Dr. Inman, the attendant physician, as well as that "of the lady's
husband, of mutual friends occasionally residing in the house with
her, of her mother, of her sisters, and of her nurse." We have
apparently no alternative but to believe it; and if it is true, it is
certainly decisive. It is nothing less than an _experimentum crucis_.
The suggestion that this lady might have kept up her normal activity
while nursing children, for a whole year, with no aliment except her
own tissues and the water and vegetable matter contained in her ale
and brandy, is too absurd to need refutation. The thing is an utter
impossibility. Moreover, not being emaciated at the end of the year,
she had probably been consuming her own tissues but very little. Her
weight, her muscular activity, and the natural heat of her body, could
have been sustained by nothing but the alcohol; which thus appears as
a true food, at once nourishing, strength-giving, and heat-producing.
This conclusion is further re-enforced by the numerous cases on record
of persons who have lived actively for many years upon a diet of
alcoholic liquor accompanied by a quantity of solid food notoriously
inadequate to support life. The case of Cornaro is outdone by some of
those quoted by Dr. Anstie, as having occurred under his own
observation. Of twelve cases which are described in detail, the most
remarkable is that of a man aged 83, whose diet for twenty years had
consisted of one bottle of gin and one small fragment of toasted bread
daily. This old fellow, says Dr. Anstie, "would have been of little
service as a practical illustration of the bodily harm wrought by
drinking, being in truth rather an unusually active and vigorous
person for his time of life." Probably the old man was not narcotized
by his daily bottle of gin; or he would, long before the twenty years
had elapsed, have shown symptoms of nervous disease. In most of these
cases of abnormal diet, there occurs after a while a general breaking
down of the nerve-centres, shown in delirium tremens, epileptic fits,
or a sudden stroke of paralysis. They are not quoted, therefore, as
examples to be followed, but as very important items of evidence in
favour of the opinion that alcohol is food.
Taking all these considerations together, we believe it to be
tolerably well made out that alcohol, whether changed within the body
or not, is a true food, which nourishes, warms and strengthens. And
Dr. Brinton, in the following passage, declares it to be, in many
cases, a necessary food. "That teetotalism is compatible with health,
it needs no elaborate facts to establish; but if we take the customary
life of those constituting the masses of our inhabitants of towns, we
shall find reason to wait before we assume that this result will
extend to our population at large. And, in respect to experience, it
is singular how few healthy teetotalers are to be met with in our
ordinary inhabitants of cities. Glancing back over the many years
during which this question has been forced upon the author by his
professional duties, he may estimate that he has sedulously examined
not less than 50,000 to 70,000 persons, including many thousands in
perfect health. Wishing, and even expecting to find it otherwise, he
is obliged to confess that he has hitherto met with but very few
perfectly healthy middle-aged persons, successfully pursuing any
arduous metropolitan calling under teetotal habits. On the other hand,
he has known many total abstainers, whose apparently sound
constitutions have given way with unusual and frightful rapidity when
attacked by a casual sickness." "This," says an English reviewer of
the French experiments, "is quite in accordance with what I have
myself observed, and with what I can gather from other medical men;
and it speaks volumes concerning the way in which we ought to regard
alcohol. If, indeed, it be a fact that in a certain high state of
civilization men require to take alcohol every day, in some shape or
other, under penalty of breaking down prematurely in their work, it is
idle to appeal to a set of imperfect chemical or physiological
experiments, and to decide, on their evidence, that we ought to call
alcohol a medicine or a poison, but not a food. I am obliged to
declare that the chemical evidence is as yet insufficient to give any
complete explanation of its exact manner of action upon the system;
but that the practical facts are as striking as they could well be,
and that there can be no mistake about them. And I have thought it
proper that, while highly-coloured statements of the results of the
new French researches are being somewhat disingenuously placed before
the lay public, there should not be a total silence on the part of
those members of the profession who do not see themselves called upon
to yield to the mere force of agitation."[34] If this view of the
case, which so strongly recommends itself to the mind of the practical
physician, be the true one, we are forced to regard teetotalism,
considered not in its moral but in its physiological aspects, as a
dietetic heresy nearly akin to vegetarianism. Man can do without wine,
as he can do without meat; but the rational course is to adopt that
diet from which we can obtain the greatest amount of available vital
power.
