The anatomy of drunkenness / [Robert Macnish].

  • Robert Macnish
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The anatomy of drunkenness / [Robert Macnish]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    er rum; and that the popular belief of its greater tendency to produce dropsy, is quite unfounded. An experiment has lately been made for the purpose of ascertaining the comparative powers of gin, brandy, and rum upon the human body, which is not less remarkable for the inconsequent conclu- sions deduced from it, than for the ignorance it displays in confounding dead animal matter with, the living fibre. It was made as follows :-— | A piece of raw liver was put into a glass of gin, another into a glass of rum, and a third into a glass of brandy. That in the gin was, in a given time, - partially decomposed; that in the rum, in the same time, not diminished; and that in the brandy quite dissolved. . It was concluded from these results, that rum was the most wholesome spirit of the three, and brandy the least. The inferences deduced from these premises are not only erroneous, but glaringly absurd; the premises would even afford grounds for drawing results of the very opposite nature: it might be said, for instance, that though brandy be capable of dissolving dead animal matter, there is no evidence that it can do the same to the living stomach, and that it would in reality prove less hurtful than the others, in so far as it would, more effectually than they, dissolve the food con-