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

68 Tlie Pli)'siolo,icaI Eff'cIs of A Ico hol.
this tonic constituent has been followed by a sense of
stomachic weakness and siymptomns of indigestion. But
these effects would have followed the discontinuance of
any similar beverage destitute of alcohol, and have no
relation to the question of the influence of alcohol upon
health and life. It should be remembered that tonics,
properly so called, cannot be habitual, used with impunity, and that, when the stomach flags from their abandonmeint, the evidence of their abuse is palpably disclosed.
The proper course, then, to be adopted is not to resume
the use of an alcoholic drink which has a tonic united
with it, but to take some tonic apart from the alcohol,
diminishling the quantity and strength of the dose till
the stomach regains its natural digestive power and can
dispense with the misused tonic infusion.* Where the
stomachic debility is chronic, enlightened medical advice
should be procured, but all alcoholic compounds strenuously declined. After abstracting from the list of failures these four classes of failing abstainers, the remnant
of other cases will be found exceedingly small, and will
consist of two kinds: persons who have relied so much
and for so long on alcoholic excitement as to require
medical treanizent in connection wzth abstinence —not
afiarl from abstinence and persons who are suffering
from some ailment whose symptoms are masked by alcohol,
but the unmasking of which by abstinence is a real service to the individuals so affected. Forms of hysteria
come under this description, though it is well known that
hysteria is never cured-frequently it is caused-by the
use of alcoholic drinks.
That total abstinence really injures any one adopting
it is a notion confuted by the voluntary experience of
* The fashionable taste of late years for bitter beer has been exceedingly
prejudicial; the appetite may be improved for a time by the greater quantity of hops used, but all medical testimony condemns the use of bitters as an
article of diet.
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