Study and Stimulants | Page 8

not to be
misunderstood. Several years of my life were spent in the East, and my
experience there only confirms me the more. I have known many
drunkards among literary men, and the stimulants they took never
helped their work; and it was only because they were men of
exceptionally strong brain that their excesses did not incapacitate them.
There are many excesses of this kind that are equally misunderstood by
those who indulge in them, and by temperance writers. There are, in
fact, many men of enormous power, who can smoke and drink all day
long. They constitute no standard: so far as I have seen, the
consequences show themselves only in the offspring, though in this
case it must be taken into account, that the children are sometimes born
before a man's health has been seriously injured. A man of exceptional
strength misleads and encourages others to indulge.
HYDE CLARKE. October 14, 1882.

MR. WILKIE COLLINS.
When I am ill (I am suffering from gout at this very moment) tobacco
is the best friend that my irritable nerves possess. When I am well, but
exhausted for the time by a hard day's work, tobacco nerves and
composes me. There is my evidence in two words. When a man allows
himself to become a glutton in the matter of smoking tobacco, he
suffers for it; and if he becomes a glutton in the matter of eating meat,
he just as certainly suffers in another way. When I read learned attacks
on the practice of smoking, I feel indebted to the writer--he adds largely
to the relish of my cigar.
WILKIE COLONS. February 10, 1882.

MR. MONCURE D. CONWAY, M. A.
My experience of stimulants has been insufficient to enable me to give
any important opinion about them. As to tobacco, my strong hope is
that my own sons will never use it; but if they should develop peculiar
and excitable nerves, or become very emotional, or have much trouble,
it is so likely that they might take to some worse habit that I would
prefer they should smoke.

M. D. CONWAY. February 22, 1882.

REV. W. H. DALLINGER, F. R. S.
I am not a pledged abstainer: I have used both tobacco and alcohol in
various forms. Neither is at all necessary to my vigour of either body or
mind. My use of tobacco has been but slight. I have never Used alcohol
for years. I could never think deeply after the use of tobacco; I have felt
a quickening of thought at times after a slight use of good wine; but I
know, from physiological evidence, what practice has certainly proved,
that no permanent benefit to either body or mind must be sought from
its use. I have employed it with great benefit at times--that is, where it
was better to afford the exhaustion following a mere stimulant, than to
submit to an exhaustion which the stimulant could for the moment
counteract. This is the only advantage, save to the palate, that I have
known to be derived personally from the use of alcohol.
W. H. DALLINGER. February 11, 1882.

PROFESSOR DARWIN.
I drink a glass of wine daily, and believe I should be better without any,
though all doctors urge me to drink wine, as I suffer much from
giddiness. I have taken snuff all my life, and regret that I ever acquired
the habit, which I have often tried to leave off, and have succeeded for
a time. I feel sure that it is a great stimulus and aid in my work. I also
daily smoke two little paper cigarettes of Turkish tobacco. This is not a
stimulus, but rests me after I have been compelled to talk, with tired
memory, more than anything else. I am 73 years old.
CH. DARWIN. February 9, 1882.

W. BOYD DAWKINS, M. A., F. R. S., F. G. S. PROFESSOR OF
GEOLOGY, OWENS COLLEGE, MANCHESTER.
I have received your note asking about the effect of alcohol on my
health and work. I cannot say that they influence either; I find, however,
that I cannot drink beer when I am using my brain, and, therefore, do
not take it when I have anything of importance to think about. I look
upon tobacco and alcohol as merely luxuries, and there are no luxuries
more dangerous if you take too much of them. I find quinine the best

stimulant to thought.
W. BOYD DAWKINS. February 16, 1882.

The Rev. ALEX. J. D. D'ORSEY, B. D., LECTURER ON PUBLIC
READING AND SPEAKING AT KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON.
For my own part, I am decidedly averse to the use of tobacco and
stimulants. I am myself a total abstainer (not pledged), and I have never
smoked in my life. I always