Phenix Gazette

RUM IN YOUR BLOOD.—If you distill a drunkard's blood, you will obtain pure alcohol: indeed it has been found in the ventricles of the brain.—Now alcohol in the blood cannot nourish any part of the animal system, because no part of that system is composed of alcohol: and there is no reason to suppose that this substance is decomposed after getting into the circulation. All the organs, as an ingenious medical writer remarks, decline this alcohol, as the blood conveys it round to them. The head says, 'my nerves are calmer, my thoughts are clearer, without it.—I beg to be excused:' the heart says, 'my motions are more regular, my affections are purer without it.—I have no occasion for it:'—the limbs say, our strength is firmer, our vigor is more durable, without it,—we need it not: all say, it cannot nourish us, it cannot sustain us.—we will none of it:' and at length rejected by all, except by those organs whose peculiar office it is to convey out of the blood its refuse and worthless parts, it is taken up by them and thrown out of the body.

Stimulants can bow down to the earth an intellect of giant strength, and make it grind in bondage, year after year, like Sampson shorn of his locks, and deprived of his vision. Would to God there were not so many melancholy illustrations of this position in the history of drunkenness in our land. Alas! intemperance seems to select the brightest intellects as her victims, that she may show her omnipotence by crushing them in her iron embrace! But to pass by the sot and the drunkard, I maintain that the unnatural excitement which a moderate and occasional use of alcoholic and narcotic substances produces, is unfavorable to clearness and vigor in mental operations. The dizziness of the brain, and exhilaration accompanying their use, especially that of alcohol, what are they but incipient delirium, and the premonitions of apoplexy? The mental operations may, indeed, seem to be quickened; but to what purpose is it, that the machine is furiously running and buzzing, after the balance wheel is taken off?