[34] Brinton, _Treatise on Food and Digestion_; and _Letters
on Chemistry_, Sept. 1862; cited in the pamphlet of Gov.
Andrew, above-mentioned.
But even if we were to give up the doctrine that alcohol is a true
food, the great indisputed and indisputable fact of its stimulant
value would still remain. Tobacco neither nourishes the body nor warms
it; yet it enables us to earn our daily bread with less fatigue, and
to support the incessant trials of life with a more even spirit. The
value of alcohol as a stimulant is inferior only to that of tobacco;
or perhaps, for general purposes, it is quite unsurpassed. It
compensates for the occasionally inevitable incapacity of ordinary
food to maintain due nutrition; and in this way enables us to work
longer, and with a lighter heart, and with less fear of ultimate
depression. It bridges over the pitfalls which the complicated
exigencies of modern life are constantly digging for us. Warm-hearted
but weak-headed radicalism may imagine a utopian state of things in
which money will grow on bushes and every one mind the moral law, and
digestion be always easy, and vexation infrequent, and "artificial"
stimulus unnecessary; but this is not the state of things amid which
we live. A modern man cannot, if he does his duty, secure to himself
the enjoyment of such a state. There are times when he must sacrifice
a little of his own round perfection, if it be only to lend a helping
hand to his neighbour. A kind of valetudinarian philosophy is now
afloat, which says, Look out, above all things, for your own physical
welfare. This philosophy contains a truth, but as usually manifested
it is nothing but the result of a morbid self-consciousness. Duty
sometimes requires that we should cease coddling ourselves, and go to
work, unless we would see some cause suffer which interests other men,
living and to come, besides ourselves. We must sometimes run to put
the fire out, even if we do thereby lose our dinner, and interfere
with the stomach's requirements. It is useless, then, to talk about
agents which "support us in doing wrong," when, from the very
constitution of the world and of society, we can no more go exactly
"right" than we can draw a line which shall be mathematically
straight. It is useless to speculate about an ideal society in which
men can dispense with the agents which economize their nervous
strength, when we find as a historical fact that no nation has ever
existed which has been able to dispense with those agents. As long as
there are inequalities in the daily ratio of waste and repair to be
rectified, so long we shall get along better with wine than without
it. For this, looked at from the widest possible point of view, is the
legitimate function of alcohol,--_to diminish the necessary friction
of living_.
This too is the view of Liebig: "As a restorative, a means of
refreshment when the powers of life are exhausted, of giving animation
and energy where man has to struggle with days of sorrow, as a means
of correction and compensation where misproportion occurs in
nutrition, wine is surpassed by no product of nature or of art.... In
no part of Germany do the apothecaries' establishments bring so low a
price as in the rich cities on the Rhine; for there wine is the
universal medicine of the healthy as well as the sick. It is
considered as milk for the aged."[35]
[35] Liebig, _Letters on Chemistry_, p. 454.
This is also the view of Dr. Anstie. Comparing the action of alcohol
upon the organism with that of chloroform and sulphuric ether, he
observes: "It seems as if the former were intended to be the medicine
of those ailments which are engendered of the _necessary_ everyday
evils of civilized life, and has therefore been made attractive to the
senses, and easily retained in the tissues, and in various ways
approving itself to our judgment as _a food_; while the others, which
are more rarely needed for their stimulant properties, and are chiefly
valuable for their beneficent temporary poisonous action, by the help
of which painful operations are sustained with impunity, are in great
measure deprived of these attractions, and of their facilities for
entering and remaining in the system."[36] Apart from its implied
teleology, this passage contains the gist of the whole matter.
