An address on ardent spirit : read before the New Hampshire Medical Society at their annual meeting, June 5, 1827, and published at their request / by R.D. Mussey.

  • Reuben Dimond Mussey
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address on ardent spirit : read before the New Hampshire Medical Society at their annual meeting, June 5, 1827, and published at their request / by R.D. Mussey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    disappear. The idle and half starved vagrant is trans- formed into a lord, and surrounded with pomp and plenty ; and the miserable outcast, who has tenanted a prison for his crimes, imagines himself on a throne, clothed with power sufficient to direct the destinies of a nation or of the world. The lover of alcohol sometimes resorts to poetry and song in the expression of his ecstacies, but as the effect of the ethereal liquor deepens, he sings or shouts inar- ticulate responses to music or voices which seem to come to him from a distance, but which are occasioned by a violent beating of the arteries of his own brain. If the corporeal part of man, in this happy condition, be inspected, it presents phenomena which correspond with those of the mind. The whole face is swollen, the forehead and temples patched with red and white, the cheeks of a deep crimson, the nose tipped with ruby, the corners of the mouth drawn down, and the under lip in- clining to drop, the eyes bloodshot and glassy, roll up- wards under their lids, and the body and limbs, no longer subjected to the arbitrary control of the will, assume that position which is dictated by the power of gravitation ; in a word, the whole man declining farther intercourse with external nature, retires within himself, and heed- less of the material creation around him, remains for hours, as if in a trance. If such be some of the effects of alcohol, who can wonder that it has been called golden drink, or that poets have chanted its praises? This, however, is not ail. It possesses, more than any other invention of man, the power of transforming character; but what is worthy of particular notice, is, that all its good transformations are transitory, and nearly all its bad ones, permanent. Does it give momentary strength to the feeble ? Its habitual use makes the strong man weak. Does it inspire the coward with desperation ? It can break down the heart of courage, and reduce the manly spirit to the imbecility of childhood. Does it make the poor man rich in imagination 1 It makes the rich man poor in reality. If it occasionally excite a flood of sympathetic tears, and unclench the fist of avarice, it relaxes benevolent exertion, and renders the mind ha- bitually less sensible to the sufferings of others.