Part 14

Drunkenness being considered a beastly propensity, its gradations were fixed by animal comparisons. In a curious treatise on drunkards by George Gascoigne, we find the following illustration of these degrees: "The first is _ape-drunk_, and he leaps and sings and hallos and danceth for the hearers; the second is _lion-drunk_, and he flings the pots about the house, calls the hostess w----, breaks the glass windows with his dagger, and is apt to quarrel with any man that speaks to him; the third is _swine-drunk_, heavy, lumpish, and sleepy, and cries for a little more drink and a few more clothes; the fourth is _sheep-drunk_, wise in his own conceit, when he cannot bring forth a right word; the fifth is _maudlin-drunk_, when a fellow will weep for kindness in the midst of his drink, and kiss you, saying, 'By G--! Captain, I love thee! Go thy ways; thou dost not think so often of me as I do of you; I would I could not love thee so well as I do!' and then he puts his finger in his eye and cries; the sixth is _martin-drunk_, when a man is drunk, and drinks himself sober ere he stir; the seventh is _goat-drunk_, when in drunkenness he hath no mind but in lechery; the eighth is _fox-drunk_, when he is crafty drunk, as many of the Dutchmen be, which will never bargain but when they are drunk. All these species, and more, I have seen practised _in one company at one sitting_."

Drunkenness has at various periods been resorted to in religious and political fervour. Daring the usurpation of Cromwell, the Cavaliers were wont to drink their king's health in bumpers of wine in which some crumbs of bread had been thrown, exclaiming, "God send this _crum-well_ down!" and Whitelocke, in his Memorials, records the following barbarous Catilinian orgies: "Five drunkards agree to drink the king's health in their blood, and that each of them should cut out a piece of his buttock, and fry it upon the gridiron, which was done by four of them, of whom one did bleed so exceedingly that they were fain to send for a chirurgeon, and so were discovered. The wife of one of them, hearing that her husband was amongst them, came to the room, and, taking up a pair of tongs, laid about her, and so saved the cutting of her husband's flesh."

The laws enacted to prevent drunkenness at various periods and by different governments, are curious. Domitian ordered all the vine-plants in the Roman territory to be rooted out. Charles IX. of France issued a similar edict. In 1536, under Francis I, a law was passed sentencing drunkards to imprisonment on bread and water for the first offence; a public whipping punished a second infringement; and, on reiteration, banishment and the loss of ears. The ancients, equally aware of the danger that arose from intoxication, were also anxious to prevent it. Draco inflicted capital punishments. Lycurgus destroyed the vineyards. The Athenians had officers, named _ophthalmos_, to prevent excesses in liquor drinking. In Rome, patricians were not allowed the use of wine until they had attained their thirty-fifth year. Wine was only drunk pure in the beginning of sober repasts in honour of _Deus Sospes_, and afterwards mixed with water in honour of _Jupiter Servator_. Notwithstanding these wise examples in support of prudent precepts, it appears that drunkenness was a common vice amongst the Romans. Tiberius was surnamed _Biberius_; and it was said of the parasite Bibulus, "dum vixit, aut bibit aut minxit." Aurelianus had officers of his household whose duty was to intoxicate foreign ambassadors; and Cato's partiality for the juice of the grape has been recorded by Horace,

Narratur et prisci Catonis Sæpe mero caluisse virtus.

In the middle ages, drinking was resorted to by the monks as a religious libation; and they also drank to the dead, a custom which was condemned as idolatrous. These excesses were restrained by various regulations, and in 817 the quantity of wine allowed each monk was fixed at five pints. Charlemagne, in his Capitularies, forbids the provocation of drinking healths and hob-nobbing (_pléger et trinquer_). Temperance societies are not modern institutions. In 1517, Sigismund de Dietrichstein established one under the auspices of St. Christopher; a similar association was formed in 1600 by Maurice Duke of Hesse, which, however, allowed a knight to drink seven _bocaux_, or glasses, at each meal, but only twice in the day. The size of these _bocaux_ is not recorded, but no doubt it was an endeavour to obtain a comparative condition of sobriety. Another temperate society, under the name of the Golden Ring, was instituted by Frederic V. Count Palatine.

