The Northern Pacific farmer. [volume] (Wadena, Minn.) 1878-1885, 1881-02-17

Que copy one year, @l'oo
" six months ~
SPIRIT FOOD.
To the Editors of tho N, p. Farmer.
Experience shows that these news
paper discussions often lead to person
;,lities and recriminations, and ours
already tends to that general issue.
The limits of q letter COMPEL the use
of terse and abrupt language in order
to outline such a problem as temper.
ance, and the difficulty of making
suitable selections from such a mass
of facts distracts the temper. These
influences combined make one appear
rude and dognatic who is naturally
disposed to be corteous. They led
mo away from the best points made
in the reply of ". S. H., which were:
That people who live on vinous food,
like grapes and barley pudding are
sober and healthy, and those who live
on wine and beer continue drunken.
Both science and experience have
abundantly proved that such a vege-
table diet, will completely remove the
appetite for free spirit. The English
scientists, Napier, lately published
q experiments which he made on ha-
bitual drunkaras. each of which were
completely cured. One case was a
man 60 years old, who had averaged a
drunken spree every week for IS
years, and was suffering from delir.
ium tremens, when Napier reformed
his diet, and cured him. In seven
months this man had regained his
health, and q pounds in weight,
and could taste and handle wine and
spirits as deliberately as Napier him.
self, or Prof. Huxley.
THE AFFINITY BETWEEN THE HUMAN
SPIRIT AND THE SPIRIT OF WINE,
and the provision of nature to accom-"
modate that affinity, was first scien-
tifcly explained by tho celebrated
Liebig, in his "Anin,al Chemistry, :"
and the only means of controlling the
resulting appetite for spirit, il ex-
planned in that work. That control
consists of due proportion of spirit,
or its elements in the daily food. If
the food be vinous, like grapes and
barley, a healthy stomach will fer.
ment sufficient spirit for fuel to the
grain; hut with animal food, or a
stomach dispeptic, from excess or alb
stinence, there is a defect of this
spirit in the brain, and an appetite
for free spirit proportioned to the de-
feet But spirit supplied through
the lungs or the skin, reaches that
organ, and satisfies that appetite the
same as through the stomach; the
spirit in each case being found in the
subtance of the brain by dissection,
when no trace of it can be found in
its cavities, or in any other part of
the system.
The definitions of ". S. H., for
temperance and abstinence, show
that he is not aware that the spirit
produced from food in the stomach,
Is the same that is produced from the
same food in the wine and beer watts,
and that these watts are exact copies
of the heat, fluid, ferment and me-
chanical action of the human stomach.
His remark-that wine and beer does
not cure intemperance, reminds me
of Z woman for whom Leibig, pre-.
acribed to cure her drunken husband.
She came again. saying: II have fed
him for a week ON mush and milk,
and he is still as drunk as ever"
The reason is, that an excess of spir-
it destroys the pepsin ferment which
supplies spirit in the system, and
this makes the drunkard more de-
pendent on the free spirit taken, than
are abstinent dispeptics. All our to-
talists admit that such ercess cannot
remove the appetite for spirit. but
they ignore the fpct that abstinence