It would have been
merciful in comparison, if I had planted a dagger in my heart, for I have
suffered an anguish a thousand times worse than death. I would have had
liquor that morning at Cincinnati if I had known that one single drink
would have obliterated my body, soul, and spirit. I had no power to resist;
and to prove that I was powerless, let us see what effect alcohol, in its
physiological aspect, exerts.
Alcohol possesses three distinct properties, and consequently produces a
threefold physiological effect.
1. It has a nervine property, by which it excites the nervous system
inordinately, and exhilarates the brain.
2. It has a stimulating property, by which it inordinately excites the
muscular motions, and the actions of the heart and blood-vessels.
3. It has a narcotic property. The operation of this property is to suspend
the nervous energies, and soothe and stupefy the subject.
Now, any article possessing either one, or but two of these properties,
without the other, is a simple and harmless thing compared with alcohol. It
is only because alcohol possesses this combination of properties, by which
it operates on various organs, and affects several functions in different
ways at one and the same time, that its potency is so dreadful, and its
influence so fascinating, when once the appetite is thoroughly depraved by
its use.
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