exciting causes, and
therefore in greater danger from the use of alcoholic drinks than
others.

Dr. N.S. Davis, in an article in the _Washingtonian_, published at
Chicago, presents the opposite view of the case. The following extract
from this article is well worthy to be read and considered:

"If we should say that man is so constituted that he is capable of
feeling weary, restless, despondent and anxious, and that he
instinctively desires to be relieved of these unpleasant feelings, we
should assert a self-evident fact. And we should thereby assert all the
instincts or natural impulse there is in the matter. It is simply a
desire to be relieved from unpleasant feelings, and does not, in the
slightest degree, indicate or suggest any particular remedy. It no more
actually suggests the idea of alcohol or opium than it does bread and
water. But if, by accident, or by the experience of others, the
individual has learned that his unpleasant feelings can be relieved, for
the time being, by alcohol, opium or any other exhilarant, he not only
uses the remedy himself, but perpetuates a knowledge of the same to
others. It is in this way, and this only, that most of the nations and
tribes of our race, have, much to their detriment, found a knowledge of
some kind of intoxicant. The same explanation is applicable to the
supposed 'constitutional susceptibility,' as a primary cause of
intemperance. That some persons inherit a greater degree of nervous and
organic susceptibility than others, and are, in consequence of this
greater susceptibility, more readily affected by a given quantity of
narcotic, anaesthetic or intoxicant, is undoubtedly true. And that such
will

"MORE READILY BECOME DRUNKARDS,

"if they once commence to use intoxicating drinks, is also true. But that
such persons, or any others, have the slightest inherent or
constitutional taste or any longing for intoxicants, until they have
acquired such taste or longing by actual use, we find no reliable proof.
It is true that statistics appear to show that a larger proportion of
the children of drunkards become themselves drunkards, than of children
born of total abstainers. And hence the conclusion has been drawn that
such children INHERITED the constitutional tendency to inebriation. But
before we are justified in adopting such a conclusion, several other
important facts must be ascertained.

"1st. We must know whether the mother, while nursing, used more or less