to the same indication of truth.

The conclusive evidence now in our possession that alcohol taken into
the animal body sets free the heart, so as to cause the excess of motion
of which the record has been given above, is proof that the heart, under
the frequent influence of alcohol, must undergo deleterious change of
structure. It may, indeed, be admitted in proper fairness, that when the
heart is passing through these rapid movements it is working under less
pressure than when its movements are slow and natural; and this
allowance must needs be made, or the inference would be that the organ
ought to stop at once, in function, by the excess of strain put upon it.
At the same time the excess of motion is injurious to the heart and to
the body at large; it subjects the heart to irregularity of supply of
blood, it subjects the body in all its parts to the same injurious
influence; it weakens, and, as a necessary sequence, degrades both the
heart and the body.

Speaking honestly, I cannot, by any argument yet presented to me, admit
the alcohols by any sign that should distinguish them from other
chemical substances of the paralysing narcotic class. When it is
physiologically understood that what is called stimulation or excitement
is, in absolute fact, a relaxation, a partial paralysis, of one of the
most important mechanisms in the animal body, the minute, resisting,
compensating circulation, we grasp quickly the error in respect to the
action of stimulants in which we have been educated, and obtain a clear
solution of the well-known experience that all excitement, all passion,
leaves, after its departure, lowness of heart, depression of mind,
sadness of spirit. We learn, then, in respect to alcohol, that the
temporary excitement it produces is at the expense of the animal force,
and that the ideas of its being necessary to resort to it, that it may
lift up the forces of the animal body into true and firm and even
activity, or that it may add something useful to the living tissues, are
errors as solemn as they are widely disseminated. In the scientific
education of the people no fact is more deserving of special comment
than this fact, that excitement is wasted force, the running down of the
animal mechanism before it has served out its time of motion.

It will be said that alcohol cheers the weary, and that to take a little
wine for the stomach's sake is one of the lessons that comes from the
deep recesses of human na