upon the health in general, it is clearly ascertained that under
certain circumstances, it may become highly injurious.
Apart from the disturbance produced in the whole nervous system, there
are serious diseases affecting certain organs of the body, which arise
solely from the abuse of both these stimulants. We note a serious
affection of the visual organs, which we plainly designate by the name
of: "Emblyopia ex abusu nicotiano et alcoholico." The symptoms of this
complaint consist chiefly in a gradual and steady decline of the power
of sight, coupled with partial colour blindness. I cannot here enter
into details as to the manner in which the range of sight is affected
as regards each of the different colours, and can only refer to the
characteristic weakening of the power to distinguish red from other
hues.
It will not be necessary, I presume, to extend my remarks to the evil
effects of tobacco and alcohol upon the human body, as you are
sufficiently acquainted with them, especially as far as alcohol is
concerned.
Now as to the relation in which both stand to mental work. If I may be
allowed to state first of all the result of observations in my own
case, I must tell you that I have not found these drugs to be in any
degree helpful in the performance of mental labour. I find it
absolutely impossible to put any sensible thoughts on paper when I am
smoking. In former years I frequently tried to smoke a pipe or a cigar
over my work, but had always to give it up; I only got into proper
working condition after putting tobacco aside. Indeed, of late years I
have felt a growing antipathy to tobacco, so that, whilst I was
formerly passionately fond of smoking, I new, very rarely, indeed,
indulge in the practice.
My experience with regard to alcohol is precisely similar. I am very
fond of a little beer, but not when at work. The current of my
thoughts flows much more clearly and rapidly when I have had no drink.
I have a special aversion for wine, which, indeed, I do not drink at
all. Generally speaking, I can therefore say, that, in my own case,
tobacco and alcohol have a disturbing effect, when doing mental work.
This you will, of course, take as applying to myself alone. I know
some very respectable scholars in this town and neighbourhood who are
only capable of thinking and working properly when under the influence
of tobacco.
MAGNUS.
Breslau, February 28, 1882.
MR. EDWARD MAITLAND, B. A.
In reply to your enquiries, I have to say that my experience of the
effects of alcohol and tobacco upon intellectual work is a very
limited one, owing to the very moderate use I have made of either. So
far, however, as my experience goes, my conclusions are as follows:
tobacco, though it may, indeed, give a momentary fillip to the
faculties, lessens their power of endurance; for by lowering the
action of the heart, it diminishes the blood supply to the brain,
leaving it imperfectly nourished, and flaccid, and unable, there-fore,
to make due response to the demands of its owner, the man within, who
seeks to manifest himself through the organism. Of an organism thus
affected, as of an underpitched musical instrument, the tones will be
flat. Of stimulants, the effect is the contrary. Owing to the
over-tension of the strings, the music will be sharp. It is apt also
to be irregular and discordant, owing to the action set up in the
organism itself--an action which is not that of the performer or man.
That which alone ought to find expression, is the central, informing
spirit of the individual; and for both idea and expression to be
perfect, the first essential is purity, mental as well as physical.
Hence, however great a man and his work may be, under the influence of
alcohol or tobacco, or on a diet of flesh, they would be still greater
on pure natural regimen. Of course, there are cases in abundance in
which persons have become so depraved by evil habits, as to be utterly
incapacitated through the disuse of that to which they have been
accustomed. But no sound argument in favour of the abuse can be
founded on this.
EDWARD MAITLAND.
March 20, 1882.
SIR THEODORE MARTIN, K. C. B.
To myself tobacco is simply poison, and I believe it is so to very
many who use it. I have seen proofs that it is so among the friends of
my youth, who certainly hurt their health and shortened their lives by
smoking. But, on the other hand, I have known others who smoked with
impunity, and even with benefit to their nervous system. These,
however, are, in my experience, exceptional cases. Wine in moderation
is, I am sure, beneficial to brain workers; and I feel confident that
it is far better, as a rule, to assist the system by this, than by
food without wine or alcohol, which, in my experience, seems always to
lead to eating to an extent that is very apt to cause derangement of
the functions of the body. But, really, I have not made my
observations either with such care or on so wide a scale as to give
them any value.
THEODORE MARTIN.
February 18, 1882.
THE REV. JAMES MARTINEAU, D. D.
