, by its affinity for water, hardens all the albuminous or
glue-like substances in the body.
10. It thus paralyzes the small nerves, produces arterial relaxation,
and deranges the circulation of the blood.
11. It produces thus an increased quickness in the beating of the heart,
and ruddiness of countenance which are not signs of health, but of
disease.
Pardon me if I dwell a moment on this proposition, which was not made
clear by science until a a few years ago. You say that moderate drinking
quickens the pulse and adds ruddiness to the countenance, and that,
therefore, you have some reason to believe that it is a source of
health. I can hardly pardon myself for not having here a set of the
chemical substances that partially paralyze the small nerves. I have a
list of them before me, and it includes ether and the whole series of
nitrites, and especially the nitrite of amyl. If I had the latter
substance here, I might, by lifting it to the nostrils, produce this
flushing of the face that you call a sign of health in moderate
drinking. There are five or six chemical agents that produce paralysis
of the vessels of the minute circulation, and among them is alcohol. A
blush is produced by a slight paralysis of the small nerves in the
interlacing ends of the arteries and veins. If I had ether here, and
could turn it on the back of my hand and evaporate it, I could
partially freeze the skin, and then, removing the ether, you would see a
blush come to the back of the hand. That is because the little nerves
that help constrict and keep up the proper tone of the circulating
organs, are temporarily paralyzed. A permanent blush in the face of a
drunkard indicates a permanent injury to the blood vessels by alcohol.
The varicose vein is often produced in this way by the paralysis of some
of the nerves that are connected with the fine parts of the circulatory
organs. When the face blushes permanently in the drunkard the injury
revealed is not a local one, but is inflicted on every organ throughout
the whole system.
After moderate drinking you feel the heart beating faster, to be sure,
but it beats more rapidly because of the paralysis of the delicate
nerves connected with the arteries, and because of the consequent
arterial relaxation. The blood meets with less resistance in passing
through the relaxed circulatory organs, and so, with no additional force
in the heart, that organ beats more rapidly. It beats faster simply
because it has less force to overcome. The quickened pulse is a proof of
disease and not of health. (_See_ Dr. Richardson, Cantor Lectures on
Alcohol.)
12. Alcohol injures the blood by changing the color and chemical
composition of its corpuscles.
In the stereopticon illustrations, you saw that the red discs of blood
are distorted in shape by the action of alcohol. You saw that the
arrangement of the coloring matter in the red discs is changed. You saw
that various adulterations appeared to come into the blood, or at least
into visibility there, under the influence of alcohol. Lastly, you saw,
most terrible of all, an absolutely new growth occurring there--a sprout
protruding itself from the side of the red corpuscle in the vital
stream. Last year I showed you what some of the diseases of leprosy did
for the blood, and you see how closely alcoholism in the blood resembles
in physical effects the most terrific diseases known to man.
Here are the diseases that are the great red seal of God Almighty's
wrath against sensuality; and when we apply the microscope to them, we
find in the blood discs these sprouts, that greatly resemble each other
in the inebriate and in the leper. Dr. Harriman has explained, with the
authority of an expert, these ghastly growths. These sprouts shoot out
of the red discs, and he tells you that, after having been called before
jury after jury as an expert, sometimes in cases where life was at
stake, he has studied alcoholized blood, and that a certain kind of
spore, a peculiar kind of sprout, which you have seen here, he never saw
except in the veins of a confirmed drunkard. I think the day is coming
when, by microscopic examination of the blood discs, we can tell what
disease a man has inherited or acquired--if it be one of that kind which
takes hold of the circulatory fluid.
This alcohol, with its affinity for water, changes the composition of
every substance in the body into which water enters, and there are seven
hundred and ninety parts of water in every thousand of blood. The reason
alcohol changed this white of an egg into hardness, that if it had been
put in whole I could have rolled it across the platform, was that the
fierce spirit took the water out of the albumen. If I had a plate of
glass here, and could put upon it a solution of the white of an egg, and
could sprinkle upon it a little finely-powdered caustic soda, I could
very soon pick up the sheet of gelatinous substance and should find it
leathery, elastic, tough. Just so this marvelous white matter folded in
sheets in the brain is drenched with a substance that takes out the
water, and the effect on the brain is to destroy its capacity to perform
some of its most delicate actions. The results of that physical
incapacity are illustrated in all the proverbial effects of
intemperance.
