JOHN E. B. MAYOR. March 2, 1882.



THE ABBE MOIGNO.

I am grateful to you for thinking of me in your generous enquiry about the best conditions of literary and scientific composition. I can hardly offer myself as an example, because my constitution is rather too exceptional, but my experience may have some degree of usefulness. I have already published a hundred and fifty volumes, small and great. I scarcely ever leave my writing table. I never take a walk, nor recreation, even after meals; and yet have not felt any head-ache, constipation, or any derangement in the urinary organs. I have never had occasion to have recourse to stimulants, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, &c., in order to work, or to obtain clearness of mind. On the contrary, stimulants give rise in my case to abnormal vibrations in the brain, which are adverse to its quick and regular working.

Several times in my life I fell into the habit of taking snuff. It is a fatal habit, dirty to begin with, since it puts a cautery to the nose, filth in the pocket, is extremely unwholesome; for he who takes snuff finds his nose stopped up every morning, his breathing difficult, his voice harsh and snuffling, because the action of tobacco consists in drawing the humours to the brain; fatal, at last, because the use of snuff weakens and destroys, by degrees, the memory. This last effect is fully proved by my own professional experiences, and that of many others.

I learned twelve foreign languages by the method I published in my "Latin for all;" that is to say, I draw up the catalogue of 1,500, or 1,800 radical or primitive simple words, and engraved them upon my mind by means of mnemonic formulas. In that way I had learned about 41,500 words, whose meaning is generally, or most frequently, without connection with the word itself, and from 10,000 to 12,000 historical facts, with their precise date. All this existed simultaneously in my mind, always at my disposal when I wanted the meaning of a word or the date of an event. If anyone asked me who was the twenty-fifth king of England, for instance, I saw in my brain that it was Edward, surnamed Plantagenet, who ascended the throne in 1154. With respect to philology or chronology, I was the most extraordinary man of my time, and Francis Arago jokingly threatened to have me burnt like a wizard. But I had again fallen into the practice of snuff-taking during a stay of some weeks in Munich, where I spent my evenings in a smoking room with the learned Bavarians, each of whom ate four or five meals a day, and drank two or three jugs of beer. The most illustrious of these learned men, Steinhein, boasted of smoking 6,000 cigars a year. I attained to smoking three or four cigars a day. While drawing up my treatise on the Calculus of Variations, the most difficult of my mathematical treatises, I unconsciously emptied my snuff-box, which contained twenty-five grammes (nearly an ounce) of snuff; and one day I was painfully surprised to find that I was obliged to have recourse to my dictionary for the meaning of foreign words. I found that the dates of the numerous facts I had learnt by heart had fallen from my mind. Such a thing has rarely or seldom happened before. Distressed at this sorrowful decay of my memory, I made an heroic resolution, which nothing has disturbed since. On the 1st of August, 1863, I smoked three cigars and used twenty-five centimes (2-1/2d.) worth of snuff; from the following day to June, 1882, I have neither taken a pinch of snuff nor smoked a single cigarette.

It was for me a complete resurrection, not only of memory, but of general health and well-being. It was only necessary for me to do, what I did eighteen years later, to lessen nearly one-half the quantity of food which I took every day, to eat less meat and more vegetables, to obtain such incomparable health, of which it is hardly possible to form any idea, unlimited capacity of labour, perfect digestion, absence of wrinkles, pimples; and I beg leave to affirm that those who tread in my footsteps will be as sound as I am. Add to this the habit, irrevocably established, of never saying, I shall do, nor I am doing, but I have done, and you have the secret of the enormous amount of work I have been able to accomplish, and am accomplishing every day, in spite of my eighty years. Nobody will dispute me the honour of being the greatest hard-working man of my century.

I ought, finally, to add that I find it well for me to take at breakfast a small half-cup of coffee without milk, to which, when only two or three teaspoonful remain at the bottom of the cup, I add a small spoonful of brandy, or other alcoholic liquor. That is my whole allowance of stimulants. How happy would those be who should adopt my regime. They would be able, without harm, to sit at their desk immediately after breakfast, and to stay there till dinner-time. No sooner would they be in bed, at about nine o'clock, but they would be softly asleep a few minutes later, and could rise at five in the morning, full of strength, after a nourishing sleep of eight hours.

ABBE F. MOIGNO. July 20, 1882.



REV. J. MORRISON, D. D., PRINCIPAL OF THE EVANGELICAL UNION COLLEGE.

For my kind of work, I have found it absolutely necessary to abstain altogether from the use of both alcohol and tobacco.

J. MORRISON. May 11, 1882.



MR. AUGUSTUS MONGREDIEN.

I am 75 years of age. I have smoked moderately all my life; and for the last fifty years have never, except in rare and short instances of illness, retired to bed without one tumbler of whiskey toddy. You will therefore see that I am utterly incompetent to pronounce on the respective effects, on the mind and body, of moderate indulgence, and of total abstinence, for I have never tried the latter.

A. MONGREDIEN. March 10, 1882.



DR. J. A. H. MURRAY, EX-PRESIDENT OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, AND EDITOR OF ITS ENGLISH ETYMOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL DICTIONARY.

I use no stimulants of any kind, and should be very sorry to do so. I thought it was now generally admitted that the more work a man has to do, the less he can afford to muddle himself in any way. But as I have never tried the experiment in using either alcohol or tobacco, and cannot afford to do it, I have no comparative experience to offer. It might be beneficial; I do not believe it would, and prefer not to risk the chance. Fiat experimentum in corpore viliore.

J. A. H. MURRAY. March 2, 1882.



MR. D. CHRISTIE MURRAY.

I should have thought that the universal experience of mankind had already been set on record without much ambiguity. It has been my practice to smoke at work, and I do not think I could get along without tobacco now, unless I made an effort, the profit of which could scarcely justify the pains. As a matter of nature, I do not believe that a man works either better or worse for the use of tobacco, unless he smokes so much as to injure his general health. Alcoholic drinks are, of course, mentally as well as physically stimulative, and I have found them useful at a pinch. But everybody knows that stimulants are reactionary, and it is pretty certain that in the end they take more out of a man than they put into him. Under extraordinary pressure they have their uses, but their habitual employment muddles the faculties, and the last state of the man who constantly works on them is worse than the first. Continually taken alone, and as a stimulant to mental exertion, their influences on a man of average formation are fatal. But I should have thought all these things settled long ago, unless it were in junior debating societies.

D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. April 11, 1882.



PROFESOR NEWMAN.

In boyhood, I perceived that to my younger sisters mere drops of wine caused coughing and spitting, and the heat of wine to my own palate and throat was offensive. Beer, ale, and porter disgusted me by their bitterness. Porter was peculiarly nauseous to me. I early saw the ill-effects of wine on youths, and was frightened by accounts of college drunkenness. For this reason, as well as from economy, I never became a wine-drinker, further than to drink healths by just colouring water in a glass. I have never dreamed of needing wine, though often in old time ordered by physicians to drink it. Not having then the same power to look over their heads-which experience of their changes and their follies has brought to me-I used to obey a little while, but quickly reverted to my glass of water, and never had reason to believe, from my own case, that there was any advantage from the wine. In 1860-1, the Parisian experiments proved that all alcohol arrests digestion. Since then I have called myself a teetotaler. To me it seems clear that love of the drink, or fear of losing patients by forbidding it, are the true cause of the fuss made in its favour. I grieve that so noble a fruit as grapes should be wasted on wine. The same remark will hold of barley, of honey, of raisins, of dates: from which men make intoxicating drinks. As to tobacco-while I was in Turkey more than fifty years ago, I learned to smoke Turkish tobacco in a long Turkish pipe, partly to relieve evil smells, partly because it is uncivil there to refuse the proffered pipe. I never was aware of good or evil from it, and with perfect ease laid it aside when I quitted the soil of Asia. After this, a cigar was recommended to me in England, as a remedy for loss of sleep, but the essential oil of tobacco so near to my nose disgusted me, and the heat or smoke distressed my eyes. I have never felt any pleasure, rather annoyance, from English smoking; and since the late Sir Benjamin Brodie published his pamphlet against it (perhaps in 1855), I have learned that the practice is simply baneful. They say "it soothes"—which I interpret to mean—"it makes me inattentive and dreamy."

FRANCIS W. NEWMAN. March 2, 1882.



THE REV. MARK PATTISON, B. D.

The story of my personal experiences of alcohol is one which would require more time than I can now command to write properly. I can now only say that I did not begin wine, as a habit, till I was thirty-seven; that, at first, an occasional effect was favourable to the brain power, but always followed by corresponding reaction towards feebleness. About fifty-seven, I was obliged to give up wine altogether; I found great general advantage from doing so, and no disadvantage whatever as regards mental activity. I am now sixty-eight, and take a glass of claret every third day, or oftener. This medicine does not produce any perceptible effect on the brain directly, but I have a fancy that I sleep better after wine; and sleep I have always looked to as the best brain restorative. [Footnote: SLEEP IS THE BEST STIMULANT.—The best possible thing for a man to do when he feels too weak to carry anything through is to go to bed and sleep for a week, if he can. This is the only recuperation of brain-power, the only recuperation of brain-force; because during sleep the brain is in a state of rest, in a condition to receive and appropriate particles of nutriment from the blood, which take the place of those that have been consumed in previous labour, since the very act of thinking consumes or burns up solid particles, as every turn of the wheel or screw of the steamer is the result of the consumption by fire of the fuel in the furnace. The supply of consumed brain-substance can only be had from the nutritive particles in the blood, which were obtained from the food eaten previously; and the brain is so constituted that it can best receive and appropriate to itself those nutritive particles during a state of rest, of quiet, and stillness of sleep. Mere stimulants supply nothing in themselves; they goad the brain, and force it to a greater consumption of its substance, until the substance has been so exhausted that there is not power enough left to receive a supply, just as men are so near death by thirst and starvation that there is not power enough left to swallow anything, and is over.—Scientific American.] Spirits I have never drunk; Though I have been a smoker for many years, I cannot say anything as to its effects.

