THE CITY OF POISON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8082, 24 September 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE CITY OF POISON.

The August number of Longman's Magazine contains a clever article from the pen of Dr. B. W. Riohardson, entitled " Toxicopolis." It iB on the drink question, and although the idea is ft little far-fetched, from the total abstainer's point of view it is no doubt very convincing. Dr. Richardson asks us to imagine all the publichouses in the United Kingdom removed from their present positions and aggregated together in one great city. The result would be a city of 180,000 houses, and at the rate of five persons to every house, would be peopled by 900,000 persons. Adding waiters, potboys, servants, etc., and the frequenters of these houses, a total of over four millions of persons is obtained. They would need a city as large as London to accommodate them. This Utopian city m. Richardson somewhat fancifully calls *' Toxicopolis"—the poison city. The inhabitants differ little from those of any other great city, save that "We are credibly informed that the commercial value of life within it is so very low, that the city is practically uninsurable on the ordinary terms of life insurance. There are some insurance offices which hold the value of life in the town so low that they will not accept without the most careful inquiry a single adult life from it. There are other offices which are not quite so severe in their rules, but would, in insuring, weigh the lives by putting on them an extra premium, while they would reject a considerable number as not safe for investment at any premium." The writer proceeds to describe the buildings of Toxicopolis, which are excessively varied in style and quality, Some are palatial. Another kind is less spotless than the palace, but it is very nice, and those who go to it soon get fond of it. It becomes to them a second home. A third clasß of house lies between the palace and the quiet„ homely place. It is large and shabby genteel. Men and women crowd in on rare occasions only; as a rule it is not well filled. A fourth kind of house seems to be all bar. The people stand and lounge against the counter. A few sit about in obscure seats badly lighted. Children bring jugs, purchase beer, and take it home. A fifth centre is the shop last named, still more degraded. All about it is low and squalid. The men are badly clothed, bent in the back, nipped in the face, of cold or leaden aspect if the weather be chilly, and always sullen and sad. The women are in the same kind of predicament, meeting the cold when it is present as best they can by wrapping themselves up tightly in a dark shawl, which is to them a pocket and a place of concealment for all kinds of substances, perishable and unperishable, sometimes of a miserable specimen of a babe or child, more frequently of a bottle empty or replenished with liquor. There is also the beer shop, which is troubled leas with the women folk of the the community, "owing to the circumstance that your true woman drinker in Toxicopolis has little care for beer. She likes the sharper and the quicker acting toxical draught and the keener excitement which the draught brings to her." Having described the various kinds oil houses which exist in Toxicopolis, the writer goes on to show the sort of deceit which the dwellers in these houses practice upon their customers. We quote some of his remarks on adulteration : — The Fathers of the Toxicopolitana have on hand a very clever book, a sort of Pharmacopoeia Toxicopolitana, which, as it lies before us, is quite a study of studies. It is a book of universal reference, and its morals are splendid. "Mixing," "compounding," "blending," "reducing," "sweetening," "beading," "capillairing," are its fine arts and finer sciences, and, to give the devil in solution his due, the art and the science are up to and above the average of refinement. These are the sort of things to be found in what Dr. Richardson calls the " Pharmacopoeia Toxicopolitana":— The creaminess and smoothness so much admired in foreign Geneva (gin) are mostly the result of age. In English houses it is attempted to imitate these qualities by the addition of a little sugar. It is said that & mellow richness which answers well with gin, resembling Hollands in flavour may be given by the use of a very small quantity of garlic, Canadian balsam, or Strasburg turpentine. The peculiar sharpness or property of " biting the palate," so commonly regarded as a sign of strength and superior quality, is easily imparted to the liquor by a little caustic potash. Sliced horseradish digested in the gin communicates piquancy as well as mellowness

We would say, as regards foreign brandy, that it is always a great recommendation to a house to be known to sell a really pure, good article of this kind. A drop of genuine cognac is 30 much thought of for slight complaints of the stomach, and is in truth so comforting and efficacious on occasions, that a high reputation generally attaches to the place where one can confidently reckon on being able to procure such brandy irrespective of the price that has to be paid for it. A small stock, then, should always be kept of the " right stuff" to meet such demands, and to maintain the character of the house.

The following are the four stages of intoxication:—

When a human being sits down deliberately to get drunk—that is to say, to destroy the action of all his senses and all his powers by some strong alcoholic drink—he passes, in the eye of the physiologist, through four stages before he reaches his climax of helpless imbecility and living death. He is first excited, and acts with greater rapidity than is natural; his face flushes, and the surface of his body is heated. In a little time, if he goes on with his experiment, he becomes more excited, then uncertain of mind and action, and in the end unsteady and easily chilled if he be exposed to cold. Progressing in this course, he passes into a third stage, degree, or condition, in which his mind and body are irregular, unsteady, and really enfeebled, although they may be violent and seemingly over-active. Now his animal temperature has become reduced, with near approach to narcotism or coma. In due course the fourth or final stage of complete dead drunkenness is developed, when the body, but for the unconscious movements of the heart and respiration, lies practically dead, as unconscious to all that is going on around it as it can ever be.

The writer traces the growth of mental aberrations and mental diseases which result from inebriety. Those who commit suicide when mad with drink do it at and under peculiar seasons and circumstances. If the season be hot, people become thirsty, and drink more, so that the suicidal tendency exhibits a period of great activity. At Christmas, when, as Carlyle once said, " men celebrate the birth of their Redeemer by petting drunk," with the joviality and hilarity ther« comes an increase of suicide. " When the curve of mortality from suicide rises, the curve of the increase of revenue derived from Toxioopolis is a tower of strength to the Revenue Department." The most serious failure of vital power met with in Toxioopolis is still to be told. It lies in the general weakness, and, technically expressed, the "asthenia" of the place. The inhabitants are given to congratulate themselves that among them there are no miserable, pale faces. Unfortunately these rubicund and shining faces common to the place are even worse specimens of health than many of the paler sort. The pale face may be quite a healthy face; the red or rosaceous face> with the nose conspicuously tinted, is never a healthy face. The spare, pale man, though a weak man, may live on, because he lives out and out in every part equally. Those rubicund bodies, on the other hand, are not equally sound. At last we come to the moral of the whole matter. Dr. Richardson's Toxicopolis is not altogether Utopian : he does not conclude by saying, "Which things are an allegory." In divided parts and sections the city exists in all it 3 gross reality. "I have tried," he says in conclusion, " to bring the parts into one, that the mind may take in the whole, and, thinking over it, ask whether such a place need to be nt all in little or in great proportions ? Whether for human necessities or human wants, setting aside human harmful desires, such a place as Toxioopolis is required for any sane purpose whatever'/ Whether for the sake of the persons who live in it, for them alone and their best interests, without a thought for anyone else, it were not the wisest policy to raze this city of destruction to the earth, and in Roman fashion pass the ploughshare over its foundations 1" '■