13. The deteriorations produced in the blood by alcohol are peculiarly
injurious to the brain on account of the great quantity of blood sent to
that organ.
The brain weighs only about one twenty-eighth of the rest of the body,
and yet into it, according to most authorities, is sent from a tenth to
a sixth of all the blood. If you adopt fiat money, where will the most
harm be done? What part of this land shows first of all the effect of a
debased condition of the currency? Wall Street? Why? Because there the
circulation is most vigorous. The blood of the land, to speak of money
under that title, is thrown into Wall Street as the blood of the body is
thrown into the head, and so in Wall Street, we have our men on the
watch to tell us whether the currency is in a healthy or unhealthy
state. The slightest alteration is felt there, because the currency
there is accumulated, and so in the brain the slightest injury of the
blood is felt first, because here is accumulated the currency of the
system.
14. Most poisons and medicines act in the human system according to a
law of local affinity, by which their chief force is expended on
particular organs, and sometimes on particular spots of particular
organs.
15. All science is agreed that the local affinity of alcohol, like that
of opium, prussic acid, hashish, belladonna, etc., is for the brain.
16. The brain is the organ of the mind, and the temple and instrument of
conduct and character.
17. What disorganizes brain disorganizes mind and character, and
whatever disorganizes mind and character disorganizes society.
18. The local affinity of alcohol for the brain, therefore, exempts it,
in its relations to Government, from the list of articles that have no
such affinity, and gives to Government the right, in self-defence, to
interfere by the prohibitory regulation of its sale as a beverage.
19. It is not sufficient to prove that alcohol is not a poison to
overthrow the scientific basis of its prohibitory laws.
20. Intemperance and cerebral injury are so related that even moderate
indulgence is inseparably connected with intellectual and moral
disintonement.
21. In this circumstance, and in the inerasibility of the scars produced
by the local affinity of alcohol for the brain, the principle of total
abstinence finds its justification by science.
Nothing in science is less questioned than the law of local affinities,
by which different substances taken into the system exert their chief
effect at particular localities. Lead, for example, fastens first upon
the muscles of the wrist, producing what is known among painters and
white-lead manufacturers as a wrist-drop. Manganese seizes upon the
liver, iodine upon the lymphatic glands, chromate of potash upon the
lining membrane of the eyelids, mercury upon the salivary glands and
mouth. Oil of tobacco paralyzes the heart. Arsenic inflames the mucous
membranes of the alimentary passages. Strychnine takes effect upon the
spinal cord. Now, as all chemists admit, the local affinity of alcohol
is for the brain. Dr. Lewis describes a case in which the alcohol could
not be detected in the fluid of the brain cavities, nor, indeed, in any
part of the body, but was obtained by distillation from the substance of
the brain itself. Dr. Percy distilled alcohol in large quantities from
the substance of the brains of animals killed by it, when only small
quantities could be found in the blood or other parts of the systems of
the same animals. Dr. Kirk mentions a case in which the brain liquid of
a man who died in intoxication smelt very strongly of whisky, and when
some of it was taken in a spoon, and a candle put beneath it, the flame
burned with a lambent blue flame. But brain is the organ of the mind.
Dr. Bucknell (Habitual Drinking) quotes Forbes Winslow as having
testified before a Committee of Parliament that the liquid dipped from
the brain of an habitual inebriate can thus be burned. Whatever is a
disorganizer of the brain is a disorganizer of mind, and whatever is a
disorganizer of mind is a disorganizer of society. It is from this point
of view that the right of Government to prevent the manufacture of
madmen and paupers can be best seen. I care not what men make of the
famous recent experiments of Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy, of France, by
which half of the medical profession, including Dr. Carpenter, has been
carried over to the support of the propositions that alcohol is
eliminated from the system in totality and in nature; is never
transformed and never destroyed in the organism; is not food; and is
essentially a poison. I care not, on the other hand, what men make of
the proposition Mr. Lewes defends, that alcohol may be a negative food.