MARK PATTISON. March 16, 1882.



MR. JAMES PAYN.

In common with nine-tenths of my literary brethren, I am a constant smoker. I smoke the whole time I am engaged in composition (three hours per diem), and after meals; but very light tobacco— latakia. [Footnote: Latakia, or Turkish, are called mild tobaccos, and although they produce dryness of the tongue, from the ammonia evolved in their smoke, they do not upset the digestion so materially, nor nauseate so much as the stronger tobaccos, unless they are indiscriminately used.—DR. B. W. RICHARDSON. ("Diseases of Modern Life")] That it stimulates the imagination, I have little doubt; and as I have worked longer and more continuously for thirty years than any other author (save one); I cannot believe that tobacco has done me any harm. Those who object to it have never tried it, or find it disagrees with them. How can they, therefore, be in a position to judge? I find cigars disagree with me but I do not on that account pronounce them unwholesome for everybody. I drink very little alcohol—only light claret, and occasionally dry champagne—but I do not know what effect drinking alcohol has upon composition.

JAMES PAYN.



MR. EIZAK PITMAN, AUTHOR OV "FONOGRAFI OR FONETIK SHORTHAND," AND ORIJINATER OV THE SPELING REFORM.

If a breef skech ov mei leif, and the deietetik maner ov it, wil be ov servis tu you, ei gladly giv it. Your rekwest abzolvz me from the impiutashon ov boasting. If you make it publik, pray let it be printed in the parshiali reformd speling in hwich it iz riten.

Ei hav been an abstainer from the stimiulant alkohol nearli all mei leif, and ei hav alwayz refraind from the seduktiv influens ov the sedativ tobako. Ei hav therefor no eksperiens tu ofer ov their use, eksept that about 1838 ei woz rekomended tu take a glas ov wein per day az a tonik, and az a remedi for dispepsia, hwich then began tu trubel me. After obeying this medikal preskripshon for a year or two, and feinding no releef from it, ei gave up both the wein and the use ov flesh, "the brandi ov deiet;" the dispepsia disapeard, and haz never vizited me sins.

Ei am nou verjing on seventi. Ei intensli enjoi leif and labor, and rekweir nuthing beyond the laborz ov the day, and the walk tu and from mei ofis, hwich iz a meil, tu indius refreshing sleep. Ei keep up mei leif-long praktis ov reteiring at ten o'klok, and being at mei desk at siks. About three yearz ago ei adopted the kustom ov taking a siesta for half an our after diner. It iz wel, az Milton obzervz, tu giv the bodi rest diuring the ferst konkokshon ov the prinsipal meal.

The uzhual sumer vizit tu the sea-seid woz unnon tu me til ei woz fifti yearz ov aje. From 1837 (the date ov the publikashon ov "Fonografi") tu 1861 (the date ov mei sekond maraje), nearli a kworter ov a sentiuri, ei wurkt on from siks in the morning til bed-teim, ten o'klok, without an intervening thought ov a holiday. Ei felt no wont ov a temporeri respit from labor bekauz ei tuk no ekseiting food or drink; and ei shud az soon hav meditated a breach in the Dekalog az a breach in mei daili round ov diutiz bei eidling at the sea-seid. In 1861 ei relakst, and komenst the praktis ov leaving mei ofis at siks in the evening. At the same teim ei komenst viziting the variiis watering plasez, or going tu the Kontinent in the sumer for four or feiv weeks. This rekriashon ei have taken more for the sake ov mei weif and two sunz than from eni feeling ov nesesiti for it on mei own part.

From mei own eksperiens ov the benefits ov abstinens from the sedativ alkohol, and the stimulants tobako and snuf; and mei obzervashon ov the efekts ov theze thingz on personz who indulj in them, ei hav a ferm konvikshon that they ekserseiz a dedli influens on the hiuman rase.

EIZAK PITMAN. March 25, 1882.



M. GASTON PLANTE.

I am much flattered by the interest that you attach to my opinion on the subject of the influence that certain substances can have upon thought and upon intellectual work. I must tell you frankly that I have not found that tobacco or alcohol have an advantageous influence. It is true that I have not made much use of them—I have never taken pure spirits, such as brandy, but only of wine containing a little. I have been obliged sometimes, in trying to fortify my health, to take some Bordeaux wine, and I have not observed that any appreciable effect resulted from it upon the facility of intellectual work. From the point of view of health, I counted particularly upon the iron contained in good Bordeaux wine, but I have found that the alcohol in the wine over-excited the nervous system, provoked sleeplessness and cramps; and I have finally adopted as a drink wine mixed with water, and even this in very small quantities. As to tobacco, I have also tried it; and far from thinking that it favours intellectual work, I believe, with one of our learned writers (the Abbe Moigno, Editor of the "_Journal du Mondes_"), that its use tends to weaken the memory. Neither do I make use of coffee, which equally excites the nervous system, although, like all the world, I have observed that this substance gives a certain intellectual activity. What I have found out most clearly is what everyone has observed from time immemorial—that the clearest ideas, the happiest and most fruitful expressions, come in the morning, after the repose of the night, and after sleep—when one has it, but of which I have not a very large share. I attach so much importance to the ideas which come during the night or in the morning, that I have always at the head of my bed paper and pencil suspended by string, by the help of which I write every morning the ideas I have been able to conceive, particularly upon subjects of scientific research. [Footnote: Curtis, I think, says that whenever Emerson has a "happy thought," he writes it down, be it dawn or midnight, and when Mrs. Emerson, startled in the night by some unusual sound, cries, "What is the matter? Are you ill?" the philosopher's soft voice answers, "No, my dear, only an idea."— _Appleton's New York Journal, Nov., 1873.] I write these notes in obscurity, and decipher and develop them in the morning, pen in hand. This is the reply I can make to your interesting enquiry. I shall be happy to know the conclusion to which you will be conducted by the information which you will have been able to collect.

GASTON PLANTE.



THE REV. A. PLUMMER, HEAD MASTER OF THE DURHAM COLLEGE. University Tutor and Lecturer, and University Proctor.

I am a firm believer in the value of a moderate use of tobacco and alcohol for the brain worker. I generally smoke one pipe in the morning, before work, and one at night, after work (or the equivalents of a pipe). I seldom smoke while I work, and do not find it helpful. I drink two glasses of sherry (or their equivalents), as a rule daily, and take them at late dinner—not at lunch. If troubled with sleeplessness, I find a glass of sherry, and a few biscuits, followed by smoking, a tolerably safe cure, but not always to be relied upon. I should be very sorry to attempt to do without these two helps. Of the two I believe the smoking to be the more valuable, especially when (what is far worse than heavy work) worry is pressing upon one. I am wholly sceptical as to the value of work before breakfast. Let a man get up as early as he likes: but don't let him try to work on an empty stomach. The Irishman was wise who said that when he worked before breakfast, he always had something to eat first.

A. PLUMMER April 6, 1882.



MR. EDWARD POCKNELL, (POCKNELL'S PRESS AGENCY AND LONDON ASSOCIATED REPORTERS.)

In reply to your letter, I should say that tobacco has some action on the brain; but I think its action different in different people, and at different times in the same person. I think the action soothing after food, but exciting on an empty stomach. In the former case I think it promotes thinking in this way:—that the mind concentrates its attention better during the mechanical operation of "puffing", than when it is liable to be disturbed when not so occupied. For this reason I should say that smoking does help to get through work late at night. I find frequently that having commenced to write with a fresh pipe in my mouth, I go on a long time after it goes out; but as it remains in my mouth, it seems to have almost the same effect till the discovery, at some pause, that my pipe is out; and then it is a relaxation to spare a moment to refill it. I do not look upon smoking as a necessity to mental labour; but it seems to me, as a smoker, an agreeable and useful method for concentrating thought upon any subject. But I think it would be difficult to lay down any general rule for persons of different constitutions.

E. POCKNELL. March 10, 1882.



PROFESSOR GEORGE RAWLINSON.

Although it does not appear to me that the method of your enquiry can lead to any important results, you are quite welcome to any information that I can give you on the subject. I was brought up to take daily a moderate amount of beer or wine, and have continued to do so all my lifetime, with the exception that my beer has been cut off, and I have been recommended to take a little brandy and soda-water, or whiskey and soda-water instead. I smoked an occasional cigar when I was young, but never much liked tobacco, and gave up the practice entirely when I was about five and twenty. I have never tried leaving off alcoholic liquors, being advised medically that it would probably be injurious to me to do so. I am, therefore, quite unable to say what effect my doing so would have on my powers of thought and work.

GEORGE RAWLINSON. March 28, 1882.



MR. CHARLES READE.

Your subject is important, and your method of enquiry sound. I wish I could throw any light, but I cannot more than this. I tried to smoke five or six times, but it always made me heavy and rather sick; therefore, as it is not a necessary of life, and costs money, and makes me sick, I spurned it from me. I have never felt the want of it. I have seen many people the worse for it. I have seen many people apparently none the worse for it. I never saw anybody perceptibly the better for it.

C. READE. Feb. 2, 1882.



MR. THOMAS ALLEN REED.

You ask me whether I have found tobacco or wine a help to me in my work. No! As to the first, for the sufficient reason that I have never tried it. I never smoked a pipe or a cigar in my life, and have no intention of commencing the practice. When, more than thirty years ago, I entered upon my profession, I was told by my confreres that I should soon follow their example, and they smiled at my innocence when I declared that I thought they were mistaken. As to alcohol, I am not a teetotaler, but I think I can truly say that I never found the least benefit from wine or beer in my daily or nightly work. Indeed, I consider them rather a hindrance, having a tendency to make one heavy and sleepy. I have been, and am still, a tolerably hard worker, without the use of artificial stimulants, and judging from my own experience, and that of many others with whom I have been connected in my professional labours, I don't believe in their efficacy. If I take a glass of wine occasionally (not a frequent indulgence with me) it is because I like it, not because I think it helps me in my work.

