DR. ALEXANDER BAIN,
LORD RECTOR OF ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY.


I am interested in the fact that anyone is engaged in a thorough
investigation of the action of stimulants. Although the subject falls
under my own studies in some degree, I am a very indifferent testimony
as far as concerns personal experience. On the action of tobacco, I am
disqualified to speak, from never having used it. As to the other
stimulants--alcohol and the tea group--I find abstinence essential to
intellectual effort. They induce a false excitement, not compatible
with severe application to problems of difficulty. They come in well
enough at the end of the day as soothing, or cheering, and also as
diverting the thoughts into other channels. In my early intercourse
with my friend; Dr. Carpenter, when he was a strict teetotaler, he
used to discredit the effect of alcohol in soothing the excitement of
prolonged intellectual work. I have always considered, however, that
there is something in it. Excess of tea I have good reason to
deprecate; I take it only once a day. The difficulty that presses upon
me on the whole subject is this:--In organic influences, you are not
at liberty to lay down the law of concomitant variations without
exception, or to affirm that what is bad in large quantities, is
simply less bad when the quantity is small. There may be proportions
not only innocuous, but beneficial; reasoning from the analogy of the
action of many drugs which present the greatest opposition of effect
in different quantities. I mean this--not with reference to the
inutility for intellectual stimulation, in which I have a pretty clear
opinion as regards myself--but as to the harmlessness in the long run,
of the employment of stimulants for solace and pleasure when kept to