THE REV. MARK PATTISON, B. D.


The story of my personal experiences of alcohol is one which would
require more time than I can now command to write properly. I can now
only say that I did not begin wine, as a habit, till I was
thirty-seven; that, at first, an occasional effect was favourable to
the brain power, but always followed by corresponding reaction towards
feebleness. About fifty-seven, I was obliged to give up wine
altogether; I found great general advantage from doing so, and no
disadvantage whatever as regards mental activity. I am now
sixty-eight, and take a glass of claret every third day, or oftener.
This medicine does not produce any perceptible effect on the brain
directly, but I have a fancy that I sleep better after wine; and sleep
I have always looked to as the best brain restorative. [Footnote:
SLEEP IS THE BEST STIMULANT.--The best possible thing for a man to do
when he feels too weak to carry anything through is to go to bed and
sleep for a week, if he can. This is the only recuperation of
brain-power, the only recuperation of brain-force; because during
sleep the brain is in a state of rest, in a condition to receive and
appropriate particles of nutriment from the blood, which take the
place of those that have been consumed in previous labour, since the
very act of thinking consumes or burns up solid particles, as every
turn of the wheel or screw of the steamer is the result of the
consumption by fire of the fuel in the furnace. The supply of consumed
brain-substance can only be had from the nutritive particles in the
blood, which were obtained from the food eaten previously; and the
brain is so constituted that it can best receive and appropriate to
itself those nutritive particles during a state of rest, of quiet, and
stillness of sleep. Mere stimulants supply nothing in themselves; they