T. A. REED. Feb. 18, 1882.



DR. JULIUS RODENBERG.

I have smoked from my seventeenth year, and could not do without it now. On the whole, I am but a moderate smoker, and seldom smoke whilst walking, but at work I must have my cigar, and find it agrees very well with my health. Most of my learned and literary friends smoke; but two or three of them have given it up in their later years without visible effect upon their health or mental strength. As to alcohol, I could not stand to drink brandy. Sometimes I drink a glass, but only as an exception. I find it much more convenient for me, and a good help to work, to take now and then a bottle of hock or champagne; but, as a rule, I drink half a bottle of claret at dinner, and a pint of beer at supper. I generally write in the morning from nine to half-past one, when I dine; and from five o'clock in the afternoon to nine, when I take supper, but I could not bear to drink either wine or beer while at work.

JULIUS RODENBERG. March 12, 1882.



DR. W. H. RUSSELL.

I am not able to give you any very positive expression of opinion on the matter respecting which you write, but I can say that I have smoked tobacco and taken wine for years, and though I cannot aver that I should not have done as well without them, I have felt comforted and sustained in my work by both at times, especially by the weed. However, I was very well in the last campaign in South Africa, where for some time we had neither wine nor spirits. Climate has a good deal to say to the craving for a stimulant, and men in India, who never drink in England, there consume "pegs" and cheroots enormously. Of course, tobacco is to be put out of account in relation to great workers and thinkers up to the close of the middle ages, but the experience of antiquity would lead one to infer that the moderate use of wine, at all events, was not unfavourable to the highest brain development and physical force. Bismarck and Moltke are very great smokers; neither is a temperance man. In effect, I am inclined to think that tobacco and stimulants are hurtful mostly in the case of inferior organizations of brain physique, where their use is only a concomitant of baser indulgences, and uncontrolled by intelligence and will. I am quite in favour, therefore, of legislative interference, and almost inclined to supporting the Permissive Bill.

W. H. RUSSELL. Feb. 23, 1882.



(For) MR. JOHN RUSKIN.

You are evidently unaware that Mr. Ruskin entirely abhors the practice of smoking, in which he has never indulged. His dislike of it is mainly based upon his belief (no doubt a true one) that a cigar or pipe will very often make a man content to be idle for any length of time, who would not otherwise be so. The excessive use of tobacco amongst all classes abroad, both in France and Italy, and the consequent spitting everywhere and upon everything, has not tended to lessen his antipathy. I have heard him allow, however, that there is reason in the soldiers and the sailors' pipe, as being some protection against the ill effects of exposure, etc. As to the effect of tobacco on the brain, I know that he considers it anything but beneficial.

Feb. 12, 1882.



KESHUB CHUNDER SEN.

The problem you have undertaken to solve is, indeed, one of intense importance and interest, and all who can ought to help its solution in the interests both of science and morality. I feel thankful for the honour you have done me in inviting my opinion on the subject. As a teetotaler I abstain wholly from intoxicating drinks and stimulants, and discourage the use of the same in others. From boyhood up to the present time—I am now 44—I have never been in the habit of drinking or of smoking, nor did it ever occur to me that such habits were essential to health or helpful to brain work. It is my firm conviction that neither the head nor the hand derives any fresh power from the use of stimulants. It is only habits already contracted which give to alcohol and tobacco their so-called stimulating properties, and engender a strong craving for them, which those who are not enslaved by such habits never experience. I must not, however, place alcohol and tobacco on the same level. The latter is comparatively harmless; the former is a prolific source of evil in society, and often acts like deadly poison.

KESHUB CHUNDER SEN. July 29, 1882.



M. JULES SIMON.

Some twenty years ago I had occasion to study the condition of the working classes, when I did not fail to observe the pernicious effects produced upon their health and morals by the use of Strong liquors. I remember that one of the most painful results of my inquiry was that whilst some look for pleasure in the abuse of intoxicating liquor, others, unable to procure sufficient food, seek to blunt the edge of their appetite by drinking a little brandy. As my researches were made so long ago, my testimony will now be of little value. Everything changes in twenty years, and I would fain hope that during this period a change for the better has taken place in the habits of the people. I have not much to say on the use of tobacco. I believe that when taken in excess, it has a stupefying effect. I know that it may act as a poison, for a friend of mine, a member of the Senate, who has just died, assured me repeatedly that he was dying from the effects of constant smoking.

I look upon the use of tobacco, as a practice much to be deprecated, as its tendency is to separate men from the society of women.

JULES SIMON. March 8, 1882.



PROFESOR SKEAT.

As to the benefit of alcohol and tobacco, my opinion is that there is no general rule. As for myself, my experience is, that the less stimulant I take, the better—I have given up beer with benefit to myself, and I have almost given up wine. I take, on an average, about five glasses of claret per week, more by way of luxury than of use. Tobacco I never use, as smoking seems to me to be rather a waste of time.

WALTER W. SKEAT. March 18, 1882.



M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE.

I have no difficulty in making known to you my views on the effects of tobacco and alcohol. I believe both to be extremely injurious, as they are the cause of many diseases, even when taken in small quantities, and much more so when indulged in to excess. I have never used them personally, but I have only too often observed their baneful influence on individuals of my acquaintance. I do not even consider wine to be harmless, especially as it is most usually adulterated. I have abstained from it for many years, indeed for nearly a lifetime, with great advantage. In our climate none of these stimulants are needed, and I very much question whether they are more necessary elsewhere.

Accept my thanks for the questions you have addressed to me.

B. ST. HlLAIRE. Feb. 24, 1882.



MR. W. SPOTTISWOODE, D. C. L., LL. D., PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

In reply to your enquiry, I beg to say that I have never smoked, and that I take wine only at meals, and in moderation. I have never observed any noticeable effect from wine so taken on mental work, but should think it quite insignificant.

W. SPOTTISWOODE.



DR. C. W. SIEMENS, D. C. L., F. R. S.

My experience has only extended to a very moderate use of alcohol and tobacco. I find that even the most moderate use of tobacco is decidedly hurtful to energetic mental effort. With regard to alcohol, a very moderate amount does not appear to depress the mental condition, under ordinary circumstances, but I find that although I never indulged in its use I can do very well without it, and I am doing with less and less. Under certain conditions, however, I find that alcohol has a beneficial effect in restoring both mind and body to a state of power and activity.

C. W. SIEMENS. Dec. 4th, 1882.



MR. G. BARNETT SMITH.

I should probably not be accepted as an authority upon the tobacco question, as I have never smoked a pipe or cigar in my life. As to the use of alcohol, the moderate quantity I have taken has not been detrimental to me, and, in consequence of the state of my health, it has sometimes been necessary. No doubt a larger quantity of stimulant than is essential is taken by many literary men, and by other classes of the community; but a moderate quantity would, I believe, be found beneficial by most writers. Of course, if a man finds that he can do quite as well without alcohol, he is undoubtedly wise in discarding it.

G. BARNETT SMITH. March 28, 1882.



M. TAINE.

I regret that it is not in my power to give you the information you ask. I have not made the question a study, and have no fixed opinion about it. All that I can say is that I have never made use of alcohol in any form as an essential stimulant. Coffee suits me much better. Alcohol, so far as I can judge, is good only as a physical stimulant after great physical fatigue, and even then it should be taken in very small quantities. As for tobacco, I have the bad habit of smoking cigarettes, and find them useful between two ideas,—when I have the first but have not arrived at the second; but I do not regard them as a necessity. It is probable that there is a little diversion produced at the same time, a little excitement and exhilaration. But every custom of this kind becomes tyrannical, and the observations which accompany your letter are very judicious. Among the men of letters and men of science around me there is not one to my knowledge who in order to think and to write has recourse to spirituous liquors; but three-fourths of them smoke, and almost all take before their work a cup of coffee. I have seen English journalists writing their articles by night with the aid of a bottle of champagne. With us, the articles are written in the day time, and our journalists have, therefore, no necessity to resort to this stimulant.

H. TAINE. March 28, 1882.



MR. ANTHONY TROLLOPE.

I have been a smoker nearly all my life. Five years ago I found it certainly was hurting me, causing my hand to shake and producing somnolence. I gave it up for two years. A doctor told me I had smoked too much (three large cigars daily). Two years since I took to it again, and now smoke three small cigars (very small), and, so far as I can tell, without any effect.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE. Feb. 11, 1882.



SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, M. A., LL. D., D. C. L., F. R. S.

The question of usefulness or the reverse of tobacco or alcohol is one of health, and to be answered by medical men, if they can. It seems to me that neither is of the slightest consequence as a stimulus or help to intellectual efforts, but that either may be used without harm or the reverse if in small enough quantities, so as not to hurt the digestion.

WILLIAM THOMSON. Feb. 13, 1882.



PROFESSOR TRANTMANN, BONN UNIVERSITY.

I am not a smoker, so that I am unable to make any statement regarding the effect of tobacco. As to alcohol, I never make use of spirits in order to stimulate my brain, but often, after working hard, I drink a glass of beer or wine, and immediately feel relieved.

M. TRANTMANN. March 14, 1882.



PROFESSOR TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S.

With regard to the use of alcohol and tobacco, I do not think any general rule can be laid down. Some powerful thinkers are very considerable smokers, while other powerful thinkers would have been damaged, if not ruined, by the practice. A similar remark applies in the case of alcohol. In my opinion, the man is happiest who is so organised as to be able to dispense with the use of both.

JOHN TYNDALL. Feb. 14, 1882.



MR. IVAN TOURGUENEFF.

In answer to your enquiry I have to state that I have no personal experience of the influence of tobacco and alcohol on the mind, as I do not smoke or use alcoholic drinks. My observations on other people lead me to the conclusion that tobacco is generally a bad thing, and that alcohol taken in very small quantities can produce a good effect in some cases of constitutional debility.

