Abstinence (alcohol)

“ In England it is recognized that total abstinence is a necessity where great exertions are concerned, and it is now beyond all question that alcohol, in even so-called dietetic quantities, diminishes the output of muscular work, both in quantity and quality, and that the best physical results are obtained under total abstinence from its use. ”

“ They shut their eyes to the most obvious facts, and do not hesitate in their blindness to misrepresent the most obvious truths. They affirm that under the influence of total abstinence and, by inference, because of total abstinence, the yearly decreasing death-rate of the population is accompanied by reduction of vitality; that people who live long are more enfeebled than those who live short lives and merry; that under abstinence from alcohol fearful diseases are being developed; that the total abstainers have less power for resisting disease than the moderate temperate ”

“ The effect of alcohol upon the kidneys can only be described as disastrous. In proportion as the kidney shrinks, there is a diminution of the excretion of urine, and, finally, the condition known as Bright’s disease is established.
The Effect of Alcohol on the Muscular System.—The muscular tissue forms 43 per cent. of the body weight. It has been proved that under the moderate use of alcohol the muscles become flabby and less vigorous and effective; that troops cannot work or march on alcohol; that in training for athletics, for races, or for other sports, total abstinence is always practised ”

“ Comparing the experience of the treatment of acute rheumatic disease without alcohol with that which I have previously observed with alcohol, I can have no hesitation in declaring that it is of the greatest advantage to follow total abstinence absolutely in this disease. The pain and swelling of joints is more quickly relieved under abstinence, the fever falls more rapidly, there is less frequent relapse, and there is quicker recovery. ”

“ Yet society has continually maintained that when encountering the alcoholic it has crime, not disease, to deal with. Hence the crudely ineffective idea of penalization as a preventive.
In general the nearest approach which has been made toward physiological treatment—beyond, of course, the mere “sobering up” in an occasional hospital of patients made delirious by drink—has not been through medicine, but regimen, and this regimen has invariably included sudden enforced abstinence. This remedy is worse than the disease. ”

“ Therefore, I appeal to the young and the old, to try abstinence for the very reasons they now use alcohol—in order to increase their power of work and their enjoyment of life. Let the young make the experiment of working on water only. Alcohol slowly corrupts and certainly retards the activity of the brain of the greater number of men. They will be able to do all they have to do more swiftly. ”

“ The point upon which they were all agreed was that alcohol is injurious to children, and if the boy has been accustomed from his early youth to do without it, and, as he grows up, remains a total abstainer, there is no question that his abstinence will prove a great safeguard; though I cannot go as far as some of my abstaining friends, who seem to regard the use of alcohol as the root of what must, in the nature of things, be one of the strongest primal passions of human nature, and therefore liable to abuse, whether men are total abstainers or not. ”

“ The labourer who has a drinking bout at intervals is thoroughly nauseated; and the condition of liver and stomach induced, enforces abstinence on him for a time sufficient to bring his organs back to a normal condition; while the city merchant who indulges more moderately, but whose organs are almost continuously impregnated with alcohol, becomes gouty and prematurely old.
The Stomach may become acutely inflamed, when a large dose of alcohol is taken. ”

“ Someone must have discovered alcohol; and my teetotal friends would probably say, invented it, for they cannot attribute so diabolical an agency to the action of purely natural causes. But even those who least sympathize with "the lean and sallow abstinence" would scarcely maintain that alcohol has been an unmixed blessing to the race. ”

“ And that which doctors now have discovered and are publishing as a warning to people, that has ever been known in occult science, and one of the conditions of giving the details of the methods whereby that body may be rendered active, has been abstinence from alcohol, and for the simplest reason. So long as you are not using any of these methods, it does not so very much matter whether that body be poisoned or not. You may live long with a poisoned pituitary body ”

“ Newell Martin says:—
"A vast number of persons suffer from alcoholic dyspepsia without knowing its cause; people who were never drunk in their lives and consider themselves very temperate. Abstinence from alcohol, the cause of the trouble, is the true remedy." ”

“ If any man, therefore, is resolved to carry out total abstinence strictly, he must refuse every sort of vegetable food, even bread itself; for all such diet contains more or less of alcohol.
Sir James Paget, in the article already referred to, asserts that the habitual moderate use of alcoholic drinks is generally beneficial, and that, in the question raised between temperance and abstinence, the verdict should be in favour of temperance. ”

“ Having no teetotal tendencies, and believing that to take a pledge of total abstinence from alcohol is simply a piece of puritanical absurdity, which, if carried out in all cases where temptation presents itself, would result in an abnegation of the will itself, I, nevertheless, could not help being struck with the astounding fact, that in the first four inquests held promiscuously in one day, every case of death was clearly caused, either directly or indirectly, by the vice of intoxication. ”

“ He is a strong believer in the value of total abstinence as promoting robust health of body and mind. He regards the value of alcohol in disease as exceedingly small, and prescribes it only very rarely. He thinks that alcohol increases the activity of cancer and other malignant growths, an opinion which is of great importance from one with such exceptional opportunities for observation in these complaints. ”

“ Among the poisons which must be kept out of the body should be mentioned habit-forming drugs, such as opium, morphine, cocain, heroin, chloral, acetanilid, alcohol, caffein, and nicotin. The best rule for those who wish to attain the highest physical and mental efficiency is total abstinence from all substances which contain poisons, including spirits, wine, beer, tobacco, many much-advertised patent drinks served at soda-water fountains, most patent medicines, and even coffee and tea. ”

