Temperance and total abstinence, or the use and abuse of alcoholic liquors in health and disease / By Spencer Thomson.

  • Spencer Thomson
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Temperance and total abstinence, or the use and abuse of alcoholic liquors in health and disease / By Spencer Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    atmosphere upon the human organism, its food, and its func- tions, is so close, that they almost necessarily fall to be consi- dered under one head. The stimulant property of duly aerated arterial blood is, undoubtedly, “essential to the maintenance of the vital phe- nomena, not only in the moving solids, but in all other parts of living bodies,” * essential to the due digestion of that food, which, in its turn, stimulates the stomach to the performance of the first process requisite for the conversion of the dead mass into the vital components of a living body. Moreover, aliment even of the blandest nature, thus prepared and conveyed into the circulation, becomes a stimulant; either producing the feeling of increased activity or energy which most feel after the products of a well-digested meal have entered the system, or displaying a still greater amount of stimulant action, by causing in some constitutions more or less of febrile excitement. It is not needed here, to insist upon the stimulus imparted to the system generally, and to every one of the vital processes particularly, by the excitant power of muscular movement, which every healthy man is compelled, or ought to undergo: the fact is generally recognised. “All enjoyment must neces- sarily arise from activity of the various systems of which the human constitution is composed. The bones, muscles, nerves, digestive or respiratory organs, furnish pleasing sensations, directly or indirectly, when exercised in conformity with their nature.’ We have now seen that certain ordinary physical stimuli are necessary for the sustenance of human health and life ;—equally * Alison’s Physiology, Circulation. + Combe’s Constitution of Man, p. 161].
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