The bases of the temperance reform: an exposition and appeal./ With replies to numerous objections. By Rev. Dawson Burns.

Alcoliol a l~tV;cotic and Poisot.
doxicaly —the dose is so smiall, or the dilution so great,
as to prevent any specific action whatever. But if intoxicating drinkl produced no characteristic effect as a bev7erage, it would not be consumed; and the retention of the
epithet "intoxicating"-i.e., poisoning-to all alcoholic
liquors in common use is a tacit confession that, in proportion to their strength and amount, they act toxically
(poisonously) on the human system. The vulgar idea of
a poison, as of something that mzust kill if not speedily
ejected, blinds many to the true poisonous quality of
of alcoholic drinks when freely used without causing immediate death. It is forgotten that in all these drinks
the poison of alcohol is rendered less potent by its combination with water, but that the combination being mechanical, and not chemical, the alcoholic virus is not
destroyed, and that, so far as it can act, the action will
exhibit the distinctive features of the poisonous agent.
This principle is in accordance with our kInowledge of all
poisonous substances, none of which lose or change their
specific properties by dilution or admixture. That alcohol should be an exception to this rule would require the
plainest evidence, and from no quarter has such evidence
been adduced. *
2. Evidence in support of the view that the action of
alcohol is always injurious HAS BEEN FURNISHED BY
PHYSIOLOGISTS OF THE HIGHEST REPUTE, wvriting, not as
* Dr. Wilson, in his "Pathology of Drunkenness," writes (p. s92): " All
these diversified proofs have pointed unqhallengeably to the conclusion that
alcohol is the most widely and intensely destructive of poisons. In large and
concentrated doses there are few which are more promptly and inevitably
fatal. In more moderate and diluted potions, continuously repeated, it is,
with its own peculiar modifications of action, obviously one of those so-called
accumulative poisons of which science possesses other well-known examples
in corrosive sublimate, foxglove, and arsenic." Dr.. Carpenter and Dr. B.
Smith have expressed the same opinion in terms equally explicit. The latter
says: "' For all medicinal and dietetic purposes, the dose only affects the degree,
not the direction,-of the influence." (" P'hilosophical Transactions," 1859.)
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