root of wisdom."

ANTI-CHOLERA.

MEDICAL men have been so much occupied in attending to the diseased, that, till of late, little has been done for the preservation of health. Hitherto the sources of physical debility have, to a very great extent, been left undisturbed; and consequently millions, who would certainly have cnjoyed uninterrupted good health to the end of their days, had they only been taught obedience to the laws of their nature, have fallen victims to their ignorance. The advancing intelligence of the age is demanding a more rational procedure. Have we not pleasing evidences of this fact, in the many popular physiological works which have, during the past few years, issued from the press, bearing the names of some of our most distinguished medical men; works designed, and eminently calculated, to convey to the masses sound knowledge as to the functions and management of the human frame; as well as in the many powerful associations which have been formed to trace out the sources of disease, and, as far as possible, to secure their removal.

This change in public sentiment, and in medical practice, is undoubtedly the result of that magnificent moral enterprise, the temperance movement. Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the temperance reformers directed attention to the startling fact, that nearly all the diseases under which our fellow-countrymen were suffering, had their origin in our drinking habits; the idea was scouted by the learned, and laughed at by the great body of the people. Nay, it was even boldly asserted by the guardians of the public health, that intoxicating drinks

were essentials of life. The originators of this movement, however, were men of too much intelligence and devotion to be driven back by the obstacles which assailed them; they were satisfied that they advocated a good and growing cause; and after more than twenty years of laborious perseverance, they have succeeded in establishing their position, and in calling forth from nearly the entire mass of the medical profession an endorsement of their doctrinea.

The temperance movement has given rise to others, based upon the principle of improving the public health, by removing the causes of disease; and certainly, if we are ever to have a vigorous population, that end can only be attained by a practical adoption of that soundest of all maxims-“ prevention

better than cure."

Much sound advice has been given in the many documents recently issued regarding cholera; such as, the importance of pure air, bodily exercise, habits of temperance, regular bathing, temperance in eating and drinking, &c.; and those admonitions cannot be too much urged upon public attention.

Our present object is to point out the fearful hazard those are running who, in the face of cholera, persist in the use of intoxicating drinks. We regret that this view of the case has not been more insisted upon. The destructive nature of these liquors, the extensive prevalence of drinking habits, and the fact that they are the prolific source of almost all the other evils against which the public authorities are warning us, are certainly sufficient reasons why every well-wisher of his kind should be decided and urgent in his condemnation of them.

Whether cholera result from a peculiar state of the atmosphere, as some suppose, or from electrical or magnetic perturbations of the earth, as is asserted by others, one thing is now certain, that this invisible destroyer finds his victims only among those of diseased constitutions: a body performing aright all its functions is proof against cholera; while, on the other hand, the body impaired by irregular living is the most likely to be sacrificed on the altar of this malignant enemy of our

race.

It will not be denied that the surest preservatives against cholera, is to maintain all the functions of the system in the most perfect order; and this being granted, it becomes our duty to avoid everything calculated to impede their free operation.

How, then, does alcoholic liquors operate on the physical energies of those who use them? If articles so extensively used act prejudicially at all, the amount of injury inflicted upon the community at large must be very great. The following facts and testimonies will be sufficient evidence on the point:

Dr. Hunter, of London, some years ago, selected two children of similar ages and constitutions, and both in perfect health, and gave every day after dinner, for a week, to the one a large China orange, and to the other a glass of wine: the former continued to enjoy good health, while the latter showed decided indications of fever. The following week he reversed the experiment, and brought out precisely the same result.

Perhaps the most interesting and satisfactory case on record, is that of St. Martin, a young man who, by a gunshot wound, had an opening made into his stomach, which opening remained after the stomach was healed. Dr. Beaumont, an eminent American physician, embraced the opportunity afforded him for observing the process of digestion. He found that the free use of ardent spirits, wine, beer, or any intoxicating liquor, when continued for some days, invariably produced morbid changes on the coats of the stomach; these changes, however, were seldom indicated by any ordinary symptoms,

or particular sensations described or complained of, unless when drink was taken in considerable excess; and their existence, therefore, was only ascertained by actual ocular demonstration.*

Dr. Sewall, remarking on this experiment, says: "We have here a most important pathological fact brought to view, and established by ocular demonstration, and one which ought ever to be present to the mind of him who uses alcohol. It is this, that the stomach may be extensively diseased from the influence of alcoholic drinks, without there being present any general constitutional derangement, or other obvious manifestation of its morbid state. The fact is particularly applicable to the moderate drinker: for in his case the narcotic poison of alcohol so blunts and deranges the healthy sensibilities of the stomach, that it holds out no signal of its sufferings. But though the manifestations of disease may be absent, that morbid changes, extensive and fatal, may exist; and that, while he is sipping his wine, or regaling himself upon his brandy and water, he is laying the foundation of a broken constitution, and premature decay and death."

Dr. Sewall further adds: "From a careful observation of this subject, during many years of practice, I am persuaded that tens of thousands of temperate drinkers die annually of diseases through which the abstainer would pass in safety."

