By ardent spirits, I mean those liquors only which are obtained by distillation from fermented substances of any kind. To their effects upon the bodies and minds of men, the following inquiry shall be exclusively confined. Fermented liquors contain so little spirit, and that so intimately combined with other matters, that they can seldom be drunken in sufficient quantities to produce intoxication, and its subsequent effects, without exciting a disrelish to their taste, or pain, from their distending the stomach. They are moreover, when taken in a moderate quantity, generally innocent, and often have a friendly influence upon health and life. The effects of ardent spirits divide themselves into such as are of a prompt, and such as are of a chronic nature. The former discover themselves in drunkenness, and the latter, in a numerous train of diseases and vices of the body and mind. I. I shall begin by briefly describing their prompt, or immediate effects, in a fit of drunkenness. This odious disease (for by that name it should be called) appears with more or less of the following symptoms, and most commonly in the order in which I shall enumerate them. 1. Unusual garrulity. 2. Unusual silence. 3. Captiousness, and a disposition to quarrel. 4. Uncommon good humour, and an insipid simpering, or laugh. 5. Profane swearing, and cursing. 6. A disclosure of their own, or other people's secrets. 7. A rude disposition to tell those persons in company, whom they know, their faults. 8. Certain immodest actions. I am sorry to say, this sign of the first stage of drunkenness, sometimes appears in women, who, when sober, are uniformly remarkable for chaste and decent manners. 9. A clipping of words. 10. Fighting; a black eye, or a swelled nose, often mark this grade of drunkenness.