A Common Stimulant

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 19, 1885

A Common Stimulant.

WHISKY is by no means the only dangerous stimulant. W. Mattieu Williams, in a recent number of the Popular Science Monthly, bears this significant testimony against a common stimulant on the tables of many temperate people:—

“Cayenne pepper may be selected as a typical example of a condiment, properly so called. Mustard is a food and condiment combined; this is the case with some others. Curry-powders are mixtures of very potent condiments with more or less of farinaceous materials, and sulphur compounds, which, like the oil of mustard, of onions, garlic, etc., may have a certain amount of nutritive value.

“The mere condiment is a stimulating drug that does its work directly upon the inner lining of the stomach, by exciting it to increased and abnormal activity. A dyspeptic may obtain immediate relief by using cayenne pepper. Among the advertised patent medicines is a pill bearing the very ominous name of its compounder, the active constituent of which is cayenne. Great relief and temporary comfort are commonly obtained by using it as a ‘dinner pill.’ If thus used only as a temporary remedy for an acute and temporary, or exceptional, attack of indigestion, all is well, but the cayenne, whether taken in pills or dusted over the food or stewed with it in curries or any otherwise, is one of the most cruel of slow poisons when taken habitually. Thousands of poor wretches are crawling miserably toward their graves, the victims of the multitude of maladies of both mind and body that are connected with chronic, incurable dyspepsia, all brought about by the habitual use of cayenne and its condimental cousins. The usual history of these victims is that they began by over-feeding, took the condiment to force the stomach to do more than its healthful amount of work, by using but little at first. The stomach then became tolerant of this little, and demanded more, then more, and more, and more, until at last inflammation, ulceration, torpidity, and finally the death of the digestive powers.”