or feeble acceleration of the pulse, trembling, nausea of the stomach, and torpidity of the liver and intestines. Nearly or quite all of these effects producible by tobacco, are producible also, in even a heightened degree, by narcotic doses of tea and coffee. A concentrated dose of tea will produce a paralytic shock; and a single cup of very strong coffee is sometimes enough to cause alarming disorder in the heart's action. All these narcotic effects, we repeat, are instances of paralytic depression. _In no case are they instances of stimulus followed by reaction; but whenever a narcotic dose is taken, the depressive paralytic action begins as soon as the dose is absorbed by the blood-vessels_. The cheerful and maudlin drunkard is not under the action of stimulus. His rapid, irregular, excited mental action is no more entitled to be called "exaltation" than is the delirium of typhoid fever. In the one case and in the other, we have not stimulation but depression of the vitality of the cerebrum; in both cases, the nutrition is seriously impaired; in both cases, molecular disorganization of the nerve-material is predominant. [5] Sleep is caused by a diminution of blood in the cerebrum; stupor and delirium, as well as _insomnia_, or nocturnal wakefulness, are probably caused by excess of blood in the cerebrum. We feel sleepy after a heavy meal, because the stomach, intestines and liver appropriate blood which would ordinarily be sent to the brain. But after a drunken debauch, a man sinks in stupor because the brain is partially congested. The blood rushes to the paralyzed part, just as it rushes to an inflamed part; and in the paralysis, as in the inflammation, nutrition and the products of nutrition are lowered. The habitual drunkard lowers the quality of his nervous system, and impairs its sensitiveness,--hence the necessity of increasing the dose. It will be seen, therefore, that it is not the function of a narcotic, as such, to induce sleep, though in a vast number of cases it may induce stupor. The headache felt on awaking from stupor, is the index of impaired nutrition, quite the reverse of the vigor felt on arising from sleep.