Study and Stimulants | Page 4

driving home from dining out, with his skin full of wine. That a man might get chance suggestions by the nervous excitement, I have no doubt; I speak of the serious work of composition. John Stuart Mill never used tobacco; I believe he had always a moderate quantity of wine to dinner. He frequently made the remark that he believed the giving up of wine would be apt to be followed by taking more food than was necessary, merely for the sake of stimulation. Assuming the use of stimulants after work to aid the subsidence of the brain, I can quite conceive that tobacco may operate in this way, as often averred; but I should have supposed that any single stimulant would be enough: as tobacco for those abstaining entirely from alcohol, and using little tea or coffee.
ALEXANDER BAIN. March 6, 1882.

PROFESSOR ROBERT S. BALL, LL. D., F. R. S., ANDREWS PROFESSOR OF ASTRONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN, AND ROYAL ASTRONOMER OF IRELAND.
I fear my experience can be of little use to you. I have never smoked except once--when at school; I then got sick, and have never desired to smoke since. I have not paid particular attention to the subject, but I have never seen anything to make me believe that tobacco was of real use to intellectual workers. I have known of people being injured by smoking too much, but I never heard of anyone suffering from not smoking at all.
ROBERT S. BALL. February 13, 1882.

MR. HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT, SAN FRANCISCO.
In my opinion, some constitutions are benefited by a moderate use of tobacco and alcohol; others are not. But to touch these things is dangerous.
H. H. BANCROFT. May 6, 1882.

MR. JOSEPH BAXENDELL, F. R. A. S.
I fear that my experience of the results of the use of stimulants will not aid you much in your enquiry. Although I am not a professed teetotaler or anti-smoker, practically I may say I am one: and when I am engaged in literary work, scientific investigations, or long and complicated calculations, I never think of taking any stimulant to aid or refresh me, and I doubt whether it would be of any use to do so.
JOSEPH BAXENDELL. February 20, 1882.

DR. G. M. BEARD, FELLOW OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.
In reply to your enquiries, I may say--first: I do not find that alcohol is so good a stimulant to thought as coffee, tea, opium, or tobacco. On myself alcohol has rather a benumbing and stupefying effect, whatever may be the dose employed; whereas, tobacco and opium, in moderate doses, tea, and especially coffee, as well as cocoa, have an effect precisely the reverse.
Secondly: there are many persons on whom alcohol in large or small doses has a stimulating effect on thought: they can speak and think better under its influence. The late Daniel Webster was accustomed to stimulate himself for his great speeches by the use of alcohol.
Thirdly: these stimulants and narcotics, according to the temperament of the person on whom they are used, have effects precisely opposite, either sedative or stimulating; while coffee makes some people sleepy, the majority of persons are made wakeful by it. Some are made very nervous by tobacco in the form of smoking, while on others it acts as a sedative, and induces sleep. General Grant once told me 'that, if disturbed during the night, or worried about anything so that he could not sleep, he could induce sleep by getting up and smoking a short time--a few whiffs, as I understood him, being sufficient.
If I were to judge by my own experience alone--which it is not fair to do--I should say that coffee is the best stimulant for mental work; next to that tobacco and quinine; but as I grow older, I observe that alcohol in reasonable doses is beginning to have a stimulating effect.
GEORGE M. BEARD. March 13, 1882.

PROFESSOR PAUL BERT.
My views on tobacco and alcohol, and their action on the health, may be summed up in the following four propositions:--
1.--Whole populations have attained to a high degree of civilization and prosperity without having known either tobacco or alcohol, therefore, these substances are neither necessary nor even useful to individuals as well as races.
2.--Very considerable quantities of these drugs, taken at a single dose, may cause death; smaller quantities stupefy, or kill more slowly. They are, therefore, poisons against which we must be on our guard.
3.--On the other hand, there are innumerable persons who drink alcoholic beverages, and smoke tobacco, without any detriment to their reason or their health. There is, therefore, no reason to forbid the use of these substances, while suitably regulating the quantity to be taken.
4.--The use of alcoholic liquors and of tobacco in feeble doses, affords to many persons very great satisfaction, and is altogether harmless and inoffensive.
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