ever they come, or how hard soever they seem! How doth it believe, how doth it hope, how doth it excuse, how doth it cover even that which seemeth not to be excusable, and not fit to be covered! How kind is it even in its interpretations and charges concerning miscarriages! It never overchargeth, it never grates upon the spirit of him whom it reprehends; it never hardens, it never provokes; but carrieth a meltingness and power of conviction with it. This is the nature of God; this, in the vessels capacitated to receive and bring it forth in its glory, the power of enmity is not able to stand against, but falls before, and is overcome by it.

I. PENINGTON.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled;

ALCOHOL AND ITS EFFECTS UPON THE HUMAN
SYSTEM.

BY PROFESSOR E. L. YOUMANS.

Mr. Youmans began his introductory by saying, that in undertaking to consider a profound scientific question within the limit of a single lecture, I encounter difficulties at the threshold with which lecturers generally are unacquainted. Those who speak to a popular audience upon critical, literary, ethical, political, or historical, toThe Memorial of the Representatives of the pics, usually find their hearers educated up to a Religious Society of Friends, in the State of ready understanding of the elements of their subNew York and parts adjacent, respectfully shows: ject, and the terms employed to represent them : That near a century has elapsed, since the re- this is presupposed. But it is not so in a scienligious Society of Friends required the uncondi- tific discussion; we are here compelled to pretional freedom of all the slaves held by the mem- suppose the very opposite-that the listeners are bers of their body. This measure was the result quite unacquainted with elementary facts and of a firm conviction of the incompatibility of principles, and the terms employed to represent slavery with the spirit and precepts of our holy them. We everywhere meet with persons of high religion-of that religion which was announced literary attainments and large intelligence, who, as the harbinger of "good will to men;" which nevertheless, are deplorably deficient in scientific enjoins the love of our neighbors as ourselves; culture. Were I to speak to you of President and which, in its practical application, precludes Pierce's administration of the laws of this Governslavery, or the right of man to hold his fellow-ment, I should be understood and anticipated in man in bondage. This rule of their discipline, everything; but in treating of God's administraunder the Divine blessing, and sustained by its intrinsic truth and justice, overcame individual prejudices and personal interests, and abolished slavery within their borders.

Under these circumstances, your Memorialists could not but view with satisfaction, and with gratitude to the Giver of "every good and perfect gift," the general spread of similar sentiments, and a corresponding action among the nations professing the benign religion of Him, who declared the badge of discipleship to be, the love of each other—and look to the period as not remote, when crime alone should lead to shackled

limbs.

It is, therefore, with pain and deep regret your Memorialists learn, that measures are now proposed in the National Legislature, which, if consummated, will extend the area of slavery, and perpetuate a state of society which they consider alike hostile to the spirit and precepts of our holy religion, the genius of our political institutions, and the best interests of our beloved

country.

In remonstrating, as they now do, on behalf of the religious Society of Friends, against the enactment of laws, of the character referred to, your Memorialists trust, that the great length of time during which the Society has plead the

tion of the laws of the human constitution, I must
begin with the most primal conceptions. I speak
of this only as a serious difficulty in attempting
to dispatch an important scientific subject in a
narrow compass of time. The sources and nature
of alcohol are well understood by all scientific
men; with them there are no two opinions about
it; but many people are not quite clear upon the
subject; for the benefit of such I have prepared
a chart, upon which the chemistry of the ques-
tion is made visible. (The lecturer here directed
attention to a large and beautiful chart, the same
which accompanies his work, which exhibits the
sources and chemical compositions of alimentary
chemical atoms. He showed how, mainly,
from the three substances, carbonic acid, water,
and ammonia, plants produce all the principles of
food.) They organize or build together dead
mineral matter into compounds capable of nourish-
ing the animal body, viz.: sugar, starch, gum,
oil, gluten, &c. Within the animal system those
foods are decomposed and destroyed, and restored
to the simple or inorganic state. In returning to
this condition, they give out heat and force,
which become animal heat and animal power.
In a scientific view, foods are only those sub-
stances which are capable of becoming parts of
the animal body, and then of relapsing into

the inorganic state, without doing injury to the fabric. All organized or living substances have this tendency to perish or return to simple conditions; and a great number of chemical productions are formed as their successive steps of this backward change. Among these is alcohol. It is not a product of vegetable growth, as are all foods, but a result of the destructive forces of putrefactive decomposition, and differs totally in origin, chemical properties, and properties which man employs as food. This is the peculiar and active principle of all intoxicating liquors.

