pain, and, instead of pleasurable, produces afflicting ideas. But its energies, like those of any other part, are apt to be over-excited. When this takes place, the balance is broken; the mind gets tumultuous and disordered, and the ideas inconsistent, wavering, and absurd. Then come the torpor and exhaustion subsequent on such excessive stimulus. The person falls into drowsiness or stupor, and his mind, as well as his body, is followed by languor corresponding to the previous excitation. Such is a slight and unsatisfactory attempt to elucidate some of the more prominent phenomena of drunkenness. Some are omitted as being too obvious to require explanation, and others have been elsewhere cursorily accounted for in different parts of the work. CHAPTER IX. METHOD OF CURING THE FIT OF DRUNKENNESS. I. _From Liquors._—Generally speaking, there is no remedy for drunkenness equal to vomiting. The sooner the stomach is emptied of its contents the better, and this may, in most cases, be accomplished by drinking freely of tepid water, and tickling the fauces. On more obstinate occasions, powerful emetics will be necessary. The best for this purpose, are ten grains of sulphate of copper, half a drachm of sulphate of zinc, or five grains of tartar emetic. Either of these should be dissolved in a small quantity of tepid water, and instantly swallowed. Should this treatment fail in effecting vomiting, and dangerous symptoms supervene, the stomach pump should be employed. Cold applications to the head are likewise useful. In all cases, the head ought to be well elevated, and the neck-cloth removed, that there may be no impediment to the circulation. Where there is total insensibility, where the pulse is slow and full, the pupils dilated, the face flushed, and the breathing stertorous, it becomes a question whether blooding might be useful. Darwin[26] and Trotter speak discouragingly of the practice. As a general rule I think it is bad; and that many persons who would have recovered, if left to themselves, have lost their lives by being prematurely bled. In all cases it should be done cautiously, and not for a considerable time. Vomiting and other means should invariably be first had recourse to, and if they fail, and nature is unable of her own power to overcome the stupor, blooding may be tried. In this respect, liquors differ from opium, the insensibility from which is benefited by abstraction of blood.