Iv. TOURGUENEFF. March 14, 1882.



MARK TWAIN.

I have not had a large experience in the matter of alcoholic drinks. I find that about two glasses of champagne are an admirable stimulant to the tongue, and is, perhaps, the happiest inspiration for an after dinner speech which can be found; but, as far as my experience goes, wine is a clog to the pen, not an inspiration. I have never seen the time when I could write to my satisfaction after drinking even one glass of wine. As regards smoking, my testimony is of the opposite character. I am forty-six years old, and I have smoked immoderately during thirty-eight years, with the exception of a few intervals, which I will speak of presently. During the first seven years of my life I had no health—I may almost say that I lived on allopathic medicine, but since that period I have hardly known what sickness is. My health has been excellent, and remains so. As I have already said, I began to smoke immoderately when I was eight years old; that is, I began with one hundred cigars a month, and by the time I was twenty I had increased my allowance to two hundred a month. Before I was thirty, I had increased it to three hundred a month. I think I do not smoke more than that now; I am quite sure I never smoke less. Once, when I was fifteen, I ceased from smoking for three months, but I do not remember whether the effect resulting was good or evil. I repeated this experiment when I was twenty-two; again I do not remember what the result was. I repeated the experiment once more, when I was thirty-four, and ceased from smoking during a year and a half. My health did not improve, because it was not possible to improve health which was already perfect. As I never permitted myself to regret this abstinence, I experienced no sort of inconvenience from it. I wrote nothing but occasional magazine articles during pastime, find as I never wrote one except under strong impulse, I observed no lapse of facility. But by and by I sat down with a contract behind me to write a book of five or six hundred pages—the book called "Roughing it"— and then I found myself most seriously obstructed. I was three weeks writing six chapters. Then I gave up the fight, resumed my three hundred cigars, burned the six chapters, and wrote the book in three months, without any bother or difficulty. I find cigar smoking to be the best of all inspirations for the pen, and, in my particular case, no sort of detriment to the health. During eight months of the year I am at home, and that period is my holiday. In it I do nothing but very occasional miscellaneous work; therefore, three hundred cigars a month is a sufficient amount to keep my constitution on a firm basis. During the family's summer vacation, which we spend elsewhere, I work five hours every day, and five days in every week, and allow no interruption under any pretext. I allow myself the fullest possible marvel of inspiration; consequently, I ordinarily smoke fifteen cigars during my five hours' labours, and if my interest reaches the enthusiastic point, I smoke more. I smoke with all my might, and allow no intervals.

MARK TWAIN. March 14, 1882.



MR. CORNELIUS WALFORD, F. S. S., F. I. A.

The subject you enquire about is one of vital consequence to brain-workers. I am distinctly of opinion that all stimulants are decidedly injurious to the physical system, and that as a consequence they tend to weaken and destroy the mental powers. I believe tobacco to be a more insidious stimulant than alcoholic beverages. It can be indulged in more constantly without visible degradation; but surely it saps the powers of the mind. In this view I gave it up some years ago. Many men say they smoke to make them think. I notice that a number of them seem to think to very small purpose, either for themselves or mankind generally. I am not a total abstainer, and theoretically have had a belief that pure wine ought to be beneficial to the human system. In practice I have not found it so, though I have always been a very moderate drinker. I certainly never drank a glass of wine or any other liquor in view of mental stimulus, and did not know it was ever seriously regarded as having any such effect, except in so far as it might invigorate the body, which I now find it does not do; but in case of sedentary occupations is positively injurious in its effects. Until mankind can rise above beer and tobacco, the race will remain degraded, as it now is, mentally, socially and physically.

P.S.—I have never had so large an amount of mental labour on hand as now—three works in the press (including an encyclopedia, whereof all the articles are written by myself), all requiring much thought and research. I am taking no stimulants whatever.

CORNELIUS WALFORD. March 9, 1882.



MR. G. F. WATTS, R. A.

In answer to your letter asking for my experience and opinion as a worker, on the subject of tobacco and alcoholic stimulants, I must begin by saying that reflection and experience should teach us the truth of the adage that "What is one man's meat is another man's poison," and that what may be wisely recommended in some cases is by no means desirable in all; in fact, that it is equally unwise and illiberal to dogmatise upon any subject that is not capable of scientific proof. Being myself a total abstainer from tobacco, and equally so, when not recommended by my doctor, from wine and all stimulants, I confess to having a strong prejudice against them. The use of wine seems to be natural to man, and it is possible he would be the better for it if it could be restrained within very moderate limits; but I have good reason for concluding that the more active stimulants are altogether harmful. It is natural as time goes on that new wants should be acquired, and new luxuries discovered, and doubtless it is in the abuse, and not in the use, of such things that the danger lies; but we all know how prone humanity is to abuse in its indulgences. It is, I believe, an admitted fact that even people who are considered to be strictly temperate as a rule, habitually take more wine than is good for them. With regard to tobacco, I cannot help thinking that its introduction by civilised races has been an unmixed evil. History shows us that before it was known the most splendid mental achievements were carried put, and the most heroic endurance exhibited, things done which if it be possible to rival, it is quite impossible to excel. The soldier, and sailor, the night-watchman especially in malarious districts may derive comfort and benefit from its use, and there I think it should be left; for my observation has induced me to think that nothing but evil results from its use as a luxurious habit. The subject is doubtless one of vital interest and importance; but I must end as I began by disclaiming a right to dogmatise.

G. F. WATTS. Feb. 19, 1882.



PROFESSOR ANDREW WILSON, Ph. D., F. R. S. E.

The question you ask concerning the effects of alcohol and tobacco upon the health of brain-workers, relatively (I presume) to myself, is a complex one. Personally, I find with often excessive work in the way of lecturing, long railway journeys, and late hours, writing at other times, that I digest my food with greater ease when I take a little claret or beer with meals. Experiment has convinced me that the slight amount of alcohol I imbibe in my claret is a grateful stimulus to digestion. As to smoking, I take an occasional cigar, but only after dinner, and never during the day. As to health, I never suffer even from a headache. I usually deliver 18 lectures a week, often more; and I have often to make journeys of over 50 miles after a hard day's work here, to lecture in the country. My writing is done at night chiefly, but as a rule, I don't sit after 12-30. My work is exceptionally constant, yet I seem to be exceptionally healthy. I regard my claret or wine to meals in the same light in which others regard their tea, as a pleasant stimulus, followed in my case by good effect. At the same time, there may be others who may do the same amount of work as abstainers. My position in this matter has always been that of recognising the individual phases of the matter as the true basis of its settlement. What I can urge is, that I am an exceptionally healthy man, doing what I may fairly claim to be exceptionally hard work, and careful in every respect of health, finding that a moderate quantity of alcohol, with food, is for me better than total abstinence. Whiskey, or alcohol, in its strong forms I never taste.

ANDREW WILSON. Feb. 14, 1882.



MR. JUSTIN WINSER.

Referring to your note, I may say that I have never used stimulants to incite intellectual work, but have found occasionally in social gatherings a certain intellectual exhilaration arising from its use, which conduces to quickness of wit, etc., but perhaps not so much from alcoholic liquors as from coffee, a cup of coffee being with me a good preparation for an after-dinner speech. My moderate use of a stimulant has not disclosed to me beneficial or hurtful effects. I often go long intervals without it; and have never indulged in it, to great extent, so that my testimony is of a narrow experience. My use of tobacco is so inconsiderable as to show nothing.

JUSTIN WlNSER. March 9, 1882.



M. WURTZ, PARIS.

In reply to your letter of the 7th February, I have the honour to recall you the opinion which is current to-day among doctors of the highest authority, namely, that the abuse of alcohol and tobacco offers the greatest inconvenience from the point of view of health. Alcoholism produces a state of disorder of the organism to which a great number of maladies attach themselves. It is not a question of the moderate use of excitants, but the limit between use and abuse is difficult to trace, because it varies according to the country, the climate, and the habits of the individual constitution.

A. WURTZ. March 14, 1882.



APPENDIX.



DR. RISDON BENNETT.

"There are few people, I believe, who are aided in the actual performance of brain-work by alcohol; not that many, nay, most persons, are not rendered more ready and brilliant in conversation, or have their imagination quickened for a time. But the steady, continued exercise of the mental powers demanded of professional men is more often impeded than aided at the time by alcohol."

Contemporary Review, vol. 34, p. 343.



THE REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M. A.

"It has been said that moderate doses of alcohol stimulate work into greater activity, and make life happier and brighter. My experience, since I became a total abstainer, has been the opposite. I have found myself able to work better. I have a greater command over any powers I possess. I can make use of them when I please. When I call upon them, they answer; and I need not wait for them to be in the humour. It is all the difference between a machine well oiled and one which has something, among the wheels which catches and retards the movement at unexpected times. As to the pleasure of life, it has been also increased. I enjoy Nature, books, and men more than I did—and my previous enjoyment of them was not small. Those attacks of depression which come to every man at times who lives too sedentary a life rarely visit me now, and when depression does come from any trouble, I can overcome it far more quickly than before. The fact is, alcohol, even in the small quantities I took it, while it did not seem to injure health, injures the fineness of that physical balance which means a state of health in which all the world is pleasant. That is my experience after four months of water-drinking, and it is all the more striking to me, because for the last four or five years I have been a very moderate drinker. However, the experience of one man is not that of another, and mine only goes for what it is worth to those to whom, as much alcohol as is contained in one glass of sherry, or port, alters away from the standard of health. I have discovered, since abstinence, that that is true of me. And I am sure, from inquiries, I have made, that it is true for a great many other people who do not at all suspect it. Therefore, I appeal to the young and the old, to try abstinence for the very reasons they now use alcohol—in order to increase their power of work and their enjoyment of life. Let the young make the experiment of working on water only. Alcohol slowly corrupts and certainly retards the activity of the brain of the greater number of men. They will be able to do all they have to do more swiftly. And this swiftness will leave them leisure—the blessing we want most in this over-worked world. And the leisure, not being led away by alcohol into idleness, into depression which craves unnatural excitement, into noisy or slothful company, will be more nobly used and with greater joy in the usage. And the older men, who find it so difficult to find leisure, and who when they find it cannot enjoy it because they have a number of slight ailments which do not allow them perfect health, or which keep them in over-excitement or over-depression, let them try—though it will need a struggle—whether the total abandonment of alcohol will not lessen all their ailments, and by restoring a better temper to the body—for the body with alcohol in it is like a house with an irritable man in it—enable them not only to work better, but to enjoy their leisure. It is not too much to say that the work of the world would be one-third better done, and more swiftly done, and the enjoyment of life increased by one-half, if no one took a drop of alcohol."

