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NEW PUBLICATIONS.

"IS ALCOHOL A POISON?"—This question Dr. N. L. North,¹ of this city, answers in the affirmative, in a pamphlet just published. The Dr. is rather late in the field, as his brochure is intended as a reply to an article in the Westminster Review² of two years ago. However, as the consumption of Alcohol has no wise decreased during the interval, the Dr.'s arguments are just as relevant now as if they had seen the light at an early period.

Dr. North sets out with a protest against the authority of the very tribunal before which he is pleading, but asserting that there is "a too general knowledge among the masses to understand the special points of a scientific subject." If we were disposed to be hypercritical, we should add, that this remark is too general to apply to the special subject under consideration. But let that pass. We do not believe that it requires more than a very general and ordinary knowledge of scientific subjects to enable an individual to determine whether so common and well known a substance as alcohol is food or poison. The personal experience of most of us is as safe a guide in the premises as the contradictory assertions of the learned.

The Dr. proceeds to contend that alcohol is a medicine, and not a food—that in a diseased condition of the system a small quantity may be beneficial, while in a normal state of the body its effect must be injurious even in the smallest doses. This assertion he subsequently qualifies by the admission that alcohol will supply the fuel or burning material required by the body, and that it can be employed, temporarily at least, to fill the place of part of the usual supply of ordinary food. But that it is not food, but poison, he stoutly insists.

As the Dr. does us the honor to refer to us, as admirers of the Westminster Review, we have felt impelled to notice his pamphlet. We do not think he makes out his case, albeit he quotes several verses from Proverbs to supply the deficiencies of his own argument.

The trouble is, that he has not set out with clear definitions of the sense in which he uses the various terms. Alcohol in undue quantities will terminate life—hence it may be called a poison. But what liquid or substance is there which may not be infused into the system to a deleterious extent? No beverage can be partaken of beyond a certain limit, without injury to the system; but we are not therefore to conclude that drinking, per se, is injurious. Immoderate consumption of strong tea has shattered the nerves and debilitated the constitutions of thousands of the female sex; rich soups and savory viands have made thousands of men martyrs to gout. Dr. North might be logically driven, from his own premises, to subsist on water and the vegetable products—in other words to "drink like a fish and eat like a beast." The only true and safe guide in dietary matters is experience—it is worth more than all the analyses of Liebig³ or Chilton.⁴ And while the experience of thousands proves that alcohol, immoderately indulged in, ruins alike the character, the constitution, and the pecuniary means of its votaries, the experience of thousands of others as clearly shows that the regular, moderate, and temperate use of alcoholic stimulants is not inconsistent with the longest life, the best of health, the most persistent exertion—in short, the mens sana in corpore sano.⁵

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