Whether the influence of temperate societies or their advocates will tend to diminish the consumption of wine and spirituous liquors in the British empire, it is difficult to say. Hitherto every act of interference, either from individuals or on the part of the legislature, has proved not only abortive, but has increased the evil it was intended to remedy. The imposition of heavy duties only threw the distillation of spirits into the hands of illicit speculators instead of respectable capitalists; and, as M'Culloch justly remarks, "superadded the atrocities of the smuggler to the idleness and dissipation of the drunkard." During the latter part of the reign of George I. and the earlier period of George II. gin-drinking was so prevalent, that it was denounced from the pulpit and the press. At length ministers determined to make a vigorous effort to put a stop to the further use of spirituous liquors except as a cordial or medicine. To accomplish this end, a duty of twenty shillings was laid on spirits, exclusive of a heavy licence duty to retailers, while a fine of 100_l._ was levied on all defaulters. But instead of the anticipated effects, this act produced results directly opposite: the respectable dealers withdrew from a trade proscribed by the legislature; and the sale of spirits fell into the hands of the lowest and most profligate characters. The officers of the revenue were hunted down by the populace, and did not dare to enforce the law; and Tindal, in his Continuation of Rapin, says, "within two years of the passing of this act, it had become so odious and contemptible, that policy as well as humanity forced the commissioners of excise to mitigate its penalties." During these two years twelve thousand persons were convicted of offences connected with the sale of spirits, while no exertion could check the torrent of smuggling, and seven millions of gallons illicitly distilled were annually consumed in London and its environs. Our present consumption of British, Colonial and Foreign spirits is immense, but not equal to what it was at the period alluded to. The following is the account of this consumption in 1832:

In England, 1,530,988 imperial gallons, Foreign. 3,377,507 " Colonial. 7,259,287 " British. In Scotland, 69,236 gallons, Foreign. 112,026 " Colonial. 5,407,097 " British. In Ireland, 33,413 " Foreign. 24,432 " Colonial. 8,657,756 " British.

In that year, 1832, the total amount of spirits that paid duty in the United Kingdom was 2,646,258 gallons, yielding a revenue of 8,483,247_l._ In the same year the appearance and dread of the cholera produced a singular increase in the consumption of brandy. In the preceding year, 1831, the entries for home use in England had amounted to 1,194,717 gallons; but during this state of alarm, it increased to 1,508,924; in 1833, the danger having subsided, the consumption declined to its former level, and did not exceed 1,356,620 gallons.

From the above observations it may be inferred, that no penal enactments, no denunciations of canting senators or fanatic preachers, will ever succeed in checking the evils which must arise from excesses in the use of spirituous liquors. Gluttony and drunkenness can only be combated by the salutary effects of good example held out by the superior classes of society; by a gradual improvement in the moral education of the lower grades, for whom salutary amusements should be procured when a cheerful repose from their weekly labour will no longer be considered a breach of the sabbath. Diffusion of knowledge and habits of industry will do more than sanctimonious admonitions, and the Penny Magazines may be considered more hostile to gin-drinking than the ranting of pseudo-saints.

In regard to the quantity that we should eat, no rules can be established, as individuals differ widely from each other, both as to their capacity and their inclination. Mr. Abernethy maintained, that it would be well if the public would follow the advice of Mr. Addison, given in the Spectator, of reading the writings of L. Cornaro, who, having a weak constitution, which he seemed to have ruined by intemperance, so that he was expected to die at the age of 32, did at that period adopt a strict regimen, allowing himself only 12 ounces daily. To this remark Dr. Paris very properly observes, "When I see the habits of Cornaro so incessantly introduced as an example for imitation, and as the standard of dietetic perfection, I am really inclined to ask with Feggio, 'Did God create Lewis Cornaro to be a rule for all mankind in what they were to eat and drink?'"