Thousands of other testimonies regarding the pernicious influence of intoxicating drinks on the human constitution might be adduced, but these will suffice for our present purpose.

It will be further evident, from the following testimonies, that that state of body produced by drinking is the very state required for the development of this fearful epidemic:

"The Russian physicians have declared, that its ravages have been principally owing to the inordinate use of spirituous liquors by the people."— Times, 21st August, 1848.

"Let excess in the use of ardent

For a more particular account of Dr. Beaumont's experiments, see Dr. Combe's Work on Digestion.

and fermented liquors and tobacco be avoided."-No. 14 in the list of preventatives recommended by the Poor-Law Commissioners, July, 1848.

"Abstain from stimulants, unless prescribed as remedies under medical advice. In former visitations of cholera, many persons, both rich and poor, resorted to the use of stimulants- wine, whisky, brandy, &c., under the false impression, that what was sometimes useful as a cure, was also good as a preventative. This is a great error. Stimulants, frequently taken, or taken in excess, are followed by collapse, which predisposes to the disease; and the general health, moreover, is seriously and permanently injured by the practice."-Circular of the Irish Central Board of Health, September, 1848.

"Avoid cider, perry, ginger-beer, lemonade, and acid liquors of all descriptions, and ardent spirits. Great moderation, both in food and drink, is absolutely essential to safety during the whole duration of the epidemic period. One single act of indiscretion has, in many instances, been followed by a speedy and fatal attack. The

three fatal cases that have just occurred to sailors who had been at Hamburgh, and who were brought sick to Hull, turned out, on inquiry, to have followed very shortly after the men had eaten a large quantity of plums, and had drunk freely of sour beer; and the two still more recent cases on board the ship Volant,' of Sunderland, both occurred in drunkards, who persisted in the practice of intoxication, notwithstanding the earnest warnings that were given them against the dangers of intemperance."—Official Notification by the Government General Board of Health, October, 1848.

to disease than it was before; and it is notorious that those who habitually indulge in intoxicating drinks are not only more liable to attacks of cholera than the careful liver, but have also far less chance of recovering in the event of being attacked.-Rule to be observed by the Officers of the Customs, in the event of the Cholera appearing at this Port. J. O. M'William, M.D., F.R.S., Surgeon to the Hon. the Board of Customs.-C. H., L., October 2, 1848.

"A state of debility or exhaustion, however produced, increases the liability to cholera. The Committee therefore recommend all persons, during its prevalence, to live in the manner they have hitherto found most conducive to their health-avoiding intemperance of all kinds, and especially the intemperate use of ardent spirits and other intoxicating liquors."- Circular of the Royal College of Physicians, 28th October, 1848; signed by J. A. Paris, M.D., F.R.S., President.

N. M'Cann, Esq., who recently gave evidence on this subject before the Sanitary Commission, says, in a letter to the Editor of the Morning Herald, "I advise abstinence from spirituous and fermented liquors."

He

G. Hamilton Bell, Esq., F.R.C.S.E., in his publication on cholera just issued, says: "Above all, intoxication and dissipated habits have been found, whenever the disease prevailed, powerfully to predispose to cholera." adds: "Debauchery of all kinds may be regarded as almost the certain means of provoking an attack of the disease, while it prevails in a town or district."

"Intemperance in the use of malt, vinous, and spirituous liquors, is a powerful concurrent cause."-Article Cholera, Penny Cyclopædia.

"I observed that those who drank

Dr. Adams, of Dublin, affirms: "Our foreign reports testify that drunkards are carried off at once by this dire disease; but those who, by daily use of a moderate quantity, debilitate the tone of their stomachs and biliary organs, become easy victims to the cholera."

"The habitual use of ardent spirits, in the smallest quantity," says Dr. Bronson, of Montreal," seldom fails to invite the cholera, and to render it incurable when it takes place."

In corroboration of these astounding testimonies, we have now to submit a few facts from the history of cholera.

In China, according to Dr. Reiche, the disease selected its victims from among such of the people as live in filth and intemperance.

Mr. Huber, who saw 2,160 perish in twenty-one days, in one town of Russia, says: "It is a most remarkable circumstance, that persons given to drink have been swept away like flies. In Tiflis, containing 20,000 inhabitants, every drunkard has fallen-all are dead, not one remaining."

A physician of Warsaw says, that the disease spared all those who led regular lives, and lived in healthy situations, whereas those whose constitutions had been broken down by excess and dissipation, were invariably attacked. Out of one hundred individuals destroyed by cholera, it was proved that ninety had been addicted to the free use of ardent spirits.

In Paris, of the 30,000 destroyed by cholera, it is said that the greatest part were intemperate or profligate.

Dr. Rhinelander, who visited Montreal during the prevalence of cholera there, in the summer of 1882, says, that the victims of the disease are the intemperate. In that city, after there had been 1,200 cases of the malady, a Montreal journal states, "that not a drunkard who has been attacked has recovered, and almost all the victims have, at least, been moderate drinkers."

