Drink, strong drink, is responsible for very much of the misery that afflicts our social state; but it is scarcely fair to much-abused Alcohol—a harmless spirit enough except when abused—to attribute to it all the ruin that flows from the bottle and the public-house gin-tap. Alcohol has enough to answer for; but there can be no doubt that for one victim to its intoxicating qualities, two might be reckoned who have “come to their deathbed” through the various deadly poisons it is the publican’s custom to mix with his diluted liquors to give them a fictitious strength and fire. Let us here enumerate a few of the ingredients with which the beer-shop-keeper re-brews his beer, and the publican “doctors” his gin and rum and whisky. As is well known, the most common way of adulterating beer is by means of _cocculus indicus_. This is known “in the trade” as “Indian berry,” and is the fruit of a plant that grows on the coast of Malabar. It is a small kidney-shaped, rough, and black-looking berry, of a bitter taste, and of an intoxicating or poisonous quality. It is extensively used to increase the intoxicating properties of the liquor. Fox-glove is a plant with large purple flowers, possessing an intensely bitter nauseous taste. It is a violent purgative and vomit; produces languor, giddiness, and even death. It is a poison, and is used on account of the bitter and intoxicating qualities it imparts to the liquor among which it is mixed. Green copperas, a mineral substance obtained from iron, is much used to give the porter a frothy top. The green copperas is supposed to give to porter in the pewter-pot that peculiar flavour which drinkers say is not to be tasted when the liquor is served in glass. Hartshorn shavings are the horns of the common male deer rasped or scraped down. They are then boiled in the worts of ale, and give out a substance of a thickisk nature like jelly, which is said to prevent intoxicating liquor from becoming sour. Henbane, a plant of a poisonous nature, bearing a close resemblance to the narcotic poison, opium. It produces intoxication, delirium, nausea, vomiting, feverishness, and death, and appears chiefly to be used to increase the intoxicating properties of intoxicating liquors; or, in other words, to render them more likely to produce these effects in those who use these liquors. Jalap, the root of a sort of convolvulus, brought from the neighbourhood of Xalapa, in Mexico, and so called Jalap. It is used as a powerful purgative in medicine. Its taste is exceedingly nauseous; and is of a sweetish bitterness. It is used to prevent the intoxicating liquor from turning sour; and probably to counteract the binding tendency of some of the other ingredients. Multum is a mixture of opium and other ingredients, used to increase the intoxicating qualities of the liquor.