In regard to the dyspeptic, Dr. Philips has given the very best advice in the following paragraph:

"The dyspeptic should carefully attend to the first feeling of satiety. There is a moment when the relish given by the appetite ceases; a single mouthful taken after this oppresses a weak stomach. If he eats slowly and carefully attends to this feeling, he will never overload the stomach." To this Dr. Paris adds, "Let him remember to _eat slowly_." "This is an important condition--for when we eat too fast we introduce a greater quantity of food into the stomach than the gastric juice can at once combat with; the consequence of which is, that hunger may continue for some time after the stomach has received more than would be sufficient, under the circumstances, to induce satiety."

The introduction of French cookery in every part of England amongst the wealthy will render attention to dietetic rules still more important than in former days; although Dean Swift, in his time, observed, "That modern epicurism had become so prevalent, that the world must be encompassed, before a washerwoman can sit down to breakfast."

INFLUENCE OF IMAGINATION.

Innumerable are the diseases that arise from our busy fancy. We are all subject to the tyrannic sway of imagination's empire. Under this mighty influence man displays energies which lead him boldly to dare danger and complicated sufferings, or he is reduced to the most degraded state of miserable despondency. These diseases are the more fearful, since they rarely yield to physical aid, and it is seldom that moral influence is sufficiently persuasive to combat their inveteracy. It is idle to tell the timid hypochondriac that he is not ill; the mere circumstance of his believing himself sick, constitutes a serious disorder. His constant apprehensions derange his functions until an organic affection arises. The patient who fancies that he labours under an affection of the heart disturbs the circulation, which is ever influenced by our moral emotions, till at last this disturbance occasions the very malady which he dreaded. These aberrations of the mind arise from various causes,--mental emotions, constitution, climate, diet, hereditary disposition, education. Tertullian called philosophy and medicine twin sisters; both may become powerful agents in controlling our imagination.

The ancients have variously endeavoured to determine the seat of this faculty. Aristotle placed it in the heart, which, from the sense of its oppression observed in acute moral sufferings he considered the origin of our nerves, or sensorium. Avicenus and other philosophers located imagination in the anterior portion of the brain, which he called the _prow_; memory in the posterior part, which he denominated the _poop_, and judgment in the centre of the organ, or what mariners would term _mid-ship_. The notions of Gall and Spurzheim had long since been anticipated by philosophers and physicians, both in regard to the division of the cerebral organ, and the external appearance of the cranium, which denoted their preponderancy. That temperature exercises a powerful influence over our mental faculties is evident. In warm climates we find a greater exaltation of the mind, more enthusiasm and vivid emotion, than in northern latitudes. The East is the land of fancy, illustrated by their wondrous tales of fiction, and their vivid and fantastic imagery, displayed in the chimeras and the arabesques of their palaces and temples. In these regions all the passions are uncontrollable and wild. Love is characterized by furious or dark jealousy, according to the rank and power of the lover; and ambition is signalized by bloodthirsty and promiscuous barbarity. No opposition can be brooked: man is either a ferocious tyrant, or an abject slave; subjection alone preventing the oppressed from being as sanguinary as the oppressor. Government is despotism, and religion fatality and fanaticism. In northern climes, on the contrary, every thing is cold and calculating. The almighty passion of love may prevail; but its demonstrations are morose, concentrated, although not less ferocious than under a southern sky. In the one country, man seeks the dark shelter of the forest, and the solitude of the mountain, to ponder over his grievances, or soliloquise on his sufferings; in the other he courts the roseate bower and the orange grove, to lull him into a soft repose which may calm his feelings by temporary oblivion, to be roused again to action by the stimulus of opium, tobacco, and a burning sun. The ancients were so fully convinced of this influence of the amorphous constitution, that Lucianus tells us that the Abderites (a people so remarkable for their stupidity and sluggishness that _Abderitica mens_ was proverbial), having witnessed the performance of one of Euripides's plays under the fierce solar rays, became fired with such enthusiasm, that they ran about the streets in a wild phrensy, repeating aloud his sublime verses, until the coolness of the evening restored them to reason and to their native torpor. So predominant are these feelings, which owe their character to climate, that they regulate our ideas of a future state, as well as our conduct on earth. The paradise of the Mohammedan is a blessed region of everlasting pleasure and sensual enjoyments; beauteous houris await the soul, which is to luxuriate in corporeal voluptuousness; and the purple wine, forbidden to the living, is to flow in delectable streams, to delight the dead, who may, in the seventh paradise inhabit a land where rivers of wine, and milk, and honey, are ever flowing; where evergreen trees bend under luxurious fruits, whose very pips are transformed into lovely maidens, so sweet--to use their own metaphorical language--that the ocean would lose its bitterness if they did but condescend to spit in its briny waters; and all these enjoyments are secured to the true believer by hosts of guardian angels, who have seventy thousand mouths, and seventy thousand tongues, to praise God seventy thousand times each day in seventy thousand languages: and such is their horror of earthly heat, that in the other world one of the greatest rewards is the delight of being able to sleep under the cool shade of a tree each leaf of which is of such an expanse that a man might travel fifty thousand years under its benign protection. How different is the paradise of Odin! There, it is true, the soul of the departed dwells in magnificent palaces; but what are his enjoyments compared to those of the sensual Asiatic! Instead of soft music, the din of war is constantly to resound in his ear, while he luxuriates in drinking strong beer and hydromel, poured by the fair Valknas, the houris of the Vahalla paradise, into the skulls of his enemies. Their God is called the god of crows; and two of these sable familiars, _Hugin_, who represents the mind, and _Nunnin_, or memory, are constantly perched upon his shoulders, until they take flight to seek information for their master.

