Note (20) — CANTO THIRD.

“A vulgar error prevails, which is, that strong liquors are essential to bodily strength. This false opinion is partly grounded on the idea of a nutritious property in those liquors, and partly, perhaps, in a logical error in using the word strong, as being necessarily connected with strengthening the animal body. The first notion is entirely wrong; since it is proved, by continual evidence that strong liquors are inimical to animal life throughout the creation, and that no living animal or plant can be supported by such fluids; but that, on the contrary, they all become sickly and perish under their influence. I presume that no person would give a lamb, a calf, a chicken, or a duck, such liquors, with a hope of rendering them sooner fat, and of sweeter flesh, even if such liquors were so cheap as to render it an economical process. Yet many parents do this to their infant children! The fate of those individuals is truly deplorable, who cannot exist without an exhausting stimulus.” (Sir Anthony Carlisle’s Lectures on fermented liquors.)

Dr. Rush observes, that, “since the introduction of spirituous liquors into such general use, physicians have remarked that a number of new diseases have appeared among us, and have described many new symptoms as common to old diseases. Spirits, in their first operation, are stimulating upon the system. They quicken the circulation of the blood, and produce some heat in the body. Soon after they become what is called sedative; that is, they diminish the action of the vital powers, and thereby produce languor and weakness.”