All shrewd people, from the sly peasant to the diplomat, know how to make use of the psychical properties of wine to dissipate momentarily the defects in disposition which may clash with their personal interests. Mark, for instance, at some fair, a peasant buying a milk cow! In order to find out exactly the quality and quantity of milk given by this cow, he will endeavor to modify to his own advantage the disposition of the seller. The latter may be a deceiver, a liar, a thief, or merely exorbitant in his price. The buyer, in order to temporarily dissipate these failings, which are prejudicial to his interests, drags the seller to the public house, treats, drags the seller to the public house, treats him to a few glasses of wine, and, little by little, this beverage induces the seller to tell all he did not mean to tell, to do what he did not mean to do. In such a case, wine may sometimes develop good natural impulses.
While, in order to accomplish his purpose, the peasant in the pot-house makes use of the common local wine, the diplomat, in his sumptuous dining-room, offers choice wines, foamy champagne. Diplomat and peasant alike, however, subject their guests to a sort of psychical treatment, and that quite unconsciously, just as Moliere’s Mr. Jourdan wrote prose without knowing it.
According to the size of the dose, wine produces divers, nay opposite, effects. In small doses, it cheers, it revives all the faculties of the soul, it rests and comforts the wearied mind as well as the tired body; but used in excess, it gives a false courage, makes one indiscreet, quarrelsome, aggressive, angry, and leads to a low tone of intellect and morals and to suicide.
Drunkenness transforms an active, laborious, neat man into an apathetic, lazy, unclean, filthy-fellow. It provokes impulses to libertinism, jealousy, anger, hatred, suicide and homicide under hallucinations.
The thirty-five kinds of alcoholic drinks consumed by the different nations of the world produce very different psychical effects.
For instance, beer leads to dullness of mind as well as heaviness of body, to a departure from elevated and delicate sentiments to groveling desires.
Cider and pear-cider produce nearly the same effects as beer.
Absinth, even in small doses, makes one essentially ill- natured and quarrelsome.
Brandy makes the drinker angry and aggressive.
Anisette (Kummel) in small doses clears the brain.
Cherry-brandy (Kirschwasser) acts like anisette.
Ebriety manifests itself by psychical symptoms which are as varied as the alcoholic drinks which produce them. For instance, alcoholic drinks which produced from potatoes and grain (owing to the presence of a variable amount of amyl alcohol, otherwise fuel oil.- Translator) produces a comatose ebriety, while alcohol made from wine (pure ethylic alcohol.-Tr.) produces a merry, noisy or angry ebriety.
In order to convince the reader that the use of the psychical treatment is as general as it is unconscious, who although ignorant of the name and existence of the psychical treatment, show us that it is daily practices by millions of men. Two of these professors will describe, the one as a social, the other as an intellectual drink, the infusion of tea-leaves, which numbers from five to six hundred millions of consumers.
The action of tea, writes Prof. Marvaud, of the Val de Grace, manifests itself by an agreeable stimulation, accompanied by a feeling of comfort. The individual feels happy at being alive, the faculties of the mind blossom forth, and a mild and pleasant quietude takes possession of our being. Everything seems smiling here below; we love our hosts or our guests better; we readily forgive the shortcomings of our fellows and as readily forget our own faults. We remain silent and lose the consciousness of our misfortunes and annoyances, past and present.
Tea, writes Prof. Moleschott, of Turin, increases the power to note impressions received. It disposes one to pensive meditation; and, notwithstanding an increased rapidity in the movement of ideas, the attention is more easily concentrated upon a determinate object. One experiences a feeling of comfort and gayety. The creative activity of the brain maintains itself within the limits imposed to the attention, instead of wandering in pursuit of ideas foreign to the subject-matter under conversation, to go to the root of questions under discussion; and the calm gayety which tea-produces usually leads them to satisfactory results.
Tea, says Dr. Monin, gives wings to the minds, and to the intellect finish and airiness of inspiration.
But these pleasant moral or intellectual effects are primary effects, lasting a few hours at most, and they are followed by the secondary effects of tea, which are baneful and persistent. Dr. Dulac was, therefore, quite right when he wrote to me: Through its secondary effect, tea makes one indifferent; and, in the course of time, selfish; tea makes one lonesome and dissatisfied (ennuie), and gradually leads to melancholia. International pride and melancholia are notoriously characteristic of the two nations of Europe and Asian who consume the greatest amount of tea.
Dr. Monin also considers tea as one of the causes of melancholia, and Fothergill attributes to it the constantly increasing nervousness of the youth.
The name of ‘intellectual drink,’ which has been given to coffee, indicates clearly its cephalic and exhilarating action,’ writes Prof. Fonssagrives, of Montpelier. There is no one who has not noted upon himself, and with sensual satisfaction, the effects which this drink produces. The brain is gently. simulated, it escapes, in a degree, the heavy realities of life and the yoke of weariness. The senses become keener and work with more precision; the imagination is more lively, work is easier, the combinations of the mind crowd upon each other; less solid, perhaps, they are more rapid, clearer; the memory is unusually active, ideas flow with unwanted ease. The mind throws off disagreeable thoughts, becomes freer and more lively, while, at the same time, a feeling of benevolence spreads over the entire being.
There is, of course, a coffee inebriety which is more distinguished and less dangerous than that produced by alcohol, but which, to a certain extent, also demands the warnings and watch-care of hygiene. Men who labor intellectually are oftener than others the victims of this amiable vice, and if they give themselves up to it thoroughly they fall into a state of nervous erethism and emaciation. When Mme. de Sevigne said, Coffee makes me stupid, she alluded less to the present influence of coffee than to the state of cerebral inertia which follows its action. I know people whose brain works slowly and with difficulty as long as the spur of coffee is wanting; I know others who cannot forego this beverage without suffering from sick headache. From that point of view, it is an evil, as are all servitudes.
Another question, akin to this and which also pertains to the hygiene of literary people, would be to determine exactly the sum and nature of the assistance which coffee lends to thought. there is a cerebral excitement, undeniably, but all the faculties are not stimulated in the same degree, hence there is a little incoherence in the intellectual combinations emitted under the pressure of coffee. From personal experience, I should say that they have more rapidity than solidity; they are more numerous, but less profound. The thought is less free; it is mastered with difficulty; the judgment and the will are weakened; and as for me, I long ago gave up this inconvenient stimulation when I am to speak in public. Let poets continue to sip the beverage dear to them (Delisle), but let philosophers and scientific men abstain from it; they will be better off for it.
The use of wine, tea, coffee and other psychical remedies, to render the intellectual faculties more active and developed, is really child’s play by the side of what homoeopathic treatment can accomplish in that respect. Those who use the drugs I have mentioned above utilize only their primary effects, which last but a few hours and are followed by an intellectual depression equal to the artificially produced excitement. Homoeopathic physicians, on the contrary, utilize the secondary effects of their remedies, which, especially when they are administered in very high dilutions, may last weeks, months, years, and sometimes indefinitely. This fact is demonstrated by the following.
