The anatomy of drunkenness / By Robert Macnish.

  • Robert Macnish
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The anatomy of drunkenness / By Robert Macnish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    such vast quantities of it are drunk in London and elsewhere. When pure, I have no hesitation in affirming that it is decidedly more wholesome than either brandy or rum; and that the popular belief of its greater tendency to produce dropsy, is quite unfounded. An experiment has lately been made for the purpose of ascertaining the comparative powers of gin, brandy, and rum upon the human body, which is not less re- markable for the inconsequent conclusions deduced from it, than for the ignorance it displays in confound- ing dead animal matter with the living fibre. It was made as follows:— A piece of raw liver was put into a glass of gin, another into a glass of rum, and a third into a glass of brandy. That in the gin was, in a given time, partially decomposed; that in the rum, in the same time, not diminished; and that in the brandy quite dissolved. It was concluded from these results, that rum was the most wholesome spirit of the three, and brandy the least. The inferences deduced from these premises are not only erroneous, but glaringly absurd; the premises would even afford grounds for drawing results of the very opposite nature: it might be said, for instance, that though brandy be capable of dissolv- ing dead animal matter, there is no evidence that it can
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