&c, have also been productive of the same result. Instances of this unhappy result, from both of these causes, must have occurred under the observation of every extensive practitioner in this as well as other epidemic diseases.'

The volume closes with an Appendix on the medical use of ardent spirits, attempting to show that alcohol is as unnecessary and mischievous in sickness as in health.' Here we think the doctor has laid siege to intemperance, or the use of alcoholic liquors, in the very citadel of its advocates; and if he carry his point, the last strong hold of the enemy is demolished; but if not, it is impossible to dislodge and vanquish him. For so long as it is maintained that alcohol has its use as a medicine, its manufacture and traffic can be justified. We may succeed in banishing it from our side-boards and tables as a drink; but if it be admitted that it is necessary to health in any one case, or that the druggist may mix it up in his drugs, in the form of paregoric, cordials, &c, then its manufacture and sale may not be totally dispensed with-then will its venders justify themselves-then will its purchas ers found a plea of necessity for its use-and then, also, will tipplers and drunkards continue in the land. As well-wishers, therefore, to the mighty cause of temperance, which is rolling on with accumulated force, we hope the doctor will be able, not only to maintain his position, but to hurl destruction into the camp of the enemy that he will be able to convince all his brethren in the practice of medicine that the medical use of ardent spirits is both unnecessary and mischievous -then it will be easy to dissuade them from its use altogetherand then will drunkenness be speedily banished from the land, inasmuch as all arguments in vindication of its manufacture are fully answered. But we repeat, that so long as its use is tolerated and justified by the medical practitioner, so long will the enemy dwell in the land; all lovers of ardent spirits, or of alcoholic liquor, will successfully plead for its use, either to prevent or to remove indisposition; and being their own physicians, they will, on the least derangement of the stomach, or the slightest symptoms of disease, resort to this pernicious nostrum for relief; and so long as this is the case, so long the manufacturer will distil it, the render well sell it, and the inebriate will drink it; and thus the curse of drunkenness will be entailed upon us and our posterity. But let us hear Dr. Reese on this branch of the subject:

In attacking this dernier subterfuge of ardent spirits, I am aware that I am liable to be ranked among those ultras in physics and in morals, who are ordinarily denounced as enthusiasts, fanatics, visionaries, and the like; and thus, too often, by an opprobrious epithet, the advocates of truth are confounded in their honest and well-meant endeavors, by censoriousness rather than by argument. Indeed, I shall have arrayed

against me, not merely all the male and female quacks in the land, with? their boasted experience and alcoholic nostrums; but I must contend with the sages and philosophers of medical science, many of whom have written largely on the wonderful and sovereign efficacy of brandy and gin, as specifics, in various diseases. Besides all this, there are in the standard text books, pharmacopoeias, and dispensatories, thousands of valuable medicines prepared in alcohol, and thousands more of worthless medicines, which owe all their boasted virtues to their alcoholic menstrua. And add to all these the fact, that a great proportion of our regularly educated physicians have each a score of recipes or prescriptions, which, from time immemorial, have been given in gin, or spirits, or rum; and which they find both popular and profitable. And when it is recollected, in addition, that the experience of almost every family furnishes instances of relief in certain complaints by some form of alcoholic medicine, it will be seen that the array in behalf of the medical use of ardent spirits is a formidable one indeed.

But none of these things move me from the purpose I have distinctly avowed to assail the medical use of ardent spirits,' as not merely unnecessary and injurious, but as the most powerful and mischievous source of intemperance, with which the nation is now afflicted, and the only considerable obstruction to the benevolent designs of the temperance reformation.

The present fashionable use of ardent spirits as a medicine begins at birth, and is only relinquished when the individual is dead. No sooner is a child born into the world, than it must be intoxicated by the fumes of spirits, externally applied to the whole surface of the body, by some superannuated nurse, who has been taught to do so from time immemorial. This practice, although so universal, is a vile and mischievous one; and I never knew any motive for its continuance but the opportunity it affords the nurse to swallow a little during the operation. I never allow it in my presence, but direct cold water in its stead; and I believe many infantile diseases, in delicate children, result from this washing in rum.