Having kept no record of my dietary and health, I can give you no
more exact report than my memory supplies. Of tobacco, I have nothing
to say, except that my intense dislike of it has restricted my
travelling to a minimum, and kept me from all public places where I
am liable to encounter its sickening effects. My first prolonged
experience of abstinence from wine and malt liquor ran through about
seven years, dating, I think, from 1842. The change was not great in
itself, and I always thought it favourable in its effects. At no time
of my life did I sustain a heavier pressure of work and of anxiety.
But in the spring of 1849, when I was living with my family in
Germany, I fell into a low state of health, indicated by fluttering
circulation in going upstairs, or up-hill; and, under medical advice,
I adopted the habit of taking, daily, I suppose about half-a-pint
bottle of _Vin ordinam._ I recovered completely, and adhered for
several years to the allowance (or its equivalent) which had been
prescribed to me. Under this regimen, however, I became, after a
time, subject to occasional slight attacks of gout, and to some
disturbance of digestion and of sleep. In spite of medical advice, I
determined to revert to the abstinence in which I had never lost
faith. For a time of, I suppose, from twelve to fifteen years, I have
persisted in this rule; not, indeed, being under any vow, but
practically not taking more than half-a-dozen glasses of wine per
annum. During this time, I have escaped, apparently, all tendency to
gouty affections; have returned to untroubled sleep and digestion;
and, notwithstanding the advance of old age (I am now 77), have
retained the power of mental application, with only this abatement
perceptible to myself, that a given task requires a somewhat longer
time than in fresher days. Though the sedentary life of a student is
not very favourable to the maintenance of muscular vigour, it has not
yet forbidden me the annual delight of reaching the chief summits of
the Cairn Gorm mountains during my summer residence in Inverness. I
will only add that I have never found the slightest difficulty,
physical or moral, in an instantaneous change of habit to complete
abstinence. Instead of feeling any depressing want of what I had
relinquished, I have found a direct refreshment and satisfaction in
the simpler modes of life. Few things, I believe, do more, at a
minimum of cost, to lighten the spirits and sweeten the temper of
families and of society, than the repudiation of artificial
indulgences.
JAMES MARTINEAU.
December 1, 1882.
DR. HENRY MAUDSLEY.
I don't consider alcohol or tobacco to be in the least necessary or
beneficial to a person who is in good health; and I am of opinion that
any supposed necessity of one or the other to the hardest and best
mental or bodily work, by such a person, is purely fanciful. He will
certainly do harder and sounder work without them. I am speaking, of
course, of a person in health; by a person not in health they may be
used properly, from time to time, as any other drug would be used.
HENRY MAUDSLEY.
February 13, 1882.
SIR THOMAS ERSKINE MAY, K. C. B., D. C. L.
In reply to your inquiries, I can give you my experience in a few
words. I can offer no opinion as to the effects of tobacco, as I have
never been a smoker. My experience of many years favours the view that
moderation in food and drink is the great secret of physical health,
mental activity and endurance. On several occasions while working
twelve and fourteen hours a day, I tried total abstinence, but I found
myself dyspeptic and stupid, and was obliged to resume my accustomed
potations. I have found that any unusual amount of alcohol, while
stimulating mental activity for a time, soon produced lassitude and
sleepiness.
T. ERSKINE MAY.
February 23, 1882.
