D. CHRISTIE MURRAY.
April 11, 1882.
PROFESOR NEWMAN.
In boyhood, I perceived that to my younger sisters mere drops of wine
caused coughing and spitting, and the heat of wine to my own palate
and throat was offensive. Beer, ale, and porter disgusted me by their
bitterness. Porter was peculiarly nauseous to me. I early saw the
ill-effects of wine on youths, and was frightened by accounts of
college drunkenness. For this reason, as well as from economy, I
never became a wine-drinker, further than to drink healths by just
colouring water in a glass. I have never dreamed of needing wine,
though often in old time ordered by physicians to drink it. Not
having then the same power to look over their heads-which experience
of their changes and their follies has brought to me-I used to obey a
little while, but quickly reverted to my glass of water, and never
had reason to believe, from my own case, that there was any advantage
from the wine. In 1860-1, the Parisian experiments proved that all
alcohol arrests digestion. Since then I have called myself a
teetotaler. To me it seems clear that love of the drink, or fear of
losing patients by forbidding it, are the true cause of the fuss made
in its favour. I grieve that so noble a fruit as grapes should be
wasted on wine. The same remark will hold of barley, of honey, of
raisins, of dates: from which men make intoxicating drinks.
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