If the child is not stupified by this outward operation, and continues to cry until it is troublesome, there are mothers, grandmothers, nurses, and often doctors, I am ashamed to say it, who will order herb tea with a little gin in it to make it sleep; and this convenient quietus of gin is repeated, when sleep is desirable by the indolence of the nurse, every day and night, until the dose requisite for the purpose is so large that it is difficult to give so much, or the infant's stomach rejects it; and then comes the far-famed Godfrey's cordial, paregoric, or some other sleeping draught made of rum and opium, or some other intoxicating ingredient. Thus in earliest infancy does the medical use of ardent spirits often inflict injury which sends the child to a premature grave, or inflicts upon it a feeble constitution for life. Now, all this use of alcohol, as a medicine, is understood by every man of sense in the profession to be not only useless, but hurtful; and yet it is still suffered, because to oppose it, is to encounter the prejudice of every old lady in the land.

This, then, is one argument by which the necessity of keeping alcohol in the house, as a medicine, is insisted on; and it is as unanswera

ble as any other which the advocates or apologists for rum in medicine can furnish. And I affirm, in its refutation, that for the purpose of washing a new-born infant, cold water in summer, and tepid water and soap in winter, is the only proper material; and that, to make it sleep, or for any other of the purposes for which gin and the like is given, the mother's milk, and this alone, should be introduced into the stomach; or, where this is unavoidably absent, sweetened milk and water. There are more children killed in infancy by gin and alcoholic medicines, than die from all our infantile diseases besides.

But I cannot pursue this subject farther, and will pass on to remark, that another mischievous medical use of alcohol is the practice of bribing children as they grow up to take medicine in sugar-dram. When they become sick, and medicine is required, they are often induced to take it by mixing it in toddy, and then drinking a glass of the same to wash it down. The evil is not merely the counteracting effect of the alcohol, but that the child is taught that it is not only right, but desirable; and an artificial appetite for it is thus created, which increases, until it often results in the destruction of health and life.

In many families, it is common to have a bitters, as it is called, made of garlic, or herbs of some kind, good for worms, colic, or some other of the nameless diseases of which children are often only supposed to suffer; and these bitters are frequently drank by all in the house, parents, children, and domestics. These bitters are, for the most part, prepared with alcohol for a menstruum, and have made more drunkards in this country than perhaps all other causes combined. Witness the famous bitters of Dr. Thomson, of Albany, who boasts of having sold thirty barrels in a single year. These are made of Malaga wine, and are drank and recommended for the sake of the alcohol that is in them, by the lovers of rum, as a medicine. See also Dr. Solomon's Balm of Gilead, by which he made a princely fortune, and Dr. Dyott's cordial, which has been little less successful. These, with all the tribe of stomachic bitters, cordials, elixirs, and medicamentums, are but devices founded upon the medical use of ardent spirits, and for the most part possess no active properties other than the alcohol imparts. So manifest had the ruinous effects of all this class of medicines become, as early as the days of the venerable Rush, that he banished them from his materia medica, and taught his students in the university of Pennsylvania, from his professorial chair, that all such medicines were pernicious to the health, as well as destructive to the morals of the community. And when his patients would ask permission to take his prescriptions in gin, or spirituous liquors of any kind, he would reply, "No man shall look me in the face in the day of judgment, and say, Dr. Rush made me a drunkard.” And he would often add, “If God will forgive me for making drunkards in the early part of my practice, when I knew no better, I will never make another." If his mantle had fallen upon his successors, happy would it have been for the nation and for the world.

But, alas! in the face of the ten thousand facts which this subject has presented, no prescription has been and is more common with very many physicians than a mixture of tonic bitters, to be mingled with

gin, or some other form of intoxicating liquor. No marvel that dys peptics should multiply on every hand, when such practice is pursued with almost every derangement of the digestive organs; nor is it any wonder that drunkenness should become so wide-spread an evil, when a large proportion of our adult population are regularly dosed with alcoholic medicines.'