REV. JOHN E. B. MAYOR,
M. A. FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.
When I was a school-boy of eight or nine, I was persuaded to buy some
cigars and put one to my mouth for a moment. I threw it away, and have
never touched tobacco since. I compute that I must have saved some
1500 pounds by abstaining from this narcotic. My two brothers--one 3rd
wrangler, the other 2nd classic--have also abstained for life. I know
no indulgence which leads people to disregard the feelings of others
so utterly as smoking does; nor can I believe a deadly poison can be
habitually taken without great injury to the nerves. Alcohol I have
not touched for more than two years, nor flesh meat, nor tea, nor
coffee. All my life long I have had no difficulty in adopting any diet
whatever; but I am sure that since I confined myself to fruits and
farinacea, life has gone easier with me. No one ever heard me complain
of the want of a dinner, or of the quality of what was set before me;
but I now know that a day or two's fasting will do me no sort of harm,
[Footnote: Twice in my life I have tried the experiment of a
_strictly_ vegetarian diet (_without milk, batter, eggs, fish
or flesh_)-once when I was about twelve years old, and again, for
forty-eight days, beginning On the 25th June, 1878. I had been for
some months taking regular exercise (a rare thing with me), walking on
four miles every morning from six to seven, so that I was in rude
health. I was just beginning a stiff piece of literary work on
Juvenal, which involved the daily examination of several hundred
passages of authors, chiefly Greek and Latin; and I wished to try how
far vegetarian diet would enable me to resist the depressing influence
of fasting. I mapped out my forty-eight days into four divisions of
twelve each, intending (if all went well) to fast every other day for
the first twelve; every third for the second; every fourth for the
third; and every sixth for the last twelve. I thought it prudent to
consult a doctor (a thing which I have scarcely ever had occasion to
do), who bid me go to the prison to be weighed every two or three
days and to show myself to him twice a week. I did not quite carry
out my scheme, but I did complete more than half--and the severer
half--with no ill effects, fasting June 25, 27, 29, July 2, 5, 7. 10,
13, completing that is, two-thirds of my design for the first twelve
days, and the whole of that for the second. I drank water freely on
the fasting days, but ate nothing for a period varying from
twenty-eight to about thirty-five hours. On the eating days, and for
the remainder of the forty-eight, I lived on fruits, vegetables, or
wholemeal biscuits or wheatmeal or oatmeal porridge. I never was more
fiercely eager for work in my life, nor did my pulse give way, but I
lost flesh rapidly, and had never much to spare. On the whole I lost
13 lbs., and was advised by the doctor to stay there, as it is much
easier to let yourself down than to pick up again. For years I have
been striking off one luxury after another in my diet when alone, till
at last I have come to dry bread (or biscuit or porridge) and water.--
_Herald of Health, September, 1881_.] and that whether I dine in
hall with my brother fellows, or take two or three biscuits in my own
room, makes no odds. I am more independent, and certainly more able to
influence the habits of the poor than I was.
JOHN E. B. MAYOR.
March 2, 1882.
THE ABBE MOIGNO.
I am grateful to you for thinking of me in your generous enquiry
about the best conditions of literary and scientific composition. I
can hardly offer myself as an example, because my constitution is
rather too exceptional, but my experience may have some degree of
usefulness. I have already published a hundred and fifty volumes,
small and great. I scarcely ever leave my writing table. I never take
a walk, nor recreation, even after meals; and yet have not felt any
head-ache, constipation, or any derangement in the urinary organs. I
have never had occasion to have recourse to stimulants, coffee,
alcohol, tobacco, &c., in order to work, or to obtain clearness of
mind. On the contrary, stimulants give rise in my case to abnormal
vibrations in the brain, which are adverse to its quick and regular
working.
Several times in my life I fell into the habit of taking snuff. It is
a fatal habit, dirty to begin with, since it puts a cautery to the
nose, filth in the pocket, is extremely unwholesome; for he who takes
snuff finds his nose stopped up every morning, his breathing
difficult, his voice harsh and snuffling, because the action of
tobacco consists in drawing the humours to the brain; fatal, at last,
because the use of snuff weakens and destroys, by degrees, the memory.
This last effect is fully proved by my own professional experiences,
and that of many others.
I learned twelve foreign languages by the method I published in my
"_Latin for all;_" that is to say, I draw up the catalogue of
1,500, or 1,800 radical or primitive simple words, and engraved them
upon my mind by means of mnemonic formulas. In that way I had learned
about 41,500 words, whose meaning is generally, or most frequently,
without connection with the word itself, and from 10,000 to 12,000
historical facts, with their precise date. All this existed
simultaneously in my mind, always at my disposal when I wanted the
meaning of a word or the date of an event. If anyone asked me who was
the twenty-fifth king of England, for instance, I saw in my brain that
it was Edward, surnamed Plantagenet, who ascended the throne in 1154.
With respect to philology or chronology, I was the most extraordinary
man of my time, and Francis Arago jokingly threatened to have me burnt
like a wizard. But I had again fallen into the practice of
snuff-taking during a stay of some weeks in Munich, where I spent my
evenings in a smoking room with the learned Bavarians, each of whom
ate four or five meals a day, and drank two or three jugs of beer. The
most illustrious of these learned men, Steinhein, boasted of smoking
6,000 cigars a year. I attained to smoking three or four cigars a day.
