All liquids should be forbidden that can augment the weakness or relaxation, that can diminish the little that remains of the digestive powers, that can convey any acridity into the humors, or dispose the nervous system, already too irritable, to a greater mobility. All hot waters have the first defect, of weakening or relaxing. Tea, with that, has also all the others: coffee has the two last; so that one ought rigorously to abstain from them. The author of a work superior to all encomiums, and of which those who interest themselves in the progress of the medical art, wait with the greatest impatience for the continuation, has presented such an account of the danger of these two liquids, as might very well disgust or deter from the use of them those who find the greatest pleasure in them[110]. Spirituous liquors, which, at the first view might appear serviceable, for that they operate precisely the contrary of hot water, of which they really diminish the danger, if added to it in a small quantity, are, however, attended with other inconveniences that authorise their rejection, or at least restrain them to an extremely rare recourse. Their action is too violent, too transient; they irritate more than they strengthen, and if they sometimes strengthen, the weakness which succeeds is greater than before a recourse to them: besides, they give to the _papillæ_ of the stomach a hardness that robs them of that degree of sensibility necessary to the creation of an appetite, and take from the liquids that degree of fluidity which they ought to have in aid of that sensation; and, indeed, the great drinkers of spirituous liquors are strangers to it. “Those (says the illustrious author whom I have just now quoted) who every day drink strong liquors after their meals, by way of remedying the defects of digestion, could hardly find a more likely method for accomplishing just the contrary to what they propose, and to destroy the powers of digestion.”