Dr. Sewall, who visited the cholera hospitals of New York, states, that of 204 cases in the Park Hospital, there were only six temperate persons, and that these had recovered; while 122 of the others had died when he wrote, and that the facts were similar in all the other hospitals.

Three hundred and thirty-six died of cholera in the city of Albany, United States, above sixteen years of age, of which the following is a detailed ac

count:

"According to the experience of Dr. Elliotson, cholera was very fatal among spirit-drinkers; and it is now a wellknown fact, that that portion of the lower orders who had everything calculated to keep them in good health, but who indulged in spirit-drinking, were sure to suffer; and however well persons may be off, if they enfeeble their bodies by dissipation, they are rendered unceasingly liable to attacks of cholera." JOHN C. HALL, M.D.Times, 2nd Nov. 1847.

It does not come within our object to discuss the propriety of medical men presenting alcoholic drink as a cure for this disease. We are aware that it has been very much in favour with most medical men, and that while they unanimously condemn its use as a most likely agent in the production of cholera, they approve of its applications as a remedy for the disease. That the faculty has even misgivings regarding its use as a medicine is evident, and we rejoin one proof of it. Dr. Andrew Buchanan, Professor of the Institutes of Medicine, Glasgow University, has just issued a work, entitled, "Observations on Malignant Cholera," from which we make the following extract:

"Stimulants have appeared to me to tend only to inflame the stomach, and to be of no use in exciting the heart to a salutary action. They should never be used in larger quantities than to act as cordials to an irritable stomach. Employed on the principle on which they are used in typhus, they are worse than useless. The injection of spirits and other stimulant liquids into the bowels, is still more highly pernicious, causing inflammation and ulceration of the colon and rectum, as was repeatedly ascertained by dissection."

We submit these facts and testimonies to the dispassionate consideration of every honest-hearted man. That

there exists a most intimate connection between drinking and cholera cannot be doubted. And the man who shuts his eyes to the facts we have stated, is shutting out the light, and courting his own destruction. Appetite or prejudice may be whispering excuses in your ear, but this, we tell you, is not the time to hear them; you must dismiss from your councils those enemies of your welfare, and prefer truth and reason as your guides.

Doubtless these pages will be read by many who profess the Christian name, and who add to that profession the practice of moderate drinking. We have most respectfully to assure such persons, that their practices are at utter variance with their professions. Better never to have known the facts of the case, than knowing them to despise and reject them: there can be no suffering so little entitled to sympathy, as that which results from a wilful disobedience of the laws of our nature, and especially when that disobedience is aggravated by the cloak of Christian profession.

You call your body a temple consecrated to the living and true God, and yet to satisfy your lust for false excitement, or in obedience to a depraved custom, you pour down your throat an inveterate poison; thus defiling that temple, endangering its safety by admitting within its precincts one of its most malignant enemies. Your example, if imitated, must certainly be followed by the most fatal results. If you should escape the fatal malady which these drinks are so well fitted to engender, it may not be so with others who have followed your drinking example; and a day of reckoning may proclaim to your shame, that you have been instrumental in casting upon this cold world disconsolate widows and helpless orphans.

We have no hesitation in asserting, that the drinking system, old as it is, stands before the world without one redeeming feature in its character; and now that it appears before you the prolific parent of disease, you must either renounce it as the work of the devil, or openly embrace his service; for, be assured, Christianity will have nothing that does not belong to it.

KNOWLEDGE AND PIETY WOMAN'S BEST DOWRY.

A HINT TO YOUNG MEN.

THERE is no sight so truly pitiable as that afforded by a rising family of children under the guardianship of an ignorant mother. I would be understood, in the use of the term IGNORANT, as wishing to convey the picture of a mother whose maiden days were devoted to the acquirement of fashionable accomplishments, to the exclusion of solid mental culture and acquirements. The woman who reigns the queen of the ball-room, is very seldom found capable of being the governess of her own children; and the time spent in soirée and route will be bitterly regretted when age brings experience and consequent remorse for the evil she has inflicted, and her capacity to discharge properly the interesting and important duties of her station, when it was her natural duty to be at once an instructor and example. The maiden who casts aside her book for the cotillon, will never win the love and esteem of a sensible man; and should she select a partner for life among her partners in the dance, she will find, when it is too late, that her choice has been as unfortunate as the place where she first attracted his notice was injudicious. I ever look with pain upon that young wife who enters upon her second era with fashionable ideas of society. Her first era has been devoted to the attainment of certain rules and systems which are scarcely pardonable in the girl, certainly censurable in the wife, and criminal in the mother.

The following remarks by Hannah More are so just and weighty, that I cannot withhold them:

"When a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion whom he wants, not an artist. It is not merely a creature who can paint and play, sing and dance: it is a being who can comfort and counsel him-one who can reason and reflect, and feel and judge, and discourse and discriminate one who can assist him in his affairs, lighten his sorrows, purify his joys, strengthen his principles, and educate his children. Such is the woman who