Speech at Bedford Chapel, July 20th, 1882.



WILLIAM C. BRYANT. (BORN 1794; DIED 1878.)

I promised to give you some account of my habits of life, so far, at least, as regards diet, exercise, and occupation. I have reached a pretty advanced period of life, without the usual infirmities of old age, and with my strength, activity, and bodily faculties generally in pretty good preservation. How far this may be the effect of my way of life, adopted long ago, and steadily adhered to, is perhaps uncertain.

I rise early, at this time of the year about 5 1/2; in summer, half an hour, or even an hour, earlier. Immediately, with very little incumbrance of clothing, I begin a series of exercises, for the most part designed to expand the chest, and at the same time call into action all the muscles and articulations of the body. These are performed with dumb-bells, the very lightest, covered with flannel; with a pole, a horizontal bar, and a light chair swung around my head. After a full hour, and sometimes more, passed in this manner, I bathe from head to foot. When at my place in the country, I sometimes shorten my exercises in the chamber, and, going out, occupy myself for half an hour or more in some work which requires brisk exercise. After my bath, if breakfast be not ready, I sit down to my studies until I am called.

My breakfast is a simple one—hominy and milk, or in place of hominy, brown bread, or oat-meal, or wheaten grits, and, in the season, baked sweet apples. Buckwheat cakes I do not decline, nor any other article of vegetable food, but animal food I never take at breakfast. Tea and coffee I never touch at any time. Sometimes I take a cup of chocolate, which has no narcotic effect, and agrees with me very well. At breakfast I often take fruit, either in its natural state or freshly stewed.

After breakfast I occupy myself for awhile with my studies, and then, when in town, I walk down to the office of The Evening Post, nearly three miles distant, and after about three hours, return, always walking, whatever be the weather or the state of the streets. In the country I am engaged in my literary tasks till a feeling of weariness drives me out into the open air, and I go upon my farm or into the garden and prune the trees, or perform some other work about them which they need, and then go back to my books. I do not often drive out, preferring to walk.

In the country I dine early, and it is only at that meal that I take either meat or fish, and of these but a moderate quantity, making my dinner mostly of vegetables. At the meal which is called "tea," I take only a little bread and butter, with fruit, if it be on the table. In town, where I dine later, I make but two meals a day. Fruit makes a considerable part of my diet, and I eat it at almost any part of the day without inconvenience. My drink is water, yet I sometimes, though rarely, take a glass of wine. I am a natural temperance man, finding myself rather confused than exhilarated by wine. I never meddle with tobacco, except to quarrel with its use.

That I may rise early, I, of course, go to bed early: in town, as early as 10; in the country, somewhat earlier. For many years I have avoided in the evening every kind of literary occupation which tasks the faculties, such as composition, even to the writing of letters, for the reason that it excites the nervous system and prevents sound sleep.

My brother told me, not long since, that he had seen in a Chicago newspaper, and several other Western journals, a paragraph in which it is said that I am in the habit of taking quinine as a stimulant; that I have depended upon the excitement it produces in writing my verses, and that, in consequence of using it in that way, I had become as deaf as a post. As to my deafness, you know that to be false, and the rest of the story is equally so. I abominate all drugs and narcotics, and have always carefully avoided every thing which spurs nature to exertions which it would not otherwise make. Even with my food I do not take the usual condiments, such as pepper, and the like.

March 30, 1871. Hygiene of the Brain, New York, 1878.



DR. KING CHAMBERS, HONORARY PHYSICIAN TO H. R. H. THE PRINCE OF WALES.

"The physiology of the action of alcohol has a very practical bearing on the physical regimen of the mental functions. Alcohol has the power of curbing, arresting, and suspending all the phenomena connected with the nervous system. We feel its influence on our thoughts as soon as on any other part of the man. Sometimes it brings them more completely under our command, controls and steadies them; sometimes it confuses or disconnects them; then breaks off our power and the action of the senses altogether. The first effect is desirable, the others to be avoided. When a man has tired himself with intellectual exertion a moderate quantity of alcohol taken with food acts as an anaesthetic, stays the wear of the system which is going on, and allows the nervous force to be diverted to the due digestion of the meal. But it must be followed by rest from mental labour, and is, in fact, a part of the same regimen which enforces rest—it is an artificial rest. To continue to labour and at the same time to take the anaesthetic is an inconsistency. It merely blunts the painful feeling of weariness, and prevents it from acting as a warning. I very much doubt the quickening or brightening of the wits which bacchanalian poets have conventionally attributed to alcohol. An abstainer in a party of even moderate topers finds their jokes dull and their anecdotes pointless, and his principal amusement consists in his observation of their curious bluntness to the groundlessness of their merriment. There is no more fatal habit to a literary man than that of using alcohol as a stimulant between meals. The vital powers go on getting worn out more and more without their cry for help being perceived, and in the end break down suddenly, and often irrevocably. The temptation is greater perhaps to a literary man than to any other in the same social position, especially if he has been induced by avarice, or ambition, to work wastefully against them; and if he cannot resist it, he had better abjure the use of alcohol altogether.... Mental activity certainly renders the brain less capable of bearing an amount of alcohol, which in seasons of rest and relaxation does not injuriously affect it. When any extraordinary toil is temporarily imposed, extreme temperance, or even total abstinence, should be the rule. Much to the point is the experience of Byron's Sardanapalus:—

"The goblet I reserve for hours of ease, I war on water."

"It is true that Byron assumes in his poetry the character of a debauche, and says he wrote Don Juan under the influence of gin and water. But much of that sort of talk is merely for stage effect, and we see how industrious he was, and read of his training vigorously to reduce corpulence, and of his being such an exceptionally experienced swimmer as to rival Leander in crossing the Hellespont.... The machinery of sensitive souls is as delicate as it is valuable, and cannot bear the rough usage which coarse customs inflict upon it. It is broken to pieces by blows which common natures laugh at. The literary man, with his highly-cultivated, tightly-strung sensations, is often more than others susceptible of the noxious, and less susceptible of the beneficial results of alcohol. His mind is easier to cloud, and there is a deeper responsibility in clouding it.... Equally when we descend into the lower regions of Parnassus, the abodes of talent and cleverness, and the supply of periodical literary requirements, we find the due care of the body absolutely essential to the continued usefulness of the intellect. The first thing to which one entering the profession of literature must make up his mind is to be healthy, and he can only be so by temperance.... Tobacco should not be indulged in during working hours. Whatever physiological effect it has is sedative, and so obstructs mental operations."

Manual of Diet in Health and Disease. 1876, p. 162.



PROFESSOR THOMAS R. FRASER, EDINBURGH.

"The stimulating action on the brain of quantities far short of intoxicating, is accompanied with a paralysing action which seems most rapidly and powerfully to involve the higher faculties. Mental work may seem to be rendered more easy, but ease is gained at the expense of quality. The editor of a newspaper will tell you that, if he has been dining out, he cannot with confidence write a leading article until he has allowed sufficient time to elapse from the effect of the wine he has drunk, in moderation, to pass away; and even the novelist, whose brain-work is in the regions of imagination, will relate a similar experience.... In a person accustomed to the use of tobacco the intellectual work is difficult when smoking cannot be indulged in, the mind cannot easily be concentrated on a subject, and unrest is produced—but this disappears when recourse is had to smoking; and probably some of its reputation as a soothing agent has on this account been acquired. The circulation is also a little excited, and no doubt this assists in rendering brain work more easy. In a short time, however, the circulation is slightly depressed, the pulse becoming smaller; and this may assist in producing the soothing effect generally experienced."

The Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Stimulants and Tobacco. 1881



HUBERT HERKOMER, A. R. A.

"It is no credit to me for being an abstainer. The credit is due to my father, who gave up smoking, drinking, intoxicating drinks, and eating meat at the same time, about twenty years ago; and as I was only ten years old then, I naturally grew into my father's habits (I now eat meat, however). The blessings of that reform have come down upon my children."

Sherlock's Heroes in the Strife.



COLONEL THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

"I have been a busy worker with the brain all my life, and have enjoyed very unusual health. I am now fifty-three, and have not been confined to the house by illness since I was seventeen, except for a short time during the war, when suffering from the results of a wound. This favourable result I attribute to (1) a good constitution—and an elastic temperament; (2) simple tastes, disinclining me to stimulants and narcotics, such as tea, coffee, wine, spirits, and tobacco; (3) a love of athletic exercises; (4) a life-long habit of writing by daylight only; (5) the use of homoeopathic medicines in the early stages of slight ailments. I have never been a special devotee of health, I think, but have followed out my natural tastes; and have certainly enjoyed physical life very much. It may be well to add that, though, as I said, my constitution was good and my frame always large, I had yet an unusual number of children's diseases, and have often been told that my life was several times preserved, in infancy, against all expectation, by the unwearied care and devotion of my mother. This may encourage some anxious parents."

Nov. 11, 1877. Hygiene of the Brain, N.Y., 1878.



WILLIAM HOWITT.

