Note 25 — Chapter I

The faculty begins quietly and gingerly to confess this belief. ‘The evidence that intemperance in drinking exerts a particular influence in the production of hepatitis is by no means conclusive;’ and ‘the occurrence of hepatitis, on the other hand, in its severest form, is not an unusual event in persons of temperate habits—a statement which practitioners in India generally will, I am sure, amply confirm,’ says Dr. Morehead (‘Diseases of India’). He might have instanced the case of M. Jacquemont, who, deriding the English consumption of beef and beer, scientifically Hinduized himself with rice and water, and died at the end of the year of an invincible dysentery.