The local affinity of alcohol for the brain! This is a great fact. It is
a fact uncontroverted. It is a fact sufficient. It is a fact to be
heeded even in legislation.
Among the well known authorities on the influence of alcohol on the
human brain, Dr. W. B. Carpenter and Dr. B. W. Richardson, of England,
are now in entire accord with Prof. Youmans and Dr. W. E. Greenfield, of
the United States, in recommending total abstinence. Dr. Richardson's
Cantor lectures have been followed by a volume on "Total Abstinence,"
and he gives to Dr. Carpenter's views on this subject his full assent
and final adhesion, having learned at last, he says, "how solemnly right
they are." In 1869 Dr. Richardson began to abstain from wine, by
limiting his use of it to festal occasions, but still more recently he
has abandoned its use altogether.
The graduates of Amherst College met at the Parker House, in Boston,
some years ago, and, although a wine glass was placed at the side of
each plate, not one of them was filled. Niagara itself, a recent
traveler in the United States says, is not as worthy of description to
Englishmen as the pure array of goblets with ice-water at the usual
dinners at hotels. Mrs. Hayes has expelled intoxicating beverages from
the Presidential mansion.
The latest investigators of the influence of alcohol on the brain are
Schulinus, Anstie, Dupré, Labottin, and Binz. The latter in a series of
remarkable articles published in the _Practitioner_, in 1876, maintains
that a portion of every dose of alcohol is burned in the system, and yet
he considers the use of alcohol in health as entirely superfluous. The
experimenters agree with the majority of physicians that, in the army
and navy, and for use among healthy persons, alcohol, even as a ration
strictly limited to a moderate quantity, is physiologically useless and
generally harmful.
Upon different portions of the brain the action of alcohol can be
distinctly traced by medical science and even by common observation. The
brain, it will be remembered, is divided into three parts. The upper,
which comprises the larger part, and which is supposed to be the seat of
the intellectual and moral faculties, is called the _cerebrum_. Below
that, in the back part of the organ, is another mass, called the
_cerebellum_, parts of which are believed to control the contractions
of the muscles in portions of the body. Still lower is the _medulla
oblongata_, which presides over the nerves of respiration. Now the
action of alcohol can be distinctly marked upon the different parts of
the brain. The moral and intellectual faculties are first jarred out of
order in the progress of intoxication. The tippler laughs and sings, is
talkative and jocose, coarse or eloquent to almost any degree according
to his temperament. The cerebrum is first affected. His judgment becomes
weak; he is incapable of making a good bargain, or of defending his own
rights intelligently, but he does not yet stagger; he is as yet only a
moderate drinker. The effect of moderate drinking, however, is to weaken
the judgment and to destroy the best powers of the will and intellect.
But he takes another glass, and the cerebellum which governs several of
the motions of the body is affected, and now he begins to stagger. He
loses all control of his muscles, and plunges headlong against post and
pavement. One more glass and the _medulla oblongata_ is poisoned. This
organ controls the nerves which order the movements of the lungs, and
now occurs that hard breathing and snoring which is seen in dead
drunkenness. This stoppage is caused by impure blood so poisoning the
_medulla oblongata_ that it can no longer perform its duties. The
cerebrum and cerebellum now seem to have their action entirely
suspended, and sometimes the respiratory movements stop forever, and the
man dies by asphyxia in the same manner as by drowning, strangling, or
narcotic poisoning by any other substance. (_See_ Prof. Ferrier. The
Localization of Cerebral Disease. London, 1878.)