I have read with very great pleasure the letter of Mr. Bryant.... Let me observe that while the modes of my own life and those of Mr. Bryant very much accord, in a few particulars they differ, as, I suppose, must be the case in almost any two individuals. Mr. Bryant never takes coffee or tea. I regularly take both, find the greatest refreshment in both, and never experienced any deleterious effects from either, except in one instance, when, by mistake, I took a cup of tea strong enough for ten men. On the contrary, tea is to me a wonderful refresher and reviver. After long-continued exertion, as in the great pedestrian journeys that I formerly made, tea would always, in a manner almost miraculous, banish all my fatigue, and diffuse through my whole frame comfort and exhilaration, without any subsequent evil effect.

I am quite well aware that this is not the experience of many others, my wife among the number, on whose nervous system tea acts mischievously, producing inordinate wakefulness, and its continued use, indigestion. But this is one of the things that people should learn, and act upon, namely, to take such things as suit them, and avoid such as do not. It is said that Mithridates could live and flourish on poisons, and if it be true that tea or coffee is a poison, so do most of us. William Hutton, the shrewd and humorous author of the histories of Birmingham and Derby, and also of a life of himself, scarcely inferior to that of Franklin in lessons of life-wisdom, said that he had been told that coffee was a slow poison, and, he added, that he had found it very slow, for he had drunk it more than sixty years without any ill effect My experience of it has been the same.

Mr. Bryant also has recourse to the use of dumb-bells, and other gymnastic appliances. For my part, I find no artificial practices necessary for the maintenance of health and a vigorous circulation of the blood. My only gymnastics have been those of Nature—walking, riding, working in field and garden, bathing, swimming, etc. In some of those practices, or in the amount of their use, Nature, in my later years, has dictated an abatement. In Mr. Bryant's abhorrence of tobacco, I fully sympathize. That is a poisoner, a stupefier, a traitor to the nervous system, and, consequently, to energy and the spirit of enterprise, which I renounced once and for ever before I reached my twentieth year. The main causes of the vigor of my constitution and the retention of sound health, comfort, and activity to within three years of eighty, I shall point out as I proceed. First and foremost, it was my good fortune to derive my existence from parents descended on both sides from a vigorous stock, and of great longevity. I remember my great-grandmother, an old lady of nearly ninety; my grandmother of nearly as great an age. My mother lived to eighty-five, and my father to the same age. They were both of them temperate in their habits, living a fresh and healthy country life, and in enjoyment of that tranquillity of mind which is conferred by a spirit of genuine piety, and which confers, in return, health and strength.

The great destroyers of life are not labor and exertion, either physical or intellectual, but care, misery, crime, and dissipation. My wife derived from her parentage similar advantages, and all the habits of our lives, both before and since our marriage, have been of a similar character. My boyhood and youth were, for the most part, spent in the country; and all country objects, sports, and labors, horse-racing and hunting excepted, have had a never-failing charm for me. As a boy, I ranged the country far and wide in curious quest and study of all the wild creatures of the woods and fields, in great delight in birds and their nests, climbing the loftiest trees, rocks and buildings in pursuit of them. In fact, the life described in the "Boy's Country Book," was my own life. No hours were too early for me, and in the bright, sunny fields in the early mornings, amid dews and odour of flowers, I breathed that pure air which gave a life-long tone to my lungs that I still reap the benefit of. All those daily habits of climbing, running, and working developed my frame to perfection, and gave a vigor to nerve and muscle that have stood well the wear and tear of existence. My brain was not dwarfed by excessive study in early boyhood, as is too much the case with children of to-day. Nature says, as plainly as she can speak, that the infancy of all creatures is sacred to play, to physical action, and the joyousness of mind that give life to every organ of the system. Lambs, kittens, kids, foals, even young pigs and donkeys, all teach the great lesson of Nature, that to have a body healthy and strong, the prompt and efficient vehicle of the mind, we must not infringe on her ordinations by our study and cramping sedentariness in life's tender years. We must not throw away or misappropriate her forces destined to the corporeal architecture of man, by tasks that belong properly to an after-time. There is no mistake so fatal to the proper development of man and woman, as to pile on the immature brain, and on the yet unfinished fabric of the human body, a weight of premature and, therefore, unnatural study. In most of those cases where Nature has intended to produce a first-class intellect, she has guarded her embryo genius by a stubborn slowness of development. Moderate study and plenty of play and exercise in early youth are the true requisites for a noble growth of intellectual powers in man, and for its continuance to old age.

My youth, as my boyhood, was spent in the country, and in the active exercise of its sports and labors. I was fond of shooting, fishing, riding, and walking, often making long expeditions on foot for botanical or other purposes. Bathing and swimming I continued each year till the frost was in the ground and the ice fringed the banks of the river. As my father farmed his own land, I delighted in all the occupations of the field, mowing and reaping with the men through the harvest, looking after sheep and lambs, and finding never-ceasing pleasure in the cultivation of the garden.

When our literary engagements drew us to London, we carefully avoided living in the great Babel, but took up our residence in one of its healthy suburbs, and, on the introduction of railways, removed to what was actual country. A very little time showed us the exhausting and unwholesome nature of city life. Late hours, heavy dinners, the indulgence of what are called jovial hours, and crowded parties, would soon have sent us whither they have sent so many of our literary contemporaries, long, long ago. After an evening spent in one of the crowded parties of London, I have always found myself literally poisoned. My whole nervous system has been distressed and vitiated. I have been miserable and incapable the next day of intellectual labor. Nor is there any mystery about this matter. To pass some four or five hours in a town, itself badly ventilated, amid a throng of people just come from dinner, loaded with a medley of viands, and reeking with the fumes of hot wines—no few of them, probably, of very moral habits, was simply undergoing a process of asphyxia. The air was speedily decomposed by so many lungs. Its ozone and oxygen were rapidly absorbed, and in return the atmosphere was loaded with carbonic acid, carbon, nitrogen, and other effluvia, from the lungs and pores of the dense and heated company; this mischievous matter being much increased from the products of the combustion of numerous lamps, candles, and gas-jets.

The same effect was uniformly produced on me by evenings passed in theatres, or crowded concert or lecture rooms. These facts are now well understood by those who have studied the causes of health and disease in modern society; and I am assured by medical men that no source of consumption is so great as that occasioned by the breathing of these lethal atmospheres of fashionable parties, fashionable theatres, and concert and lecture halls; and then returning home at midnight by an abrupt plunge from their heat into damp and cold. People have said to me, "Oh! it is merely the effect of the unusual late hour that you have felt!" But, though nite hours, either in writing or society, have not been my habit, when circumstances of literary pressure have compelled me occasionally to work late, I have never felt any such effects. I could rise the next day a little later, perfectly refreshed and full of spirit for my work.

Another cause to which I attribute my extraordinary degree of health, has been not merely continued country exercise in walking and gardening, but, now and then, making a clean breach and change of my location and mode of life. Travel is one of the great invigorators of the system, both physically and intellectually. When I have found a morbid condition stealing over me, I have at once started off on a pedestrian or other journey. The change of place, scene, atmosphere, of all the objects occupying the daily attention, has at once put to flight the enemy. It has vanished as by a spell. There is nothing like a throwing off the harness and giving mind and body a holiday—a treat to all sorts of new objects. Once, a wretched, nervous feeling grew upon me; I flung it off by mounting a stage-coach, and then taking a walk from the Land's End, in Cornwall, to the north of Devon. It was gone for ever! Another time the "jolly" late dinners and blithely-circulating decanter, with literary men, that I found it almost impossible to avoid altogether without cutting very valuable connections, gave me a dreadful dyspepsia. I became livingly sensible of the agonies of Prometheus with the daily vulture gnawing at his vitals. At once I started with all my family for a year's sojourn in Germany, which, in fact, proved three years. But the fiend had left me the very first day. The moment I quitted the British shore, the tormentor quitted me. I suppose he preferred staying behind, where he was aware of so many promising subjects of his diabolical art. New diet, new and early hours, and all the novelties of foreign life, made his approach to me impossible. I have known him no more, during these now thirty years.

Eighteen years ago I made the circumnavigation of the globe, going out to Australia by the Cape of Good Hope, and returning by Cape Horn. This, including two years of wandering in the woods and wilds of Australia, evidently gave a new accession of vital stamina to my frame. It is said that the climate of Australia makes young men old, and old men young. I do not believe the first part of the proverb, but I am quite certain that there is a great deal in the second part of it. During those two years I chiefly lived in a tent, and led a quiet, free, and pleasant life in the open forests and wild country, continually shifting our scene as we took the fancy, now encamping in some valley among the mountains, now by some pleasant lake or river. In fact, pic-nicing from day to day, and month to month, watching, I and my two sons, with ever new interest, all the varied life of beast, bird, and insect, and the equally varied world of trees, shrubs, and flowers. My mind was lying fallow, as it regarded my usual literary pursuits, but actually engaged with a thousand things of novel interest, both among men in the Gold Diggings, and among other creatures and phenomena around me. In this climate I and my little party enjoyed, on the whole, excellent health, though we often walked or worked for days and weeks under a sun frequently, at noon, reaching from one hundred to one hundred and fifty degrees of Fahrenheit; waded through rivers breast high, because there were no bridges, and slept occasionally under the forest trees. There, at nearly sixty years of age, I dug for gold for weeks together, and my little company discovered a fine gold field which continues one to this day. These two years of bush life, with other journeys on the Australian Continent, and in Tasmania, and the voyages out and back, gave a world of new vigor that has been serving me ever since. During the last summer in Switzerland, Mrs. Howitt and myself, at the respective ages of sixty-eight and seventy-six, climbed mountains of from three to five thousand feet above the level of the sea, and descended the same day with more ease than many a young person of the modern school could do.

As to our daily mode of life, little need be said. We keep early hours, prefer to dine at noon, are always employed in "books, or work, or healthful play;" have no particular rules about eating and drinking, except the general ones of having simple and good food, and drinking little wine. We have always been temperance people, but never pledged, being averse to thraldom of any kind, taking, both in food and drink, what seemed to do us good. At home, we drink, for the most part, water, with a glass of wine occasionally. On the Continent, we take the light wines of the country where we happen to be, with water, because they suit us; if they did not, we should eschew them. In fact, our great rule is to use what proves salutary, without regard to any theories, conceits, or speculations of hygienic economy; and, in our case, this following of common sense has answered extremely well.