To this day it is said that the Tartars fancy, that, in their future abode of bliss, their reward will be a sort of Platonic affection, and a perpetual and undisturbed state of meditation; in short, a celestial _far niente_. So convinced were the ancients of this effect of peculiar temperature, that the morose Heraclitus maintained that the power of the mind arose from a _dry splendour_; that all things were created by solar heat; and when ill himself, he sought health by endeavouring to dispel watery accumulations by the heat of a dunghill. Ptolemy and Posidonius assert, that southern climes engender genius and wit, and are better calculated for the study of things divine; and Plato, Hippocrates, and Galen, on the same principle, affirm that stupidity and forgetfulness are produced by cold and humidity. The celebrated Descartes, in his younger days, states that he felt his enthusiasm moderated by the damps and cold of Holland; and that he ever experienced more facility in pursuing his philosophic studies in winter than in summer. Poets, on the contrary, court the glowing rays of an inspiring sun, and their Phoebus and their Apollo is the conductor and the inspirer of the Muses:

Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit.

That the energies of our intellectual faculties are under the influence of our food, is a fact long since observed. The stupidity of the athletæ, who lived upon coarse bread (coliphium) and underdone meat, was proverbial; even Hercules laboured under the imputation of a mind somewhat obtuse. Our genius, our energies are all affected by our mode of living. The rule of _Sanis omnia sana_, of Celsus, is applicable to very few individuals; and all our faculties may be rendered more keen or less vivid by temperance or excesses. As the nature of our _ingesta_ influences the functions of our digestive organs, so do these organs in their turn influence our moral powers when our physical energies are elevated or depressed. Our courage, our strength of mind, our religious and our moral train of thinking, are under the control of diet. Fasting has ever been considered as predisposing to meditation and ascetic contemplation. Tertullian tells us, that we should approach the altars fasting, or having eaten nothing but dry substances. All the religious ceremonies of the Egyptians were preceded by abstinence, and their sacrificators were allowed neither animal food nor wine. Indeed, the Egyptian priesthood were remarkable for their abstinence and self-denial, fearful, according to Plutarch, that "the body should not sit light upon the soul." Similar precautions were observed with animals, and the ox apis was not allowed to drink the waters of the Nile, as they were considered of a gross and fattening nature; even upon festive days they observed a similar moderation. It was customary, on the 9th day of the month Thoth, for every one to eat fried fish at their doors--the priests only conformed to the custom by burning theirs at the appointed time. In general they abstained from most sorts of pulse, especially beans and lentils, onions, garlic, leeks, mutton, pork; and on certain days of purification, even salt was forbidden. Many of their fasts lasted from seven to forty-two days, during which time they abstained entirely from animal food, from herbs and vegetables, and the indulgence of any passion. Similar privations were observed by all those who attended the mysteries of Juno and Ceres. In Holy Writ we find that it was after abstinence that Divine inspiration illumined the elect. The angel appeared unto Daniel after he had been three weeks without tasting flesh, or wine, or "pleasant bread." In the Acts, x., we find that the vision appeared to Peter, "when