“ In such instances there is a dread of eating on account of suffering, with hunger because of the poverty of the blood and the gaunt wasting of the body from inanition. Yet the normal craving for food in a state of semi-starvation is held by our doctor as identical with the abnormal craving for alcohol by the diseased nervous system of the drunkard! The true remedy for the craving of the drunkard is complete abstinence from alcohol. Does Dr. Oswald, to carry out his parallel, recommend entire abstinence from food as a cure for the hummer of dyspepsia? ”

“ There is no doubt that it has exercised a strong influence on public opinion and on the whole in the direction of temperance. A great change of attitude has taken place and is still going on. The ill-effects of excessive drinking, especially of distilled spirits, have long been recognized, but the tendency now is to question whether any alcohol-containing drinks are of any value at all and to deny any valid distinction between distilled and fermented liquors. Medical abstinence societies have been formed in England, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Anyhow, though a lad can be trained to strict moderation, abstinence in both alcohol and tobacco must after a time come of the lad's own free will; the last thing that answers is to multiply and enforce restrictions; the rebound is inevitable and often fatal. ”

“ Anstie's conclusion from such evidence, and from a very large hospital experience, is that, beyond all possibility of doubt, pure alcohol, with the addition of only a small quantity of water, will prolong life greatly beyond the period at which it would cease if no nourishment is given; that, during the progress of acute diseases, it very commonly supports not only life, but also the bulk of the body, during many days of abstinence from common foods ”

“ The Commission has given a great many no doubt worthy persons the opportunity of airing in public their individual opinions on the folly or wisdom of total abstinence, on the exact number of ounces of alcohol it is wise to consume in a day, and on other equally absorbing themes. ”

“ He also describes hallucinatory delirious conditions due to abstinence which strongly suggest alcoholism. In addition to clouded states of the same kind, Paton [225] speaks of the early occurrence, in chronic cases, of marked symptoms of hysteria. Apprehension and anxiety develop with mild suspicions and a moral deterioration very similar to that induced by alcohol. ”

“ The Medical Profession and Alcohol. An Address before the British Medical Association. 12mo, 33 pages. Paper 10
It is a scientific plea for total abstinence, of great power. It embodies also a very earnest appeal to members of the medical profession to join in the pending vitally important warfare against alcoholic beverages. It is a most valuable publication to place in the hands of the physicians of this country, among whom it should have the widest possible circulation. ”

“ Ray, in his treatise on Medical Jurisprudence, says, that, though it most commonly occurs in habitual drinkers, after a few days of total abstinence from spirituous liquors, it may be the immediate effect of an excess or series of excesses in those who are not habitually intemperate as well as in those who are. ”

“ It is a great mistake to suppose that abstinence from concentrated alcoholic liquors could atone for the habitual use of other stimulants. The vices of our ancestors were gross, but one-sided; ours are more manifold, and in their effects more comprehensive. ”

“ The evidence which will gradually accumulate will, we hope, be sifted with much care, and will help to settle three disputed points. Will total abstinence for a time eradicate the desire for drink?—a question upon which the evidence of prisoners is by no means hopeful. Does total abstinence develop, as many affirm, a tendency to the use of drugs such as opium and ether?—a doubt suggested by the mass of experience acquired in the East. ”

“ Total abstinence defies all danger and mocks at consequences. With it, we are safe; without it, in peril.
No man was ever born a drunkard; nor are we born with a natural taste or thirst for alcoholic drinks, any more than we are born with an appetite for aloes, assafœtida, or any other drug or medicine. ”

“ Second or third attacks very seldom end in recovery unless they arise from alcoholic excess, when entire abstinence for a sufficient length of time affords fair hope of a favorable result, except in cases of long-standing drunkenness. ”

“ Even if the stomach does not at once eject the poison, it refuses to adopt it as food, for it does not pass along with the other food material, as chyme, into the intestines, but is seized by the absorbents, borne into the veins, which convey it to the heart, whence the pulmonary artery conveys it to the lungs, where its presence is announced in the breath. But wherever alcohol is carried in the tissues, it is always an irritant, every organ in turn endeavoring to rid itself of the noxious material. ”

“ For example, a man may get drunk once a month, and at the end of a dozen years he seems scarcely touched by the vice; although, as the physiologist has shown us, upon each indulgence the lining coat of the stomach is strangely inflamed, and changed in appearance; indeed, for three or four days after each debauch the mucous lining of the stomach continues to exude a matter which closely resembles pus. Besides these marked and apparently alarming effects, it is well known that alcohol is a powerful poison to every tissue of the body, especially to the nerve ”

“ And what makes the danger more fearful is, that the brain-cells never are so renewed but that this pernicious stimulus will bring back the disease in full force, so that a man once subject to it is never safe except by maintaining perpetual and total abstinence from every kind of alcoholic drink. ”

“ It is not possible that our youth will not miss to acquire much important information, such as that "wine is a good servant if well [Pg 442] used"; that total abstinence is a regimen only to be pursued by advice of a physician; that the vast majority of human beings can and do partake moderately of alcoholic liquors, not only without injurious consequences, but with positive benefit ”

“ Dodge, "institutions for the reception of inebriates, where total abstinence can be rigidly, but judiciously enforced for a sufficient length of time, to test the curative powers of absolute restraint from all intoxicating drinks. When the craving for stimulants is irresistible, it is useless to make an attempt to reclaim and cure the drunkard, unless the detention is compulsory, and there is complete restraint from all spirituous or alcoholic stimulants." ”