Who shall say where end the consequences of alcoholic injury of the
blood and of the substance of the brain? Here within the cranium, in
this narrow chamber, so small that a man's hand may span it, and upon
this sheet of cerebral matter, which, if dilated out, would not cover a
surface of over six hundred square inches, is the point of union between
spirit and matter. Inversions of right judgment and every distortion of
moral sense legitimately follow from the intoxicating cup. It is here
that we should speak decidedly of the evil effects of moderate drinking.
Men may theorize as they please, but practically there is in average
experience no such thing as a moderate dose of alcohol. People drink it
to produce an effect. They take enough to "fire up," as they say, and
unless that effect is produced they are not satisfied. They will have
enough to raise their spirits, or dissipate gloom. And this is enough to
impair judgment, and in the course of years perhaps to ruin fortune,
body, and soul. The compass is out of line in life's dangerous sea, and
a few storms may bring the ship upon breakers.
It is to be remembered that, by the law of local affinity, the dose of
alcohol is not diffused throughout the system, but is concentrated in
its chief effects upon a single organ. When a man drinks moderately,
though the effects might be minute if dispersed through the whole body,
yet they may be powerful when most of them are gathered upon the brain.
They may be dangerous when turned upon the intellect, and even fatal
when concentrated upon the primal guiding powers of mind--reason, and
moral sense. It is not to the whole body that a moderate glass goes; it
is chiefly to its most important part--the brain; and not to the whole
brain, but to its most important part--the seat of the higher mental and
moral powers; and not to these powers at large, but to their helmsman
and captain--Reason and Conscience.
"Ship ahoy! All aboard! Let your one shot come," shouts the sailor to
the pirate craft. Now, one shot will not shiver a brig's timbers much,
but suppose that this one ball were to strike the captain through the
heart, and the helmsman through the skull, and that there are none to
fill their posts, it would be a terrible shot indeed. Moderate drinking
is a charmed ball from a pirate craft. It does not lodge in the beams'
ends. It cuts no masts. It shivers no plank between wind and water. It
strikes no sailor or under-officer, but with magic course it seeks the
heart of the captain and the arms of the helmsman, and it always hits.
Their leaders dead, and none to take their place, the crew are powerless
against the enemy. Thunders another broadside from pirate alcohol, and
what is the effect? Every ball is charmed; not one of the crew is
killed, but every one becomes mad and raises mutiny. Commanders dead,
they are free. Thunders another broadside from the pirate, and the
charmed balls complete their work. The mutinous crew rage with insanity.
Captain Conscience and Steersman Reason are picked up, and, lest their
corpses should offend the crazy sailors, pitched overboard. Then ranges
Jack Lust from one end of the ship to the other. That brave tar,
Midshipman Courage, who, in his right mind, was the bravest defender of
the ship, now wheels the cannon against his own friends and rakes the
deck with red-hot grape until every mast totters with shot-holes. The
careful stewards, seamen Friendship and Parental Love, whose exertions
have always heretofore provided the crew seasonably with food and drink,
now refuse to cook, furnish no meals, unhead the water-casks, waste the
provisions, and break the ship's crockery. The vessel has wheeled into
the trough of the sea; a black shadow approaches swiftly over the
waters, and the compass and helm are deserted. That speculating mate,
Love of Money, who, if sober, would see the danger, and order every rag
down from jib to mainsail, and make the ship scud under bare poles
before the black squall, now, on the contrary, orders up every sail and
spreads every thread of canvas. The rising storm whistles in the
rigging, but he does not hear it. That black shadow on the water is
swiftly nearing. He does not see it. In the trough of the sea the ship
rocks like a cockle shell. He does not feel it. Yonder, before the dense
rush of the coming blow of air rises a huge wave, foaming, and gnawing,
and groaning on high. He does not hear it. With a shock like the opening
of an earthquake it strikes the broadside; with a roar it washes over
the deck; three snaps like cannon, and the heavily-rigged masts are
gone; a lurch and sucking in of waves, and the hold is full of water,
and the sinking ship just survives the first heavy sea. Then comes out
Mirthfulness, and sits astride the broken bowsprit, and ogles a dancing
tune. The crew dance! It were possible, even yet, to so man the pumps
and right the helm as to ride over the swells and drive into port, but
all action for the right government of the ship is ended. Trumpeter
Language mounts the shattered beams of the forecastle, and makes an
oration; it is not necessary to work, he tells the crew, but to hear him
sputter yarns.