While drawing up my treatise on the Calculus of Variations, the most
difficult of my mathematical treatises, I unconsciously emptied my
snuff-box, which contained twenty-five grammes (nearly an ounce) of
snuff; and one day I was painfully surprised to find that I was
obliged to have recourse to my dictionary for the meaning of foreign
words. I found that the dates of the numerous facts I had learnt by
heart had fallen from my mind. Such a thing has rarely or seldom
happened before. Distressed at this sorrowful decay of my memory, I
made an heroic resolution, which nothing has disturbed since. On the
1st of August, 1863, I smoked three cigars and used twenty-five
centimes (2-1/2d.) worth of snuff; from the following day to June,
1882, I have neither taken a pinch of snuff nor smoked a single
cigarette.
It was for me a complete resurrection, not only of memory, but of
general health and well-being. It was only necessary for me to do,
what I did eighteen years later, to lessen nearly one-half the
quantity of food which I took every day, to eat less meat and more
vegetables, to obtain such incomparable health, of which it is hardly
possible to form any idea, unlimited capacity of labour, perfect
digestion, absence of wrinkles, pimples; and I beg leave to affirm
that those who tread in my footsteps will be as sound as I am. Add to
this the habit, irrevocably established, of never saying, I
_shall_ do, nor I am doing, but I _have done_, and you have
the secret of the enormous amount of work I have been able to
accomplish, and am accomplishing every day, in spite of my eighty
years. Nobody will dispute me the honour of being the greatest
hard-working man of my century.
I ought, finally, to add that I find it well for me to take at
breakfast a small half-cup of coffee without milk, to which, when only
two or three teaspoonful remain at the bottom of the cup, I add a
small spoonful of brandy, or other alcoholic liquor. That is my whole
allowance of stimulants. How happy would those be who should adopt my
_regime_. They would be able, without harm, to sit at their desk
immediately after breakfast, and to stay there till dinner-time. No
sooner would they be in bed, at about nine o'clock, but they would be
softly asleep a few minutes later, and could rise at five in the
morning, full of strength, after a nourishing sleep of eight hours.
ABBE F. MOIGNO.
July 20, 1882.
REV. J. MORRISON, D. D.,
PRINCIPAL OF THE EVANGELICAL UNION COLLEGE.
For my kind of work, I have found it absolutely necessary to abstain
altogether from the use of both alcohol and tobacco.
J. MORRISON.
May 11, 1882.
MR. AUGUSTUS MONGREDIEN.
I am 75 years of age. I have smoked moderately all my life; and for
the last fifty years have never, except in rare and short instances of
illness, retired to bed without one tumbler of whiskey toddy. You will
therefore see that I am utterly incompetent to pronounce on the
respective effects, on the mind and body, of moderate indulgence, and
of total abstinence, for I have never tried the latter.
A. MONGREDIEN. March 10, 1882.
DR. J. A. H. MURRAY,
EX-PRESIDENT OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, AND EDITOR OF ITS ENGLISH
ETYMOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL DICTIONARY.
I use no stimulants of any kind, and should be very sorry to do so. I
thought it was now generally admitted that the more work a man has to
do, the less he can afford to muddle himself in any way. But as I have
never tried the experiment in using either alcohol or tobacco, and
cannot afford to do it, I have no comparative experience to offer. It
might be beneficial; I do not believe it would, and prefer not to risk
the chance. _Fiat experimentum in corpore viliore_.
J. A. H. MURRAY.
March 2, 1882.
MR. D. CHRISTIE MURRAY.
I should have thought that the universal experience of mankind had
already been set on record without much ambiguity. It has been my
practice to smoke at work, and I do not think I could get along
without tobacco now, unless I made an effort, the profit of which
could scarcely justify the pains. As a matter of nature, I do not
believe that a man works either better or worse for the use of
tobacco, unless he smokes so much as to injure his general health.
Alcoholic drinks are, of course, mentally as well as physically
stimulative, and I have found them useful at a pinch. But everybody
knows that stimulants are reactionary, and it is pretty certain that
in the end they take more out of a man than they put into him. Under
extraordinary pressure they have their uses, but their habitual
employment muddles the faculties, and the last state of the man who
constantly works on them is worse than the first. Continually taken
alone, and as a stimulant to mental exertion, their influences on a
man of average formation are fatal. But I should have thought all
these things settled long ago, unless it were in junior debating
societies.
