Alcohol as a Beverage,

I think that instead of flying to alcohol, as many people do when they are exhausted, they might very well drink water, or that they might very well take food, and would be very much better without the alcohol. If I am fatigued with overwork, personally, my food is very simple. I eat the rasins instead of drinking the wine. I have had a very large experience in that practice for thirty years. This is my own personal experience, and I believe it is a very good and true experience.

I should join issue at once with those people who page 4 believe that intellectual work cannot be so well done without wine or alcohol. I should deny that proposition and hold the very opposite. It is one of the commonest things in English society, that people are injured by drink without being drunkards. It goes on so quietly that it is even very difficult to observe. There is a great deal of injury done to health by the habitual use of wines in their various kinds, and alcohol in its various shapes, even in so-called moderate quantities. It leads to the degeneration of tissues; it spoils the health, and it spoils the intellect.

I think, as a rule, you might stop the supply of alcohol at once without injury. It is said in some cases the brain has entirely gone from leaving drink off suddenly; but that is fallacious, the brain may have gone from previous habits. I hardly know any more potent cause of disease than alcohol, leaving out of view the fact that it is a frequent source of crime of all descriptions. I am persuaded that lecturers should go about the country lecturing to people of the middle and upper-middle classes upon the disadvantages of alcohol as it is daily used.

The public ought to know that of all the diluents or solvents for the nutritious parts of food there is nothing like water. Water carries into the system the nutriment in its purest form.