Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: this, in the case of two gentlemen advanced in life, each of whom suffered from repeated attacks of paralysis, which almost invariably supervened upon a violation of the habitual rule of abstinence from fermented liquors and of extreme moderation in diet.—Precisely the same, too, may be said of Epilepsy, which disease is now generally attributed to a disordered state of nutrition of the brain, of which the paroxysm is the manifestation. Of this disordered state of nutrition, intemperance in eating and drinking is among the most frequent of the predisposing causes, especially when the disease occurs in persons advanced in life ; whilst in those who are already predisposed from these or other causes, the excessive use of fermented liquors is frequently the immediate or exciting cause of the paroxysm. 44. Besides these positive diseases, a premature exhaustion of Nervous power, manifested in the decline of mental vigour and of nervo-muscular energy, are ranked by common consent among the consequences of habitual excess in the use of Alcoholic liquors; and reasons will be given hereafter for the belief, that it is occasionally the direct, but more frequently the indirect consequence of the habitual employment of what is considered a very moderate allowance.—(See §§ 177, 178.) 45. In regard to all the forms of Encephalic disorder which result from the long-continued action of causes that impair its nutrition, it is to be observed that the habitual use of Alcoholic liquors has,—in addition to its direct action upon the functions of circulation and nutrition,—an important indirect agency; inasmuch as, by the temporary support it affords, it sustains the nervous apparatus under a degree of exertion that is in the end most injurious to it, and renders the whole system more tolerant o...