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Luxury, enervation, and effeminacy are rife, and snobbery follows close behind them. The ancestral vigor, the insight to recognize great moral principles, and the power to gladly hazard all in their defence have disappeared in a mist of indifference, which beclouds the eyes and benumbs all the powers. The race of giants is dwindling into dwarfs.
The dose should be large; whisky or brandy is best, and should be administered in hot or at least warm water. The physiologic action of alcohol, which dulls or benumbs the nervous system and dilates the peripheral blood vessels, is exactly in line with the clinical indications.
It is not indeed true that the foregoing vices do of themselves, produce all this mischief directly; but as Dr. Paley has well said, criminal intercourse 'corrupts and depraves the mind more than any single vice whatsoever. It gradually benumbs the conscience, and leads on, step by step, to those blacker vices at which the youth would once have shuddered.
And, while the men shake their dripping caps, pass their hands on their foreheads to wipe out drops of rain and perspiration that veil the eyes, the first sensation of cold comes to them, of a damp and profound cold; their wet clothes chill them, their thoughts weaken; little by little a sort of torpor benumbs them in the thick darkness, under the incessant winter rain.
It is a true copy of one of the features which make up the aspect 'of the State, and of every State where the moral leprosy of slavery covers the people with its noisome scales; a deadening lethargy benumbs the limbs of the body politic; a stupor settles on the arts of life; agriculture reluctantly drags the plough and harrow to the field, only when scourged by necessity; the axe drops from the woodman's nerveless hand the moment his fire is scantily supplied with fuel; and the fen, undrained, sends up its noxious exhalations, to rack with cramps and agues the frame already too much enervated by a moral epidemic to creep beyond the sphere of the material miasm."
I read the other day that Sir John Franklin, the great Arctic explorer, who almost lost his life in being attacked by some huge animal it must have been a bear, I think says that the animal when he first gets you in his teeth gives you such a shake that it paralyzes your nerves this is, it benumbs all your feelings, so, that, strange as it may seem, you really do not suffer.
Thus standing, the lover sang a dirge of his own making. The words were something like this: Ah, spirit, thy flight is mysterious! While the clouds are stirred by our wailing, And our tears fall faster in sorrow While the cold sweat of night benumbs us, Thou goest alone on thy journey, In the midst of the shining star people! Thou goest alone on thy journey Thy memory shall be our portion;
One of the great dangers and drawbacks to the exercise of the critical faculty is that it tends to destroy the spiritual intuition. And just in like manner the too great reliance upon this intuition benumbs and impoverishes the critical faculty. Yet, in a mind that should present at all adequately the internal evidence of the Gospels, both should co-exist in equal balance and proportion.
Its daily use, in any form, deranges, and sometimes destroys the stomach and nerves, produces weakness, low spirits, dyspepsy, vertigo, and many other complaints. These are its more immediate effects. Its remoter effects are scarcely less dreadful. It dries the mouth and nostrils, and probably the brain; benumbs the senses of smell and taste, impairs the hearing, and ultimately the eye-sight.
It is a true copy of one of the features which make up the aspect 'of the State, and of every State where the moral leprosy of slavery covers the people with its noisome scales; a deadening lethargy benumbs the limbs of the body politic; a stupor settles on the arts of life; agriculture reluctantly drags the plough and harrow to the field, only when scourged by necessity; the axe drops from the woodman's nerveless hand the moment his fire is scantily supplied with fuel; and the fen, undrained, sends up its noxious exhalations, to rack with cramps and agues the frame already too much enervated by a moral epidemic to creep beyond the sphere of the material miasm."
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