Joseph Cook

“ As a giant would toss about a straw, so the waves handle the wrecked timbers. Night gathers her black mists into the rifted clouds, and the strong moaning sound of the storm is heard on the dark ocean. By that glare of lightning I saw a sail and a life-boat! Men from another ship are risking their lives to save the insane crew whose masts are gone. They come nearer, but the boat bounds and quivers, and is nearly swamped upon the top of a wave. Jack Courage and Independence see the boat coming. "Ship ahoy," shout the deliverers. "Life-boat from the ship Temperance! ”

“ It is to be remembered that, by the law of local affinity, the dose of alcohol is not diffused throughout the system, but is concentrated in its chief effects upon a single organ. When a man drinks moderately, though the effects might be minute if dispersed through the whole body, yet they may be powerful when most of them are gathered upon the brain. ”

“ In a wiser generation than ours the haughty men who will not speak themselves of the relations of religion and science, and will not allow others to speak—veritable dogs in the manger—will be turned as dogs out of the manger. I speak very strongly, for I have an indignation that can not be expressed when it is said that men who join hands with physicians, and are surrounded by experts to teach them the facts, have no right to make inferences. Men educated and put into professorships to discuss as a specialty the relation of religion and science have no right to discuss these themes! ”

“ Whatever is a disorganizer of the brain is a disorganizer of mind, and whatever is a disorganizer of mind is a disorganizer of society. It is from this point of view that the right of Government to prevent the manufacture of madmen and paupers can be best seen. ”

“ It is a thoroughly scientific and impartial discussion of the subject of the moderate use of alcoholic beverages, by one who stands in the front rank of the most distinguished scientists in Great Britain, and as such possesses a rare value for circulation among the young, and all who may not yet have arrived at mature convictions as to total abstinence. It is one of the most valuable contributions its gifted author has yet made to temperance literature. It ought to be in the hands of all college students, and of young men, ministers, teachers, and intelligent people everywhere. ”

“ The experimenters agree with the majority of physicians that, in the army and navy, and for use among healthy persons, alcohol, even as a ration strictly limited to a moderate quantity, is physiologically useless and generally harmful.
Upon different portions of the brain the action of alcohol can be distinctly traced by medical science and even by common observation. The brain, it will be remembered, is divided into three parts. ”

“ It is not to the whole body that a moderate glass goes; it is chiefly to its most important part—the brain; and not to the whole brain, but to its most important part—the seat of the higher mental and moral powers ”

“ Friendship and Parental Love rail at thoughts of affection. Language trumpets his easy yarns and grows garrulous as the timbers crack one after another. Rage and Revenge are now the true names of Firmness and Courage. ”

“ After moderate drinking you feel the heart beating faster, to be sure, but it beats more rapidly because of the paralysis of the delicate nerves connected with the arteries, and because of the consequent arterial relaxation. The blood meets with less resistance in passing through the relaxed circulatory organs, and so, with no additional force in the heart, that organ beats more rapidly. It beats faster simply because it has less force to overcome. The quickened pulse is a proof of disease and not of health. (See Dr. Richardson, Cantor Lectures on Alcohol.) ”

“ That is because the little nerves that help constrict and keep up the proper tone of the circulating organs, are temporarily paralyzed. A permanent blush in the face of a drunkard indicates a permanent injury to the blood vessels by alcohol. The varicose vein is often produced in this way by the paralysis of some of the nerves that are connected with the fine parts of the circulatory organs. When the face blushes permanently in the drunkard the injury revealed is not a local one, but is inflicted on every organ throughout the whole system. ”

“ Not a man at the pumps, not an arm at the helm. Having destroyed their friends, the crew fall upon each other. Close under their bow rave the breakers of a rocky shore, but they hear it not. At intervals they seem to realize their condition, and their power even yet to save themselves, but they make no effort. ”

“ All science is agreed that the local affinity of alcohol, like that of opium, prussic acid, hashish, belladonna, etc., is for the brain.
16. The brain is the organ of the mind, and the temple and instrument of conduct and character. ”