[36] Anstie, op. cit. p. 401.
As for the Coming Man, whom Mr. Parton appears to regard as a sort of
pugilist or Olympic athlete, we suppose he will undoubtedly have to
exercise his brain sometimes, he will have to study, think and plan,
he will have responsibilities to shoulder, his digestion will not
always be preserved at its maximum of efficiency, his powers of
endurance will sometimes be tried to the utmost. The period in the
future when "we shall have changed all this" is altogether too remote
to affect our present conclusion; which is that the Coming Man, so
long as he is a member of a complex, civilized society, will continue
to use, with profit as well as pleasure, the two universal stimulants,
Alcohol and Tobacco.
APPENDIX.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TOBACCO.
For the benefit of those readers who may feel interested in this
subject, the following list is added, of the principal works which
have been written on the effects of tobacco. The older ones have, of
course, little scientific value, yet they are often interesting and
suggestive. They usually made the best use of the science of their
time, which is more than can be said of some of the later treatises.
Baumann: Dissertatio de Tabaci virtutibus. Basil, 1579.
Everart: De herba Panacea. Antwerp, 1583.
Ziegler: Taback von dem gar heilsamen Wundkraute Nicotiana. Zurich,
1616.
Marradon: Dialogo del uso del Tabaco. Seville, 1618.
De Castro: Historia de las virtudes y propriedades de Tabacco.
Cordova, 1620.
Thorius: Hymnus Tabaci. Leyden, 1622.
Neander: Tabacologia. Leyden, 1622.
Scriverius: Saturnalia, seu de usu et abusu Tabaci. Haarlem, 1628.
Braun: Quæstio medica de fumo Tabaci. Marburg, 1628.
Aguilar: Contra il mal uso del Tabaco. Cordova, 1633.
Frankenius: Dissertatio de virtutibus Nicotianæ. Upsal, 1633.
Ostendorf: Traité de l'usage et de l'abus du Tabac. Paris, 1636.
Venner: Via recta ad vitam longam. London, 1637. (See p. 363, for an
entertaining discourse on Tobacco.)
Ferrant: Traité du Tabac en sternutatoire. Bourges, 1645.
Cuffari: I biasimi del Tabacco. Palermo, 1645.
Vitaliani: De abusu Tabaci. Rome, 1650.
Tapp: Oratio de Tabaco. Helmstadt, 1653.
Balde: Satyra contra abusum Tabaci. Munich, 1657.
Magnenus: Exercitationes XIV. de Tabaco. Ticino, 1658.
Rumsey: Organum Salutis. London, 1659.
Paulli: Commentarius de abusu Tabaci Americanorum veteri. Argentorat.
1665.
Baillard: Discours du Tabac. Paris, 1668.
De Prade: Histoire du Tabac. Paris, 1677.
Van Bontekoe: Korte verhandeling van t' menschenleven gezondheit,
ziekte en dood, etc. s' Gravenhagen, 1684.
Worp Beintema: Tabacologia, ofle korte verhandelinge over de Toback.
s' Gravenhagen, 1690.
Fagon: Dissertatio an ex Tabaci usu frequenti vita brevior. Paris,
1699.
Brunet: Le bon usage du Tabac en poudre. Paris, 1700.
Della Fabra: Dissertatio de animi affectibus, etc. Ferrara, 1702.
Manara: De moderando Tabaci usu in Europæis. Madrid, 1702.
Nicolicchia: Uso ed abuso del Tabacco. Palermo, 1710.
Keyl: Dissertatio num Nicotianæ herbæ usu levis notæ maculam
contrahat. Leipsic, 1715.
Cohausen: Pica nasi, seu de Tabaci sternutatorii abusu et noxa.
Amsterdam, 1716.
Meier: Tabacomania. Nordhaus, 1720.
----: A Dissertation on the Use and Abuse of Tobacco in Relation to
Smoaking, Chewing, and taking of Snuff. London, 1720.