At the same time it is true that many eminent men, and especially eminent lawyers, who in their early days worked immensely hard, studied through many long nights, and caroused, some of them, deeply through others, yet attained to a good old age, as Lords Eldon, Scott, Brougham, Campbell, Lyndhurst, and others. To what are we to attribute this longevity under the circumstances? No doubt to iron constitutions derived from their parentage, and then to the recuperative effect of those half-yearly flights into the Egypt of the country, which make an essential part of English life. To a thorough change of hours, habits, and atmosphere in these seasons of villeggiatura. To vigorous athletic country sports and practices, hunting, shooting, fishing, riding, boating, yachting, traversing moors and mountains after black-cock, grouse, salmon, trout and deer. To long walks at sea-side resorts, and to that love of continental travel so strong in both your countrymen and women, and ours.

These are the saving causes in the lives of such men. Who knows how long they would have lived had they not inflicted on themselves, more or less, the destroying ones. There is an old story among us of two very old men being brought up on a trial where the evidence of "the oldest inhabitant" was required. The Judge asked the first who came up what had been the habits of his life. He replied, "Very regular, my lord; I have always been sober, and kept good hours." Upon which the Judge dilated in high terms of praise on the benefit of regular life. When the second old man appeared, the Judge put the same question, and received the answer, "Very regular, my lord; I have never gone to bed sober these forty years." Whereupon his lordship exclaimed, "Ha! I see how it is. English men, like English oak, wet or dry, last for ever."

I am not of his lordship's opinion; but seeing the great longevity of many of our most eminent lawyers, and some of whom in early life seemed disposed to live fast rather than long, I am more than ever confirmed in my opinion of the vitalizing influences of temperance, good air, and daily activity, which, with the benefits of change and travel, can so far in after life save those whom no original force of constitution could have saved from the effects of jollity, or of gigantic efforts of study in early life. For one' of such hard livers, or hard brain-workers who have escaped by the periodical resort to healthful usages, how many thousands have been "cut off in the midst of their days?" A lady once meeting me in Highgate, where I then lived, asked me if I could recommend her a good doctor. I told her that I could recommend her three. She observed that one would be enough; but I assured her that she would find these three more economical and efficient than any individual Galen that I could think of. Their names were, "Temperance, Early Hours, and Daily Exercise." That they were the only ones that I had employed for years, or meant to employ. Soon after, a gentleman wrote to me respecting these "Three Doctors," and put them in print. Anon, they were made the subject of one of the "Ipswich Tracts;" and on a visit, a few years ago, to the Continent, I found this tract translated into French, and the title-page enriched with the name of a French physician, as the author. So much the better. If the name of the French physician can recommend "The Three Doctors" to the population of France, I am so much the more obliged.

May 20, 1871. Hygiene of the Brain, New York, 1878.



THE REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY

Found great benefit from the use of tobacco, though several times he tried to give it up. He smoked the poorest tobacco, however, and Mr. C. Kegan Paul thus describes the care Charles Kingsley took to minimise the dangers of the habit:—

"He would work himself into a white heat over his book, till, too excited to write more, he would calm himself down by a pipe, pacing his grass-plot in thought, and in long strides. He was a great smoker, and tobacco was to him a needful sedative. He always used a long and clean clay pipe, which lurked in all sorts of unexpected places. But none was ever smoked which was in any degree foul, and when there was a vast accumulation of old pipes, they were sent back again to be rebaked, and returned fresh and new. This gave him a striking simile, which in 'Alton Locke,' he puts into the mouth of James Crossthwaite, 'Katie here believes in Purgatory, where souls are burnt clean again, like 'bacca pipes.'"



HARRIET MARTINEAU.

I was deeply impressed by something which an excellent clergyman told me one day, when there was nobody by to bring mischief on the head of the narrator. This clergyman knew the literary world of his time so thoroughly that there was probably no author of any mark then living in England with whom he was not more or less acquainted.

It must be remembered that a new generation has now grown up. He told me that he had reason to believe that there was no author or authoress who was free from the habit of taking pernicious stimulants, either strong green tea or strong coffee at night, or wine, or spirits, or laudanum.

The amount of opium taken to relieve the wear and tear of authorship was, he said, greater than most people had any conception of, and all literary workers took something.

"Why, I do not," said I; "fresh air and cold water are my stimulants."

"I believe you," he replied, "but you work in the morning, and there is much in that!"

I then remembered, when I had to work a short time at night, a physician who called on me observed that I must not allow myself to be exhausted at the end of the day. He would not advise any alcoholic wines, but any light wines that I liked might do me good. "You have a cupboard there at your right hand," said he; "keep a bottle of hock and a wine glass there, and help yourself when you feel you want it." "No, thank you," said I; "if I took wine it should not be when alone, nor would I help myself to a glass; I might take a little more and a little more, till my solitary glass might become a regular tippling habit; I shall avoid the temptation altogether." Physicians should consider well before they give such advice to brain-worn workers. —Autobiography.



PROFESSOR MILLER.

"In labour of the head, alcohol stimulates the brain to an increase of function under the mental power, and so effects a concentrated cerebral exhaustion, without being able to afford compensating nutrition or repair. ....There is the same common fallacy here as in the case of manual labour. The stimulus is felt—to do good. 'I could not do my work without it.' But at what cost are you doing your work? Premature and permanent exhaustion of the muscles is bad enough; but premature and permanent exhaustion of brain is infinitely worse. And when you come to a point where work must cease or the stimulus be taken, do not hesitate as to the right alternative. Don't call for your pate ale, your brandy, or your wine. Shut your book, close your eyes, and go to sleep: or change your occupation, so as to give a thorough shift to your brain; and then, after a time, spent, as the case may be, either in repose or recreation, you will find yourself fit to resume your former task of thought without loss or detriment.... Look to the mental workers under alcohol. Take the best of them. Would not their genius have burned not only with a steadier and more enduring flame, but also with a less sickly and noxious vapour to the moral health of all around them, had they been free from the unnatural and unneeded stimulus? Take Burns, for example. Alcohol did not make his genius, or even brighten it.... Genius may have its poetical and imaginative powers stored up into fitful paroxysms by alcohol, no doubt: the control of will being gone or going, the mind is left to take ideas as they come, and they may come brilliantly for a time. But, at best, the man is but a revolving light. At one time a flash will dazzle you; at another, the darkness is as that of midnight; the alternating gloom being always longer than the period of light, and all the more intense by reason of the other's brightness. While imagination sparkles, reason is depressed. And, therefore, let the true student eschew the bottle's deceitful aid. He will think all the harder, all the clearer, and all the longer!"

Alcohol: its Place and Power. 866, p. 122.



MR. R. A. PROCTOR, F. R. S.

"I would venture to add an expression of my own firm conviction that a life of study is aided by the almost entire avoidance of stimulants, alcoholic as well as nicotian, I do not say that the moderate use of such stimulants does harm, only that so far as I can judge from my own experience it affords no help. I recognise a slight risk in what Abbe Moigno correctly states—the apparent power of indefinite work which comes with the almost entire avoidance of stimulants; but the risk is very slight, for the man must have very little sense who abuses that power to a dangerous degree. Certainly, if the loss of the power be evidence of mischief, I would say (still speaking of my own experience, which may be peculiar to my own temperament) that the use of stimulants, even in a very moderate degree, is mischievous. For instance, I repeatedly have put this point to the test:—I work say from breakfast till one o'clock, when, if I feel at all hungry, I join my family at lunch; if now at lunch I eat very lightly, and take a glass of ale or whisky-and-water, I feel disposed, about a quarter of an hour later, to leave my work, which has, for the time, become irksome to me; and perhaps a couple of hours will pass before I care for steady work again: on the other hand, if I eat as lightly, or perhaps take a heartier lunch, but drink water only, I sit down as disposed for work after as before the meal. In point of fact, a very weak glass of whisky-and-water has as bad an influence on the disposition for work as a meal unwisely heavy would have. It is the same in the evening. If I take a light supper, with water only, I can work (and this, perhaps, is bad) comfortably till twelve or one; but a glass of weak whisky-and-water disposes me to rest or sleep, or to no heavier mental effort than is involved in reading a book of fiction or travel. These remarks apply only to quiet home life, with my relatives or intimate friends at the table. At larger gatherings it seems (as Herbert Spencer has noted) that not only a heartier meal, but stimulants in a larger quantity, can be taken without impairment of mental vivacity, and even with advantage, up to a point falling far short, however, of what in former times would have been regarded as the safe limit of moderation. Under those circumstances, "wine maketh glad the heart of man," and many find the stimulus it gives pleasant,—perhaps dangerously so, unless the lesson is soon learned that the point is very soon reached beyond which mental vivacity is not increased but impaired.

"I must confess it seems to me that if we are to admit the necessity or prudence of adopting total abstinence principles, because of the miseries which have been caused by undue indulgence—if A, B, and C, who have no desire to make beasts of themselves, are to refrain from the social glass because X, Y, and Z cannot content themselves till they have taken half-a-dozen social glasses too many—society has an additional reason to be angry with the drunkards, and with those scarcely less pernicious members of the social body who either cannot keep sober without blue ribbons or pledges, or, having no wish to drink, want everyone to know it. I admit, of course, if it really is the case that the healthy-minded must refrain from the innocent use of such stimulants as suit them, in the interest of the diseased, it may be very proper and desirable to do so: but only in the same way that it might be very desirable to avoid in a lunatic asylum the rational discussion of subjects about which the lunatics were astray. For steady literary or scientific work, however, and throughout the hours of work (or near them), it is certain that for most men something very close to total abstinence from stimulants is the best policy."