D. CHRISTIE MURRAY.
April 11, 1882.
PROFESOR NEWMAN.
In boyhood, I perceived that to my younger sisters mere drops of wine
caused coughing and spitting, and the heat of wine to my own palate
and throat was offensive. Beer, ale, and porter disgusted me by their
bitterness. Porter was peculiarly nauseous to me. I early saw the
ill-effects of wine on youths, and was frightened by accounts of
college drunkenness. For this reason, as well as from economy, I
never became a wine-drinker, further than to drink healths by just
colouring water in a glass. I have never dreamed of needing wine,
though often in old time ordered by physicians to drink it. Not
having then the same power to look over their heads-which experience
of their changes and their follies has brought to me-I used to obey a
little while, but quickly reverted to my glass of water, and never
had reason to believe, from my own case, that there was any advantage
from the wine. In 1860-1, the Parisian experiments proved that all
alcohol arrests digestion. Since then I have called myself a
teetotaler. To me it seems clear that love of the drink, or fear of
losing patients by forbidding it, are the true cause of the fuss made
in its favour. I grieve that so noble a fruit as grapes should be
wasted on wine. The same remark will hold of barley, of honey, of
raisins, of dates: from which men make intoxicating drinks. As to
tobacco-while I was in Turkey more than fifty years ago, I learned to
smoke Turkish tobacco in a long Turkish pipe, partly to relieve evil
smells, partly because it is uncivil there to refuse the proffered
pipe. I never was aware of good or evil from it, and with perfect
ease laid it aside when I quitted the soil of Asia. After this, a
cigar was recommended to me in England, as a remedy for loss of
sleep, but the essential oil of tobacco so near to my nose disgusted
me, and the heat or smoke distressed my eyes. I have never felt any
pleasure, rather annoyance, from English smoking; and since the late
Sir Benjamin Brodie published his pamphlet against it (perhaps in
1855), I have learned that the practice is simply baneful. They say
"it soothes"--which I interpret to mean--"it makes me inattentive and
dreamy."
FRANCIS W. NEWMAN.
March 2, 1882.
THE REV. MARK PATTISON, B. D.
The story of my personal experiences of alcohol is one which would
require more time than I can now command to write properly. I can now
only say that I did not begin wine, as a habit, till I was
thirty-seven; that, at first, an occasional effect was favourable to
the brain power, but always followed by corresponding reaction towards
feebleness. About fifty-seven, I was obliged to give up wine
altogether; I found great general advantage from doing so, and no
disadvantage whatever as regards mental activity. I am now
sixty-eight, and take a glass of claret every third day, or oftener.
This medicine does not produce any perceptible effect on the brain
directly, but I have a fancy that I sleep better after wine; and sleep
I have always looked to as the best brain restorative. [Footnote:
SLEEP IS THE BEST STIMULANT.--The best possible thing for a man to do
when he feels too weak to carry anything through is to go to bed and
sleep for a week, if he can. This is the only recuperation of
brain-power, the only recuperation of brain-force; because during
sleep the brain is in a state of rest, in a condition to receive and
appropriate particles of nutriment from the blood, which take the
place of those that have been consumed in previous labour, since the
very act of thinking consumes or burns up solid particles, as every
turn of the wheel or screw of the steamer is the result of the
consumption by fire of the fuel in the furnace. The supply of consumed
brain-substance can only be had from the nutritive particles in the
blood, which were obtained from the food eaten previously; and the
brain is so constituted that it can best receive and appropriate to
itself those nutritive particles during a state of rest, of quiet, and
stillness of sleep. Mere stimulants supply nothing in themselves; they
goad the brain, and force it to a greater consumption of its
substance, until the substance has been so exhausted that there is not
power enough left to receive a supply, just as men are so near death
by thirst and starvation that there is not power enough left to
swallow anything, and is over.--_Scientific American_.] Spirits I
have never drunk; Though I have been a smoker for many years, I cannot
say anything as to its effects.
MARK PATTISON.
March 16, 1882.
MR. JAMES PAYN.