Historical and General Facts About Liquor Revealed by Group of Books in Baker Library--Opinions Differ Widely

"The History of Liquor", from the time when Noah planted a vineyard to the controversy over the eighteenth amendment, is the title of a collection of books, pamphlets, and drawings which has recently been presented to the Baker Library of the Business School.

Many phases of the subject are represented, from the milk posset receipt of Sir Walter Raleigh to information for making malt liquor at home, so that any persons might have it "strong, fine, and aged, at their own Discretion" from a book "In Praise of Drunkenness" to such anti-alcoholic tracts as the following extract, concerned with naval morals:

"Seamen their spirits so inflame.

Scare able for to steer:

So thousands perish in the main.

Large numbers every year."

One of the masterpieces of the collection is a book entitled "The Anatomy of Drunkenness." It is by Dr. Robert Macnish of Glasgow, who claims to describe all stages of infoxication from "the delightful stage when one is neither drunk nor sober" to the eventual possibility of spontaneous combustion in extreme cases. This phenomenon was of frequent occurence, according to many authorities besides the Glasgow doctor whose works are in the collection. The burning, to quote from Dr. Macnish again, was of two varieties. "Sometimes the body is consumed by an open fiante flickering over it at other times there is merely a smothered heat without any visible flame." Dr. Macnish was inclined to be lieve that "brandy kills soonest, rum is next in point of fatality, and after that whiskey and gin."