Nephalism, the true temperance of scripture, science and experience / by James Miller.
- James Miller
- Date:
- 1861
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Nephalism, the true temperance of scripture, science and experience / by James Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![will—sustains diminution ; * a state of things surely the very reverse of what is safe and suitable to reason- able and responsible man—made but a little lower than the angelsleaving him much at the mercy of an excited imagination, and of affections and desires which, while increased in power, are lowered in their tone and tendency. Thus it is with all narcotics—but specially the alcoholic—taken unnecessarily, without the protection of the law of tolerance. If the brain have not blood enough, the blood-sending stimulus will prove satis- factory ; and a man under fever, for example, with his liberal allowance of brandy, or claret, or port, may find his imagination regulated, his reason cleared, his affections untarnished, his self-control increased, by what, in circumstances of health, would have produced an effect directly contrary. It may be said that men of intemperate lives, whether by use of opium or of alcoholics, have not only proved successful poets, but good reasoners. True; just as some men live long, intemperate, who would have lived much longer if temperate. So these * My case is a species of madness, says poor Coleridge of his in- sane passion for opium—on]y that it is a derangement, an utter im- potence of the volition^ and not of the intellectual faculties. You bid me rouse myself: go bid a man paralytic in both arms, to rub them briskly together, and that will cure him. * Alas !' he would reply, ' tliat I can- not move my arms is my complaint and misery.'](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22651779_0044.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