Knowledge, July, 29, 1882.

"I have recently had rather interesting evidence of the real value of the use of so-called stimulants. When lecturing daily, and also travelling long distances, I always adopt a very light diet: tea, dry toast, and an egg for breakfast; nothing then till six, when I take tea, dry toast, and a chop; after lecturing I take a biscuit or so with cheese, and a glass of whisky-and-water, 'cold without.' I tried this season the effect of omitting the whisky. Result—sleeplessness till one or two in the morning. No other harm, but weariness during following day. Taking the whisky-and-water again, after trying this a night or two, acted as the most perfect sedative."

Knowledge, Dec. 1, 1882.



DR. B. W. RICHARDSON, F. R. S.

"The evidence is all perfect that alcohol gives no potential power to brain or muscle. During the first stage of its action it may enable a wearied or a feeble organism to do brisk work for a short time; it may make the mind briefly brilliant: it may excite muscle to quick action, but it does nothing substantially, and fills up nothing it has destroyed, as it leads to destruction. A fire makes a brilliant sight, but leaves a desolation. It is the same with alcohol.... The true place of alcohol is clear; it is an agreeable temporary shroud. The savage, with the mansions of his soul unfurnished, buries his restless energy under its shadow. The civilised man, overburdened with mental labour, or with engrossing care, seeks the same shade; but it is shade, after all, in which in exact proportion as he seeks it, the seeker retires from perfect natural life. To search for force in alcohol is, to my mind, equivalent to the act of seeking for the sun in subterranean gloom until all is night.... In respect to the influence of smoking on the mental faculties, there need, I believe, be no obscurity. When mental labour is being commenced, indulgence in a pipe produces in most persons a heavy, dull condition, which impairs the processes of digestion and assimilation, and suspends more or less that motion of the tissues which constitutes vital activity. But if mental labour be continued for a long time, until exhaustion be felt, then the resort to a pipe gives to some habitues a feeling of relief; it soothes, it is said, and gives new impetus to thought. This is the practical experience of almost all smokers, but few men become so habituated to the pipe as to commence well a day of physical or mental work on tobacco. Many try, but it almost invariably obtains that they go through their labours with much less alacrity than other men who are not so addicted. The majority of smokers feel that after a hard day's labour, a pipe, supposing always that the indulgence of it is moderately carried out, produces temporary relief from exhaustion."

Diseases of Modern Life.

"I gave up that which I thought warmed and helped me, and I can declare, after considering the whole period in which I have subjected myself to this ordeal, I never did more work; I never did more varied work; I never did work with so much facility; I never did work with such a complete sense of freedom from anxiety and worry, as I have done during the period that I have abstained altogether."

Speech at Exeter Hall, Feb. 7, 1877.



MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.

"As to smoking stupefying a man's faculties or blunting his energy, that allegation I take to be mainly nonsense. The greatest workers and thinkers of modern times have been inveterate smokers. At the same time, it is idle to deny that smoking to excess weakens the eyesight, impairs the digestion, plays havoc with the nerves, and interferes with the action of the heart. I have been a constant smoker for nearly forty years; but had I my life to live over again I would never touch tobacco in any shape or form. It is to the man who sits all day long at a desk, poring over books and scribbling 'copy,' that smoking is deleterious."

Illustrated London News, Sep. 30, 1882.



BISHOP TEMPLE.

"I can testify that since I have given up intoxicating liquors I have felt less weariness in what I have to do. I have been busy ever since I was a little boy, and I therefore know how much I can undertake, and I certainly can testify that since I gave up intoxicating liquors— although I did not like the giving them up, inasmuch as I rather enjoyed them, when I used them, and inasmuch as I never felt the slightest intention to exceed, nor am I at all among those who cannot take one glass, and only one, but must go on to another—I have certainly found that I am very much the better for it. Whatever arguments I may hear about it, it is impossible for me to escape from the memory of the fact that I have found myself very much better able to work, to write, to read, to speak, and to do whatever I may have to do, ever since I abstained totally and entirely from all intoxicating liquor."

Speech at Torquay, Sept 10, 1882.



SIR HENRY THOMPSON, F. R. C. S., SURGEON-EXTRAORDINARY TO THE KING OF THE BELGIANS.

"I will tell you who can't take alcohol, and that is very important in the present day. Of all the people I know who cannot stand alcohol, it is the brain-workers; and you know it is the brain-workers that are increasing in number, and that the people who do not use their brains are going down, and that is a noteworthy incident in relation to the future. I find that the men who live indoors, who have sedentary habits, who work their nervous systems, and who get irritable tempers, as such people always do, unless they take a large balance of exercise to keep them right (which they rarely do), I say that persons who are living in these fast days get nervous systems more excitable and more irritable than their forefathers, and they cannot bear alcohol so well."

Speech at Exeter Hall, Feb. 7, 1877.



MR. W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS, F. R. A. S., F. C. S.

"I have just read your quotations from the Abbe Moigno, and your own comments thereon. I have tried experiments very similar to those you describe, with exactly the same results; in fact, so far as intellectual work is concerned, I might describe my own experience by direct plagiarism of your words.

Besides these, I have tried other experiments which may be interesting to those who, without any partizan fanaticism, are seeking for practical guidance on this subject.

As many of your readers may know, I have been (when of smaller girth) an energetic pedestrian, have walked over a large part of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, crossed France twice on foot, done Switzerland and the Tyrol pretty exhaustively; in one walk from Paris taking in on the way the popular lions of the Alps, and then proceeding, via, Milan and Genoa, to Florence, Rome, Naples, and Calabria, then from Messina to Syracuse, and on to the East. All this, excepting the East, on foot. At another time from Venice to Milan, besides a multitude of minor tours, and my well-known walk through Norway.

In the course of these, my usual average rate, when in fair training, was 200 miles per week. The alcohol experiments consisted in doing a fortnight at this rate on water, scrupulously abstaining from any alcoholic drink whatever, and then a fortnight using the beverages of the country in ordinary moderate quantity. I have thus used British ales and porter, Bavarian beer, French wines, Italian wines, Hungarian wine in the Tyrol, Christiania ol, &c., according to circumstances, and the result has been the same, 'or with very little variation. With the stimulant I have, of course, obtained a temporary exhilaration that was pleasant enough while it lasted, but after the first week I found myself dragging through the last few miles, and quite able to appreciate the common habit of halting at a roadside "pub." or wine-shop, for a drink on the way. No such inclination came upon me when my only beverage was water, or water plus a cup of coffee for breakfast only (no afternoon tea). Then I came in fresh, usually finishing at the best pace of the day, enjoying the brisk exercise in cool evening air. Physical work of this kind admits of accurate measurement, and I was careful to equalise the average of these experimental comparative fortnights.

The result is a firm conviction that the only beverage for obtaining the maximum work out of any piece of human machinery is water, as pure as possible; that all other beverages (including even tea and coffee), ginger-beer, and all such concoctions as the so-called "temperance drinks," are prejudicial to anybody not under medical treatment. To a sound-bodied man there is no danger in drinking any quantity of cold water in the hottest weather, provided it is swallowed slowly. I have drunk as much as a dozen quarts in the course of a stiff mountain climb when perspiring profusely, and never suffered the slightest inconvenience, but, on the contrary, have found that the perspiration promoted by frequent and copious libations at the mountain streams enabled me to vigorously enjoy the roasting beat of sun-rays striking so freely and fiercely as they do through the thin air on the southward slopes of a high mountain.

I am not a teetotaler, and enjoy a glass of light wine, but always take it as I sucked lollypops when a child, not because "it is good for my complaint," or any such humbug, but simply because I am so low in the scale of creation, as imperfect, as far from angelic, as to be capable of occasionally enjoying a certain amount of purely sensual indulgence, and of doing so from nothing higher than purely sensual motives.

If all would admit this, and freely confess that their drinking or smoking, however moderate, is simply a folly or a vice, they would be far less liable to go to excess than when they befool themselves by inventing excuses that cover their weaknesses with a flimsy disguise of medicinal necessity, or other pretended advantage. In all such cases the physical mischief of the alcohol is supplemented by the moral corruption of habitual hypocrisy."

Knowledge, August 18, 1882.



DR. BURNEY YEO, M. D.

"With regard to the effect of moderate doses of alcohol on mental work much difference of opinion exists. Many students find that, instead of helping them in their work, it hinders them. It dulls their receptive faculties. Others, on the contrary, find real help in moderate quantities of wine. These differences of effect would seem to depend greatly on differences in constitutional temperament. It is certainly capable, for a time, of calling some of the mental faculties into increased activity. Some of the best things that have ever been said have been said under the influence of wine. The circulation through the brain is quickened, the nervous tissue receives more nourishment, the imagination is stimulated, and ideas flow more rapidly, but it is doubtful if the power of close reasoning be not always diminished. It is useful for reviving mental power, when from accidental circumstances, such as want of food, &c., it has been exhausted, but it should never be relied upon as an aid to continuous effort or close application."

Fortnightly Review. Vol. 21, p. 547.



CONCLUSION.

From a review of the 124 testimonies, including those which appear in the Appendix, I find that 25 use wine at dinner only; 30 are abstainers from all alcoholic liquors; 24 use tobacco, out of which only 12 smoke whilst at work; one chews and one took snuff. Not one resorts to alcohol for stimulus to thinking, and only two or three defend its use under special circumstances—"useful at a pinch," under "physical or mental exhaustion." "Not one resorts to alcohol" for inspiration. This is an important discovery, and indicates the existence of more enlightened views in reference to the value of alcohol, since Burns sang the praise of whisky:—"It kindles wit and weakens fear." That some literary men still "support" themselves by alcoholic stimulants, is no doubt true; and, if M. Taine is not mistaken, some of the leader writers of the London papers can write their articles only by the aid of a bottle of champagne. When the creative faculty flags, or the attention wanders, a writer, who is working against time, is strongly tempted to fly to stimulants for aid.