That the prospect of its banishment from the materia medica is not an entirely hopeless one, we gather from the following asseverations of Dr. Reese, which, if well founded, give us reason to expect that this last strong hold, where the monster intemperance has 'fled for refuge,' may be, and speedily will be, demolished :

The question, the momentous question, then, for this generation to ⚫ solve is, whether ardent spirits possess this claim to immortality, or whether their medicinal virtues, if they have any, shall furnish a pretext for the perpetuation of their irreparable mischiefs to the bodies and the souls of men. I affirm the negative of this proposition, and with very many of my professional brethren, fearlessly proclaim, that the article may be safely and entirely exiled from the materia medica, without diminishing our resources in "wrestling with death." And whether we shall be successful in effecting this object, so soon as we deem it desirable or important, in this country, or not; there is every indication in the signs of the times that our transatlantic brethren are aiming at this result; for since the facts disclosed by the cholera in every part of the earth, over which its march has been witnessed, many of the ablest physicians of England, and some in India, have strenuously urged the necessity of utterly proscribing its manufacture and traffic by legislative authority, and prohibiting its use among the people by penal enactments. And the proposition of abolishing alcohol from medicine, and removing all its compounds from the dispensatories, has found many advocates in England as well as in this country; so that a "Temperance Pharmacopoeia and Materia Medica," may ere long be introduced into both countries simultaneously, and the way is prepar ing by recent events so rapidly, that it will excite neither indignation nor surprise.

Still, however, physicians may abolish it from their catalogues of remedial means, and dispense with those compounds of which alcohol is the menstruum, and the medical use of ardent spirits will not then be annihilated. For justice to our profession requires it to be understood, that but a very small part of the medicinal use of alcohol is taken by our advice, but very much indeed is taken directly in opposition to that advice. In this department, more than any other, it may be said, that every man is his own doctor, for those who would not take a dose of salts, or castor oil, without the best professional advice, will, nevertheless, not scruple to take brandy or gin as a medicine; because, forsooth, it is so innocent that, with this kind of physic, they can prescribe for themselves; and because, moreover, they need a repetition of the dose more frequently than it is convenient to see the doctor or economical to fee him.

And now, to the real friends of temperance scattered over the land,

I would affectionately urge the importance of combining the influence of their example against the use of ardent spirits, not only "as a drink," but" as a medicine," for in this way only can the doctrine of "total abstinence" be consistently maintained, and in this way only can we hope for success in banishing the accursed thing from the country and the world.

I have said little about wine or beer, except under the generic name alcohol, of which these are the species. The one is the lion, the other are the whelps; and if the former is destroyed, and declared by public sentiment to be neither good for food nor physic, the latter, and all the modifications of distilled and fermented liquors, will soon share the same fate. Already a wine-drinking, beer-tippling advocate for temperance is becoming an offence in the public estimation, and the recent desperate effort made by professional men, as well as others, to elevate wine, and especially beer, as possessing medicinal qualities preventive of cholera and the like, are beneath contempt, and only serve to show the dying struggles of alcoholic medicines for a name and place among

men.'

We have dwelt the longer on this important and deeply interesting subject, because we consider it so vitally connected with the welfare— present and eternal welfare--of mankind. The hopes of posterity are for ever blighted, unless this most monstrous and devastating evil can be arrested in its onward course, and finally banished from all our borders. We therefore most heartily recommend the book before us to all our readers, while we conclude our extracts with the following closing remarks of the author :

My object has been to show that the sale and use of ardent spirits, if a necessary evil, are not necessary for medical purposes. If the evil is necessary at all, then, it must be as a drink, and who is prepared at this late period to avow this opinion, even among those who license it, who make it, who sell it, or who drink it? The fact is, that rum, in no one of its forms, is necessary, unless it be to the work of filling alms houses, penitentiaries, state prisons, and grave yards! If necessary, it must be for that accursed revenue, the price of pauperism, crime, and blood! If necessary, I say again, it must be for filling the land with unutterable wretchedness, and peopling hell with myriads who might else escape the withering curse of Him who has said, “No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God."

Away, then, with this vile plea of necessity, as a pretext for making widows and orphans by thousands, and inflicting upon thirty thousand of "our fellow citizens annually the death of a fool and the burial of an ass. And let the public voice unite in declaring, by precept and example, that all intoxicating liquors are neither necessary nor useful, as a drink or as a medicine," and are "henceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men."'

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Having thus given our readers the views of a physician, who is, or at least ought to be, thoroughly acquainted with the human system, and with the remedies necessary to arrest the progress of disease, we will VOL. IV.-July, 1833.

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