Livro Alcohol

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: emergencies, perhaps a tabular list of the most common poisons, with short and simple rules for their counteraction.

Into which of these lists ought alcohol to go ? The question is not, How do men generally consider it, and in what category is it placed? That were easily answered?though somewhat unsatisfactorily.

Most men call it food, and use it daily as such, in some form or other. Others esteem it a luxury; and their use of it accordingly is but occasional.

A few regard it medicinally, and are ready to give it a high character as an assuager of the ills of life?all but a panacea. Few, very few, ever dream of it being a poison.

Let us see how the truth lies. Can it be that men are using as an article of food, daily and freely, what is essentially a poison ? In cooking, were an appreciable amount of verdigris from the pot or pan to be mingled with their stews and boils; in their tea and coffee, were the water to contain a grave proportion of lead from the pipe or cistern; in the flavouring of the sweet course, were the ratafia to give out a decided quantity of prussic acid, ?the effects would tell, inquiry would be made, and the contamination would be avoided.

And can it be that men are daily mingling with their food, in no niggard amount, what is as truly poisonous as the prussic acid, copper, or lead?taking little note of its evil effects, and taking no means to remove the adulteration ?

Let us see. ALCOHOL AS A POISON. Alcohol is a poison. In chemistry and physiology, this is its proper place. Many readers may receive this dogmatic assertion with a Pooh, pooh?Fanaticism and folly?

We know better. Let me support the assertion, therefore, by authority. Thesedative action of alcohol on the brain, says Christison? and we know no higher authority, either as rega...