The Coming Man, as before remarked, will not drink wine when he is
well. It will be also an article of his religion not to commit any of
those sins against his body the consequences of which can be postponed
by drinking wine. He will hold his body in veneration. He will feel all
the turpitude and shame of violating it. He will not acquire the
greatest intellectual good by the smallest bodily loss. He will know
that mental acquisitions gained at the expense of physical power or
prowess are not culture, but effeminacy. He will honor a rosy and
stalwart ignoramus, who is also an honest man, faithfully standing at
his post; but he will start back with affright and indignation at the
spectacle of a pallid philosopher. The Coming Man, I am firmly
persuaded, will not drink wine, nor any other stimulating fluid. If by
chance he should be sick, he will place himself in the hands of the
Coming Doctor, and take whatever is prescribed. The impression is
strong upon my mind, after reading almost all there is in print on the
subject, and conversing with many physicians, that the Coming Doctor
will give his patients alcoholic mixtures about as often as he will
give them laudanum, and in doses of about the same magnitude, reckoned
by drops.
We drinkers have been in the habit, for many years, of playing off the
wine countries against the teetotalers; but even this argument fails us
when we question the men who really know the wine countries. Alcohol
appears to be as pernicious to man in Italy, France, and Southern
Germany, where little is taken except in the form of wine, as it is in
Sweden, Scotland, Russia, England, and the United States, where more
fiery and powerful dilutions are usual. Fenimore Cooper wrote: "I came
to Europe under the impression that there was more drunkenness among us
than in any other country,--England, perhaps, excepted. A residence of
six months in Paris changed my views entirely; I have taken unbelievers
with me into the streets, and have never failed to convince them of
their mistake in the course of an hour.... On one occasion a party of
four went out with this object; we passed thirteen drunken men within a
walk of an hour,--many of them were so far gone as to be totally unable
to walk.... In passing between Paris and London, I have been more
struck by drunkenness in the streets of the former than in those of the
latter." Horatio Greenough gives similar testimony respecting Italy:
"Many of the more thinking and prudent Italians abstain from the use of
wine; several of the most eminent of the medical men are notoriously
opposed to its use, and declare it a poison. One fifth, and sometimes
one fourth, of the earnings of the laborers are expended in wine."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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