It is fearful now to look upon the raging of the black sea. Every moment
the storm increases in fury. As a giant would toss about a straw, so the
waves handle the wrecked timbers. Night gathers her black mists into the
rifted clouds, and the strong moaning sound of the storm is heard on the
dark ocean. By that glare of lightning I saw a sail and a life-boat! Men
from another ship are risking their lives to save the insane crew whose
masts are gone. They come nearer, but the boat bounds and quivers, and
is nearly swamped upon the top of a wave. Jack Courage and Independence
see the boat coming. "Ship ahoy," shout the deliverers. "Life-boat from
the ship Temperance! Quit your wreck and be saved." No reply.
Independence grinds his teeth and growls to Jack Courage that the offer
of help is an insult. "I will tell you how to answer," says Jack, stern
and bloody. There is one cannon left with a dry charge. They wheel that
upon the approaching boat, and Independence holds the linstock over the
fuse-hole. "Life-boat for sailors on the wreck," shouts Philanthropy
from the approaching boat. "What answer, ship Immortal?" Then shoots
from the ringing gun a tongue of flame, and ten pounds of iron are on
their way. The Temperance boat rocks lower from the wave-top, and the
deadly reply just grazes the heads of the astounded philanthropists and
buries itself heavily in their own ship beyond. It was an accident, they
think, and keep on board the ship and stand upon its deck. Then flash
from their scabbards a dozen swords; then click the locks of a dozen
muskets; then double the palms of a dozen fists; then shake the clubs of
a dozen maniac arms, and the unsuspecting deliverers are murdered on the
deck they came to save. As the lightning glares I see them thrown into
the sea, while thunders are the dirge of the dead and the damnation of
the murderers.
The drunken ship is fast filling with water. Not a man at the pumps, not
an arm at the helm. Having destroyed their friends, the crew fall upon
each other. Close under their bow rave the breakers of a rocky shore,
but they hear it not. At intervals they seem to realize their condition,
and their power even yet to save themselves, but they make no effort.
Gloom, and storm, and foam shut them up against hell with many thunders.
In this terrible extremity Independence is heard to refuse help, and
boasts of his strength. Friendship and Parental Love rail at thoughts of
affection. Language trumpets his easy yarns and grows garrulous as the
timbers crack one after another. Rage and Revenge are now the true names
of Firmness and Courage. Silly Mirth yet giggles a dance, and I saw him
astride the last timber as the ship went down, tossing foam at the
lightning. Then came a sigh of the storm, a groaning of waves, a booming
of blackness, and a red, crooked thunderbolt shot wrathfully blue into
the suck of the sea where the ship went down.
And I asked the names of those rocks, and was told: "God's Stern and
Immutable Laws."
And I asked the name of that ship, and they said: "Immortal Soul."
And I asked why its crew brought it there, and they said: "Their
captain, Conscience, and helmsman, Reason, were dead."
And I asked how they died, and they said: "By one single shot from the
pirate Alcohol; by one charmed ball of Moderate Drinking!"
On this topic, over which we sleep, we shall some day cease to dream.
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+Beer as a Beverage.+ An address by G. W. Hughey. 12mo, 24 pp +10+
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+That Glass of Ale.+ By Rev. E. H. Pratt.
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Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent,
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_SCIENCE AND TEMPERANCE._
By BENJAMIN W. RICHARDSON, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.,
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The National Temperance Society has published the following new and
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+Moderate Drinking+: For and Against, from Scientific Points of View.
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+Action of Alcohol on the Body and on the Mind, The.+ 12mo, 60 pages.
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Two able and important lectures, the result of careful and extended
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+The Medical Profession and Alcohol.+ An Address before the British
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_58 Reade Street, New York_.
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