“ Still lower is the medulla oblongata, which presides over the nerves of respiration. Now the action of alcohol can be distinctly marked upon the different parts of the brain. The moral and intellectual faculties are first jarred out of order in the progress of intoxication. The tippler laughs and sings, is talkative and jocose, coarse or eloquent to almost any degree according to his temperament. The cerebrum is first affected. His judgment becomes weak; he is incapable of making a good bargain, or of defending his own rights intelligently, but he does not yet stagger ”

“ The blood of the land, to speak of money under that title, is thrown into Wall Street as the blood of the body is thrown into the head, and so in Wall Street, we have our men on the watch to tell us whether the currency is in a healthy or unhealthy state. ”

“ It is as true of scars on the brain and nervous system as of those on any less important parts of the body, that they will not wash out, nor grow out.
3. Scars on the brain or nervous system may be made by physical or mental habits, and are the basis of the self-propagative power of habits.
4. When the scars or grooves in which a habit runs are made deep, the habit becomes automatic or self-acting and perhaps involuntary.
5. The grooves worn or scars made by good and bad habits may be inherited. ”

“ These sprouts shoot out of the red discs, and he tells you that, after having been called before jury after jury as an expert, sometimes in cases where life was at stake, he has studied alcoholized blood, and that a certain kind of spore, a peculiar kind of sprout, which you have seen here, he never saw except in the veins of a confirmed drunkard. I think the day is coming when, by microscopic examination of the blood discs, we can tell what disease a man has inherited or acquired—if it be one of that kind which takes hold of the circulatory fluid. ”

“ Scars in the flesh do not wash out nor grow [Pg 7] out, but, in spite of the change of all the particles of the body, are accurately reproduced without alteration by the flux of its particles.
Let us begin with an incontrovertible proposition. Everybody knows that the scars of childhood are retained through life, and that we are buried with them. But we carry into the grave no particle of the flesh that we had in youth. All the particles of the body are in flux and are changed every few years. There is, however, something in us that persists. ”

“ It is here that we should speak decidedly of the evil effects of moderate drinking. Men may theorize as they please, but practically there is in average experience no such thing as a moderate dose of alcohol. People drink it to produce an effect. ”

“ When the drunkard who has had an inflamed stomach, is the father of a child that brings into the world with it an inflamed stomach, you have a case of the transmission of alcoholic scars.
6. While self-control lasts, a bad habit is a vice; when self-control is lost, a bad habit is a disease.
7. When a bad habit becomes a disease, the [Pg 9] treatment of it belongs to physicians ”

“ In this circumstance, and in the inerasibility of the scars produced by the local affinity of [Pg 14] alcohol for the brain, the principle of total abstinence finds its justification by science.
Nothing in science is less questioned than the law of local affinities, by which different substances taken into the system exert their chief effect at particular localities. Lead, for example, fastens first upon the muscles of the wrist, producing what is known among painters and white-lead manufacturers as a wrist-drop. ”

“ The lesson against tampering with beer or strong drink, either the drinking, making, or vending of it, is of a most impressive character, and is admirably adapted to win and hold the reader's interest, and to create and strengthen good resolutions. ”

“ Here within the cranium, in this narrow chamber, so small that a man's hand may span it, and upon this sheet of cerebral matter, which, if dilated out, would not cover a surface of over six hundred square inches, is the point of union between spirit and matter. ”

“ The slightest alteration is felt there, because [Pg 13] the currency there is accumulated, and so in the brain the slightest injury of the blood is felt first, because here is accumulated the currency of the system.
14. Most poisons and medicines act in the human system according to a law of local affinity, by which their chief force is expended on particular organs, and sometimes on particular spots of particular organs. ”

“ They take enough to "fire up," as they say, and unless that effect is produced they are not satisfied. They will have enough to raise their spirits, or dissipate gloom. And this is enough to impair judgment, and in the course of years perhaps to ruin fortune, body, and soul. ”

“ The lectureship at the Union Theological Seminary in New York has no right to teach on these themes. There is getting to be a tolerably large company of us who are intending to look into these matters at the point of the microscope and the scalpel. ”