Morris tribune., 1885-09-16
Craving for Stimulants.

The desire or craving for stimulants
for drugs acting upon the nerves
whether as excitant or sedative agents
is an almost, if not absolutely, uni
versaa human appetite; so general, so
early developed, that we might almost
call it an instinct. Alcohol, of course,
is the most popular, under ordinary cir
cumstances the most seductive, and by
far the most widely diffused of all stim-
ulant substances. From the Euphrates
to the Straits of Dover the vine has
been from the earliest ages second only
to corn in popular estimation; wine,
next to bread, the most priced and most
universal article of human food.
The connection between Ceres and
Bacchus is found in almost every Ian
guage as in the social life of every ma
tion, from the warlike Assyrian Mon
archy, the stable hierocratic despotism
of Egypt, to the modern French Re-
public and German Empire. Corn it
self has furnished stimulants second in
popularity to wine alone; the spirit
which delighted the fiercer, sterner
races of Northern Europe Swede, Nor
wegian and Dane, st. Olaf and Harold
Hardrada, as their descendants of to-
day; and the ale of our own Saxon and
Scandinavian ancestry, which neither
spirit, cider, nor Spanish wine has
superseded among ourselves. The vine,
again, seems to have been native to
America; but the civilized or semi-civ-
ilized races of the southern and central
part of the Western Continent had
other more popular and more peculiar
stimulants, also for the most part alco-
holic. The palm, again, has furnished
to African and Asiatic tribes a spirit
not less potent or less noxious, not less
popular and probably not less primitive,
than whisky or beer.
But where alcohol has been unknown,
among races to whose habits and tenn
permanent it was alien, or in climates
where so powerful an excitant produced
effects too palpab1y alarming to be toll
Grated by rulers or law-givers royal or
priestly, other and milder stimulants or
sedatives are found in equally universal
use. Till the white man introduced
among them his own destructive bever-
ages, till the "fre-water" spread de-
moralization and disease, tobacco was
the favorite indulgence of the red In
dian of North America, and very prob
ably of that mighty race which pre-
ceded them and seems to have disap-
peared before they came upon the scene
the Mound builders, whose gigantic
works bear testimony to the existence
of an agriculture scarcely less advanced
OF less prolific, q despotism probably
not less absolute than that of Egypt.
Coffee has for ages been almost equal
ly dear to the Arab; tea has been to
China all that wine is and was to Eu-
rope, probably from a still earlier per-
iod, and has taken hold on the North
ern, as coffee and tobacco upon the
Southern, branches of the Tartar race,
Opium, or drugs resembling opium in
character, have been found as well suit
ed to the temper, as delightful to the
taste, of the quieter and more passive
Oriental races as wine to the Aryan and
Semitic nations. The Malays, the Vik-
ings of the East Indies. found in bhaaag |
drug the most exciting and madden
ing in its effects of any known to civil
lied or uncivilized man; a substitute |
for opium or hasheesh bearing much |
the same relation to those sedatives as
brandy OF whisky to the light wines of
Southern Europe, - TIE National Re-
gaeW.