wine gives to the stomach is not necessary, excepting to those who
have exhausted the excitability of that organ by the excessive use
of strong liquors. In these. The stomach can scarcely be excited to
any action without the assistance of such a stimulus. If food wants
diluting, water is the best diluent, and will prevent the rising, as
it is called, of strong food, much better than wine or spirits.

Before I finish this subject, I shall say a few words on the
pernicious custom of suffering children to drink wine, or other
fermented liquors. Nothing is more common than to see, even very
young children come to the table after dinner, to drink a glass of
wine. The least quantity produces violent effects on their
accumulated excitability, and by quickly exhausting it, ruins their
constitutions through life, and often renders them habitual
drinkers.

I can scarcely help attributing in some degree the many stomach
complaints we meet with, among young people in the present age, and
which were unknown to our forefathers, to the abominable practice of
suffering children to drink fermented, or spirituous liquors. You
must all have observed how soon children are intoxicated and
inflamed by spirituous liquors; you may judge then, that if these
liquors be only a slow poison to us, they are a very quick one to
them. A glass of wine, on account of the accumulated excitability of
children, will have more effect upon them, than a bottle will have
upon an adult accustomed to drink wine. If therefore, the health of
a child, and its happiness through life be an object, never suffer
it to taste fermented, or spirituous liquors, till it be fifteen or
sixteen years of age, unless a little wine be necessary as a
medicine.