“_Falstaff._ No, I’ll be sworn! I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death’s head or a _memento mori_. I never see thy face but I think of hell-fire.”—“When thou rann’st up Gads-hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an _ignis fatuus_, or a ball of wildfire, there’s no purchase in money. O! thou art a perpetual triumph—an everlasting bonfire light: thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with me in the night betwixt tavern and tavern; but the Sack thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap, at the dearest chandler’s in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two and thirty years—heaven reward me for it!” [32] This circumstance has not escaped the observation of Shakspeare—“_Chief Justice._ Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old, with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a _decreasing_ leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity; and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!” [33] “Let nobody tell me that there are numbers who, though they live most irregularly, attain, in health and spirits, those remote periods of life attained by the most sober; for this argument being grounded on a case full of uncertainty and hazard, and which, besides, so seldom occurs as to look more like a miracle than the work of nature, men should not suffer themselves to be thereby persuaded to live irregularly, nature having been too liberal to those who did so without suffering by it; a favour which very few have any right to expect.”—_Carnaro on Health._ [34] “The workmen in provision stores have large allowances of whisky bound to them in their engagements. These are served out to them daily _by their employers_, for the purpose of urging them, by excitement, to extraordinary exertion. And what is the effect of this murderous system? The men are ruined, scarcely one of them being capable of work beyond fifty years of age, though none but the most able-bodied men can enter such employment.”—_Beecher’s Sermons on Intemperance, with an Introductory Essay by John Edgar._ This is an excellent little work, which I cordially recommend to the perusal of the reader. [35] It has been considered unnecessary to enter into any detail of the nature and treatment of the foregoing diseases, because they may originate from many other causes besides drunkenness; and when they do arise from this source, they acquire no peculiarity of character. Their treatment is also precisely the same as in ordinary cases—it being always understood, that the bad habit which brought them on must be abandoned before any good can result from medicine. The disease, however, which follows is different, and requires particular consideration.