Alcohol : its place and power / by James Miller.

  • Miller, James, 1812-1864.
Date:
[1858?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Alcohol : its place and power / by James Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    21/184 (page 9)
    ALCOHOL: ITS PLACE. Let everything have a place, and everything be in its place. This is a good old Scottish maxim, pregnant with both thrift and wisdom. And had it but its full sway over the common household thing whose ominous name heads the page, the world were many times fairer, richer, and better, than it is this day. But in order to put and keep anything in its proper place, we must ascertain and determine what that place is. And, accordingly, let us at once proceed to make some inquiry in this direction, so far as alcohol is concerned. Under the term alcohol, is included, let it be distinctly understood, every kind of intoxicating drink. All the varieties of spirits, wines, and malt liquors, are the same as to Lheir intoxicating quality ; that invariably depends upon the pre- scence of alcohol. This may be more or less diluted, mixed, coloured, and flavoured; or, as in the case of malt liquors, combined with a small quantity of nutritive material; ^ but it is always present, and according to its amount is the in- toxicating power of the beverage. A man is apt to draw a broad distinction—greatly in his own favour—between him- * Very small in the best of them, especially if you excUule the saccharine stuffs. For, according to Liehig, suppose a man to consume, daily, eight or ten quarU of the hest Bavarian heer, he will obtain from it, in tlie course of twelve months, no more than the same quantity of nutritive constituents con- tained in a five-pound loaf of bread.