Plaz: De Tabaco sternutatorio. Leipsic, 1727.
Stahl: Dissertatio de Tabaci effectibus salutaribus et nocivis.
Erfurt, 1732.
Maloet: Dissertatio an a Tabaco, naribus assumpto, peculiaris quædam
cephalalgiæ species, aliique effectus. Paris, 1733.
Alberti: De Tabaci fumum sugente theologo. Halle, 1743.
Garbenfeld: Dissertatio de Tabaci usu et abusu. Argent. 1744.
Beck: De suctione fumi Tabaci. Altdorf, 1745.
Büchner: De genuinis viribus Tabaci. Halle, 1746.
Herment: Dissertatio an post cibum fumus Tabaci, etc. Paris, 1749.
De la Sone: Dissertatio an Tabacum homini sit lentum venenum. Paris,
1751.
Ferrein: Dissertatio an ex Tabaci usu frequenti vitæ summa brevior.
Paris, 1753.
Petitmaitre: De usu et abusu Nicotianæ. Basil, 1756.
Triller: Disputatio de Tabaci ptarmici abusu, affectus ventriculi
causa. Wittenberg, 1761.
Cuntira: De viribus medicis Nicotianæ ejusque usu et abusu. Vienna,
1777.
Hamilton: De Nicotianæ viribus in Medicina et de ejus malis effectibus
in usu communi et domestico. Edinburgh, 1779.
Clarke: A dissertation on the Use and Abuse of Tobacco. London, 1797.
Szerlecki: Monographie über den Tabak. Stuttgart, 1840.
Stahmann: Cigarre, Pfeife, und Dose. Quedlinburg, 1852.
Baldwin: Evils of Tobacco. New York, 1854.
Trall: Tobacco, its History, etc. New York, 1854.
----: Discours contre l'usage du Tabac. Nantes, 1854.
----: Discours en faveur du Tabac. Nantes, 1854.
Tiedemann: Geschichte des Tabaks. Frankfort, 1854.
Vlaanderen: Over den Tabak, bijzonder over zijne on bewerktuigde
bestanddeelen. Utrecht, 1854.
Felip: El Tabaco. Madrid, 1854.
Hortmann: Der Tabaksbau. Emmerich, 1855.
Von Bibra: Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch. Nürnberg,
1855.
Tognola: Riflessioni intorno all' uso igenico del Tabacco. Padua,
1855.
----: A Commentary on the Influence which the Use of Tobacco exerts on
the Human Constitution. Sydney, 1856.
Jarnatowsky: De Nicotiana ejusque abusu. Berlin, 1856.
Asencio: Reflexiones sobre la renta del Tabaco. Madrid, 1856.
Hammond: The Physiological Action of Alcohol and Tobacco upon the
Human Organism. American Journal of Medical Sciences. October, 1856.
Budgett: The Tobacco Question, Morally, Socially, and Physically.
London, 1857.
Cavendish: A few Words in Defence of Tobacco. London, 1857.
Jeumont: Du Tabac, de son Usage, de ses Effets, etc. Paris, 1857.
Lizars: On the Use and Abuse of Tobacco. London, 1857.
Steinmetz: Tobacco. London, 1857.
Alexandre: Contre l'abus du Tabac. Amiens, 1857.
Fermond: Monographie du Tabac. Paris, 1857.
Koller: Der Tabac. Augsburg, 1858.
Prescott: Tobacco and its Adulterations. London, 1858.
Schmid: Der Tabak als wichtige Culturpflanze. Weimar, 1858.
Demoor: Du Tabac. Brussels, 1858.
Mourgues: Traité de la Culture du Tabac. Paris, 1859.
Morand: Essai sur l'Hygiène du Tabac. Epinal, 1859.
Fairholt: Tobacco, its History and Associations. London, 1859.
Cheever: On Tobacco. Atlantic Monthly, August, 1860.
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