We now inquire what is its behaviour in the human system. When alcoholic liquors are taken into the stomach, they do not remain there to be digested like alimentary matter, but are at once taken up by the veins, and pass forward to the general circulation. If they remained in the stomach, they would stop all digestion, thereby destroying the gastric juice, precipitating its pepsin. Say Todd and Bowman, perhaps the first living authors upon physiological subjects, "The use of alcoholic stimulants also retards digestion by coagulating the pepsin, and thereby interfering with its action." Were it not that wine and spirits are rapidly absorbed, the introduction of these into the stomach in any quantity would be a complete bar to the digestion of the food, as the pepsin would be precipitated from solution as quickly as it was secreted by the stomach. Having entered the circulation, the alcohol is distributed throughout the system, or it enters those parts which have the strongest attraction for it. What now are its effects upon the animal tissues? The human body is a theatre of the constant change of atoms and particles; and to carry forward these changes and transportation of atoms, water is the great medium-from four fifths to nine tenths of all parts, muscle, nerve, eye, and brain. It is just as vital and living an element of the tissues as the solid substances with which it is associated. Leibig made the following experiment: He took a piece of fresh animal membrane, weighing 141 grains, and consisting of 34 grains of dry matter and 107 grains of water, and placed it in about two and a half cubic inches of alcohol; after a time he withdrew it, and found that it had absorbed 51 grains of alcohol, and lost 99 of water. The alcohol, therefore, drove the water before it, displacing thrice its value. This disturbance of the natural composition of a tissue we call disorganization, and it occurs whenever alcohol enters a living part. This action of alcohol-"depletion of the organs," as it is termed is recognized by Pereira in accounting for its me dicinal effects. The next great constituent of the body is albumen, which exists in the blood and all the fluids of the system; white of egg is a sample of it. It is the material from which all tissue structures are derived. With only the addition of warmth, the chicken is produced from it. Throughout the body albumen is constantly changing into fibrin, and fibrin into flesh. It is

| the foundation material of the living fabric, and the elaboration of tissue from it is one of the grand processes of nutrition. Now albumen is susceptible of a change called coagulation, by which it is solidified. This change in the body is unhealthful, and if carried too far, produces death. Heat effects this attraction, and so do certain chemical substances. I have here some samples of albumen; I add to them corrosive sublimate, aqua fortis, and oil of vitriol, and you see the effect: the albumen is solidified. Those are poisons. I now add alcohol: you see it produces the same effect. We judge of chemical substances as we do of men-by the company they keep. We see here by what it does, that it asserts brotherhood with the swiftest and deadliest poisons; its claims are just, and shall be allowed. Now, as commonly taken, alcohol does not destroy life, but just in proportion to its extent it exerts this pernicious effect, which the powers of a system may for a long time resist, but which, finally, induces various forms of disease. The effect of drinking, in perverting the nutritious operations, and in depressing the plastic and healing powers of the body, is well known to physicians, and disinclines them from severe surgical operations in such cases.

I should be glad to consider the relations of alcohol to the combustive or respiratory processes of the body; a fruitful and most important topic, but time forbids, and I proceed to other considerations. The power which the living system possesses of analysing food and appropriating its various elements where they are required, is very remarkable. However various are our foods, they become dissolved and mingled in one uniform mass-the blood-and from this current each part of the body extracts what it needs for growth; at certain points, compounds of lime are withdrawn for the bones, and elsewhere phosphorized oils for the nerves, sulphur for the muscles, &c. Each part exerts a local attraction for the especial constituents that it requires. Now medicines, as every physician knows, and poisons also, follow the same rule. Different medicinal and poisonous substances, when taken into the circulation, are drawn out at different points. Dr. Christison, the highest authority on the subject of poisons, says that the supposition that poisons act generally on the system is a mistake, they act locally; strychnine, for example, attacks the spinal cord while oil of tobacco paralyzes the heart. Now there is a prevalent idea that alcohol when introduced into the system mingles with the mass of the blood, and by it is distributed to all parts, and thus takes equal effect on the general system. It is supposed that the liquor is thus greatly weakened, and hence cannot act very powerfully anywhere. This is a profound mistake. Alcohol obeys the same great laws which control nutrition and the action of medicinal and poisonous substances. It is localized in the system-it is attracted or drawn out of the circulating current

It would be interesting, had we time, to trace the unequal action of alcohol upon various parts of the brain-its progressive invasion of the several cerebral functions. We should find that, by first embarrassing and breaking down the higher governing faculties, and thereby stimulating the baser propensities, the effect of alcohol is to augment the tendencies to vice and crime. This is precisely what experience teaches, for it is the concurrent testimony of all who have had the largest chances of observation, that the use of alcoholic beverages multiplies crime in society from a four-fold to a ten-fold proportion.

