BY ACTUAL PROOF.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 44, 31 October 1891, Page 542

BY ACTUAL PROOF.

Dr. B. W. Richardson, the noted physician, says that he was once enabled to preach an effectual temperance lecture by means of a scientific experiment. An acquaintance was singing the praises of wine, and declared that he could not get through the day without it. ‘ Will you be good enough to feel my pulse, as I stand here ?’ asked Doctor Richardson. The man did so. ‘ Count it carefully. What does it say?’ * Seventy-four.’ The physician then went and lay down on a sofa, and asked the gentleman to count his pulse again. ‘ It has gone down to sixty-four, he said, in astonishment. ‘ What an extraordinary thing !’ • When you lie down at night,’ said the physician, ‘ that is the way nature takes to give your heart rest. You may know nothing about it, but the organ is resting to that extent ; and if you reckon the rate, it involves a good deal of rest, because, in lying down, the heart is doing ten strokes less a minute. ‘ Multiply that by sixty, and it is six hundred ; multiply it by eight hours and, within a fraction, there is a difference of five thousand strokes ; and as the heart is throwing six ounces of blood at every stroke, it makes a difference of thirty thousand ounces of life during the night. When I lie down at night without any alcohol, that is the rest my heart gets. ‘ But when I take wine or grog, I do not allow that rest, for the influence of alcohol is to increase the number of strokes. Instead of getting repose, the man who uses alcohol puts on something like fifteen thousand extra strokes, and he rises quite unfit for the next day’s work, until he has taken a little more of that “ruddy bumper,” which he calls “ the soul of man below. ” ’