PROFESSOR ANDREW WILSON, Ph. D., F. R. S. E.


The question you ask concerning the effects of alcohol and tobacco
upon the health of brain-workers, relatively (I presume) to myself, is
a complex one. Personally, I find with often excessive work in the way
of lecturing, long railway journeys, and late hours, writing at other
times, that I digest my food with greater ease when I take a little
claret or beer with meals. Experiment has convinced me that the slight
amount of alcohol I imbibe in my claret is a grateful stimulus to
digestion. As to smoking, I take an occasional cigar, but only after
dinner, and never during the day. As to health, I never suffer even
from a headache. I usually deliver 18 lectures a week, often more; and
I have often to make journeys of over 50 miles after a hard day's work
here, to lecture in the country. My writing is done at night chiefly,
but as a rule, I don't sit after 12-30. My work is exceptionally
constant, yet I seem to be exceptionally healthy. I regard my claret
or wine to meals in the same light in which others regard their tea,
as a pleasant stimulus, followed in my case by good effect. At the
same time, there may be others who may do the same amount of work as
abstainers. My position in this matter has always been that of
recognising the individual phases of the matter as the true basis of
its settlement. What I can urge is, that I am an exceptionally healthy
man, doing what I may fairly claim to be exceptionally hard work, and
careful in every respect of health, finding that a moderate quantity
of alcohol, with food, is for me better than total abstinence.