An interesting question arises here as to where the real responsibility of this crime rests, but I cannot consider it now. Those who are interested to pursue the inquiry may do so by consulting a little work which I have lately offered to the public on the subject.

WOODS.

by the affinity or special attraction of certain parts; | when, therefore, a small quantity of alcohol is taken in drinking a glass of wine, we are not to suppose that it is lost by diffusion and dilution with the fluids of the body, but that it lodges somewhere that it is withdrawn in some one spot which thus may become much and seriously affected although the dose were apparently trifling. The question now arises, what, under the action of this great physiological law, is the destiny of alcohol? What part of the fabric does it seek and fasten upon to establish those disorganizing changes which I have shown it produces on the tissues? This is a question of the highest import. You need hardly be reminded that the various parts of the body are of very unequal importance, performing functions whose values are remarkably different. A man without hands or feet or eyes, may be still a man; numerous parts, internal and external, may be diseased or destroyed, and yet manhood in all its august essentials still remain. But if, in the same manner, EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF MARGARET you disturb or disorder another portion of the material fabric-the brain-how immensely different the effects. The glory of manhood is extinguished. You have stormed and levelled the soul's citadel; you have changed a god-like being, around whom clustered all considerations of grandeur, and whose mind mirrored the order and harmony of the universe, and symbolized the Creator in power, into a senseless and pitiable maniac. Touch the material brain, and you change a being who honors the sweet and sacred relations of domestic life, meets gladly his multifarious obligations to society, and recognises solemnly his responsibilities to the Creator, into a blind and irresponsible agent of evil, shot with aimless and headlong violence athwart the peace of society. Within the undisturbed brain there occurs the sublimest phenomena of the created universethe disorganized brain the most sad and deplorable. Truly may it be said, then, that this organ is the most sacred material thing that God has made-laboratory of wonders-the masterpiece of the Almighty. It is this organ to which alcohol is first and chiefly attracted, and which is the grand theatre of its ragings. It is withdrawn from the circulating current and seizes upon the cerebral matter by reason of its special affinity for it. This is proved by its effects. If the chief object of alcoholic assault were some inferior organ of the body-the stomach or liver, or even the heart-the question would be comparatively unimportant. But it attacks and disorganizes the brain, and thus dislocates and dislodges the responsible soul, and suspends all the relations of manhood. Here is the warrant for society to interfere. The use of alcoholic beverages breaks down the mental and moral nature of man, producing insanity in all its stages, from its first gentle jar of intellectual and passional accord, to the ravings of ungovernable madness, or the death stupor of complete coma.

Fourth Month, 10th, 1788.-Good humor is, I think, that habit of mind which is disposed to please, and to be pleased with the surrounding objects; perhaps, not so essentially necessary as a good temper, its influence being chiefly in the trivial concerns of life; but the want of it will embitter the most pleasing scenes, cause fear to be substituted in the room of freedom and confidence, and throw a gloom over every enjoyment. It is a quality as beneficial to the possessor as to the rest of mankind; we should, therefore, endeavor to cultivate it, for the sake of our own happiness, as well as that of others; and I am firmly of the opinion that much depends upon ourselves, though we may be sometimes disposed to conclude that it is chiefly influenced by things foreign.

From the little regard for each other's happiness expressed by the general conduct of mankind, one would be almost ready to query, whether they thought it a spontaneous production, natural to the soil of humanity, and flourishing on every branch. But if we hear them speak, it will be in very different language; vexation and disappointment, they will say, is the lot of mortals, and each individual will be apt to forget how many unnecessary grains he adds to the weight of human misery. That benevolence and goodness of heart which delights in making others happy, will return, fraught with additional happiness to the breast of the possessor; and if we consider good humor as a fruit almost necessarily produced by good dispositions, we shall endeavor to cultivate it as much as we can, and see the propriety of guarding against that sourness or pettishness, which would inevitably counteract the most serious purposes and best wishes of our souls.

Fifth Month, 17th, 1788.-Sentiments expres