he had become hungry and would have eaten." Moses fasted forty days on Mount Sinai. We find in Jonah, that even cattle were frequently subject to this mortification, when he proclaimed in Nineveh that neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, should taste any thing; "let them not feed nor drink water." Congius Ripensis tells us, that the same restriction was imposed by the Lacedæmonians on their Helots and all domestic animals. Fasting was considered by the early Christians as an essential rite. St. Anthony prescribed to his disciples one meal of dry bread, salt and water, in the day without any food on Wednesdays and Fridays. In the monastery of Mocham, in Egypt, a monk of the name of Jonas was beatified for having lived until the age of eighty-five, working hard in the garden, and without any other food than raw herbs and grass steeped in vinegar; this abstemious cenobite added to his claims to canonization by always sleeping in his chair. St. Hilarius only ate fifteen figs and six ounces of barley bread _per diem_. St. Julian Sabus retired to a cavern, where he only luxuriated once in the week on millet-bread, with salt and water; and St. Macarius resolved to outdo him by restraining his sustenance to a few cabbage-leaves every Sunday. Not only did these gastric martyrs attribute their holy visions to abstinence, but they considered it as the source of their longevity. Thus, St. Anthony lived to the age of one hundred and five; St. Paphinus to ninety on dry bread; and St. Paul the Hermit thrived for one hundred and fifty-nine years upon dates. It is not derogatory to their supposed divine mission to say that all these men were as enthusiastic as the fakirs of the east.

So acceptable to the Deity was starvation considered, that at various periods it was enforced by penal laws. Charlemagne denounces the punishment of death on all those who transgressed in this respect; and, by an old Polish edict, any sinner who ate on a fast-day was sentenced to have all his teeth drawn. However, monkish ingenuity endeavoured to elude these severe enactments, by interpreting the letter instead of the spirit; and we find, in the regulations of a German monastery, the following accommodation, "_Liquidum non frangit jejunium_," by which, on days of penance, the monks only took rich soups and succulent broth. In latter days, being permitted to eat fish in Lent, they saw no reason why fowl should not be included, on the authority of Genesis, that the waters brought forth every winged fowl after his kind. This relaxation in culinary discipline called forth loud indignation from many prelates. St. Ambrosius attributes the profligacy of the monks to these excesses; and Tertullian considers the fall of the Israelites as the punishment of their neglect in this respect. Our Shakspeare illustrates this belief in the influence of fasting as preparatory to inspiration.

Last night the very gods shew'd me a vision-- I _fast_ and pray'd for their intelligence.

Not satisfied with this mystification in food, we find some austere monks endeavouring to reduce carnal appetites by other means, such as by blood-letting, _monialem minuere_; and claustral flesh was brought down by phlebotomy and purging at regular periods. To this day we find that well-behaved Turks, during the Ramasan, make it a godly point never to swallow their saliva.

This digression on fasting was somewhat necessary, to show how much our diet tends to modify our being. It is well known that troops will display more activity and courage when fasting than after a meal; and an ingenious physician of our day is perfectly correct when he attributes a daring spirit or a pusillanimous feeling to the influence of our stomach.