whose habits are abstemious, as regards the drinking of wines or
fermented liquors, we generally discover him to have a great predilection
for that valuable commodity _salt_, which article being in its nature
antiseptic, answers the same purpose as wine. Therefore, the labouring
man, whose narrow circumstances prohibit him from the advantage of a
daily use of wine, by taking with his food a sufficient quantity of salt,
and his apportioned quantity of malt liquor, retains his vigour and
strength of body equally with those whose more ample means render them
capable of acquiring the necessary quantity of wine daily. Doctor Barry
mentions an experiment made on a soldier, who was hired to live entirely
for some days on wild fowl,[3] with water only to drink; he received in
the beginning his reward and diet with great cheerfulness, but this was
soon succeeded by nausea, thirst, and disposition to putrid dysentery,
which was with some difficulty prevented from making further progress, by
the physician who made the experiment. Again, he remarks, "I knew a
person who, by the advice of his physician abstained for some years
entirely from _salt_, drank chiefly _water_, and used freely an animal
diet, and by that means acquired a violent scurvy; he was, after some
time, relieved by a strict regimen of diet and medicine, and as he
afterwards used salt and vegetables with animal food, and drank wine more
freely, never had a return of the disorder." It is therefore evident,
that a _moderate_ use of wine tends to promote health, and keeps off the
numerous train of disorders, to which the constitution of man is subject,
thereby lessening the evils incidental to human nature. We can then
exclaim with Virgil of wine,

"Deus ille malis hominum mitescere discat."

S.S.T.