[40] View of the Elementary Principles of Education. [41] American Journal of the Medical Sciences, No. IV. [42] See Transylvania Journal of Medicine and the Associate Sciences, for July, August, and September, 1832. [43] “In warm countries, the aqueous part of the blood loses itself greatly by perspiration; it must therefore be supplied by a like liquid. Water is there of admirable use; strong liquors would coagulate the globules of blood that remain after the transuding of the aqueous humour.”—_Montesquieu_, Book xiv. Chap. x. [44] Tropical Diseases. [45] Glasgow Medical Journal, No. XV. [46] Glasgow Medical Journal, No. XV. [47] The following account of Temperance Societies is by Professor Edgar, one of their most enthusiastic advocates:— “Temperance Societies direct their chief exertions against the use of distilled spirits, conceiving them to be the great bane of the community; but they do not exclude these to introduce other intoxicating liquors in their room. Their object is to disabuse the public mind respecting the erroneous opinions and evil practices which produce and perpetuate intemperance; and though they do not hold it to be sinful to drink wine, yet they are cheerfully willing to accord with the sentiment of inspiration—‘It is good neither to drink wine nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.’ Were the wine spoken of in Scripture alone used in these countries, they do not believe that there would be a necessity for Temperance Societies; yet even from such wine, so different from that commonly in use, the Scriptures gave them the fullest liberty to refrain. Avoiding, however, all appearance of rigorous abstinence, they leave to every man’s judgment and conscience, how far he shall feel himself warranted in the use of fermented liquors, and only insist, as their fundamental principle, on an abstinence from distilled spirits, and a discountenancing of the causes and practices of intemperance. Their regulations respect persons in health alone; with the prescriptions of physicians they do not interfere. Even the moderate use of distilled spirits they consider to be injurious; and they call upon their brethren, for their own sake, to renounce it. The great mass of excellences attributed to intoxicating liquors, they believe to be fictitious; and though all the virtues attributed to them were real, they are cheerfully willing to sacrifice them, while they have the remotest hope of thus cutting off even one of the sources of drunkenness, or arresting one friend or neighbour on the road to ruin. They do not look on the use of intoxicating liquors as necessary either to their health or happiness; they do not love them, and therefore, they do not wish to represent an abstinence from them as, on their part, a great sacrifice; and they trust that they only require to be convinced that the good of their brother demands it, to induce them to do much more than they have yet done.