nature, essentially devolves upon the nerves, and
the nervous centres in which they terminate.
In order that the nervous system should live
and manifest its life by sensibility, it is necessary
that it should constantly be in contact
with a sanguineous current: as soon as the
blood fails, or its circulating movement ceases,
life is extinct. It suffices, then, to point out
this grand physiological phenomena of life,
manifesting itself by the contact of the nervous
system with the blood, to let the influence be
seen which such or such a constitution of the
blood may exercise upon the energy and the
quality of this manifestation. We may
consider the sanguineous system as a vast reservoir
into which are finally conveyed the substances
absorbed by the digestive organs, the lungs, and
the integuments: all drinks, all nutritive
matters extracted from food or medicine,
everything that passes into the blood, either to be
incorporated in the organism, to influence it, or
to be expelled from it. "Do you think,"
exclaims Dr. Arthaud, "that the blood when mixed
with generous wine will act upon the nerves in
the same manner as when in its weakened
condition it is incorporated with toast-and-water?
That is the fundamental point of our physiological
question."

Every kind of drink, the doctor goes on to
say, gives to the blood a peculiar modification;
and so (but the doctor omits this
consideration) does every kind of meat. It is
upon his dictum alone that the doctrine of
internal remedies is based. When a medical
man prescribes a tisane, or draught of any
kind, it is just as if he should say to the
patient, "You will mingle such a substance
with your blood, in order that the latter may
cause its influence to be felt on the whole
nervous system, or only on a particular part
of it, according as to whether the medicine
has a general or local action." Is it, then,
surprising that different drinks mixed with the
blood should act upon the nerves in various
ways?

In reply to this question, Dr. Arthaud enters
into a comparative examination of the different
effects produced by wine, coffee, and tea, the
liquids most in use. That which distinguishes
wine from all other drinks, is its general action
upon the human economy. Taken in moderate
quantities, it increases the energy of all the
faculties; the heart, the brain, the secretive
organs, the muscular system, all gain by its use
an increase of sensible vitality. Pliny tells us
that by wine the blood and inward heat of man
are nourished; Sheridan gave us his reason for
drinking wine, that it made his thoughts flow
freely, or rewarded them when they came; and
we learn from lago that "good wine is a good
familiar creature, if well used." Wine
associates itself generously with all our functions;
it fortifies and harmoniously exerts them, while
other fluids act like those medicines which only
lend their activity to a single organ, and far
from increasing the general harmony, they only
trouble it. Coffee, like wine, excites vitality,
but it only stimulates those portions of the
brain in which are seated the mind, properly so
called, and the powers of speech. Its special
property, then, is to give birth to a clear, lively,
and ready eloquence, which is never troubled by
the emotions of passionate conviction; under
the action of coffee the heart remains perfectly
calm. It is a coffee-drinker himself who has
said that, in order to express a sentiment
correctly, it was absolutely necessary not to have
felt it. Coffee is the drink that belongs
exclusively to people who live only for themselves;
it is the provocative agent of specious
arguments, of cynical sneers, of sharp, cruel
witticisms, of all that delights the elegant, used-up,
heartless world of fashion. Tea, on the other hand,
addresses itself neither to the heart nor to the
head; it merely stimulates the liver and the
kidneys. These properties explain why tea
facilitates digestion in sluggish stomachs, and why
tea-drinkers (these are Dr. Arthaud's own
sentiments) are inclined to a melancholy seriousness,
to coldness of manner, and little disposition to
talk: the doctor does not even except old ladies.
Tea produces in individuals, and in nations where
it is in general use, a slight tendency to
hypochondria; so that it is impossible for a tea-
drinker to be a jolly good fellow. Respecting
certain properties of tea, Dr. Arthaud adduces
his own personal experience, and draws some
conclusions which, at all events, have novelty to
recommend them.

All the senses, he says, are flattered by wine.
"In my youth, when I worked very hard, I
used to drink a great deal of tea at breakfast,
and, notwithstanding my passion for music, I
detested morning concerts. Since I have
analysed and experimented upon the cause of my
sensations, I am satisfied that my melophobia
was caused by the astringent action of the
tea on my nervous system in general, and on
my acoustic nerves in particular. The poverty
in musical genius of great tea-drinkers, such
as the Chinese and the English, arises, in
my opinion, from no other cause. It is well
known, on the other hand, that Bacchus has no
more faithful disciples than musicians in general.
In the province of Roussillon, where the wines
are perfumed and full flavoured, to express the
pleasure caused by a glass of good wine the
people say, when they drink it, that they hear the
angels sing! This saying tends to prove that
wine flatters the sense of hearing, and makes it
experience light and gentle hallucinations."Not
musicians only, but actors have furnished
martyrs to this species of "gentle hallucination."

Having considered wine as the exciting agent
of the physical and moral activity of man, Dr.
Arthaud proceeds to show that a strict
geographical correlation exists between the culture
of the vine and the intellectual development of
humanity. In Asia, in Africa, and in Europe,
the vine has never been cultivated with a view
of converting its fruit into wine, outside the
zone comprised between the thirtieth and the
fiftieth degrees of north latitude, where also
have flourished the civilisations of Japan, China,