Alcohol abuse

“ 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. ”

“ We seldom have to do more than confirm the patient's suspicions in this direction, and recommend temporary abstinence from the cigarette or pipe and greater care in the future. With alcohol it is a different matter. Alcoholism grows by what it feeds on, and our best efforts are often vain. The present is hardly an occasion for dwelling on this subject—the duty of the profession to their patients and friends in respect of the abuse of alcohol. ”

“ In order to war against this abuse, they earnestly appeal to the officers having charge of funds for the sick, henceforth, under no circumstances, any longer to permit the prescription of wine, whisky and brandy for sick members; but to resist to the utmost, according to the right given them by the laws insuring the sick, the taking of spirituous liquors, under the false pretext that they have a curative and strengthening effect."
Dr. Bleuler, Rheineau, Switzerland, says:—
"The treatment of chronic diseases with alcohol is contrary to our knowledge of the physiological effects of alcohol. ”

“ Alcohol, coffee, and tea are especially injurious to children. The celebrated German clinician, Strümpell, writes as follows in the Pædagogical Pathology: “Among the acute as well as chronic intoxications—which can be the cause not only of a temporary, but also of a prolonged psychopathic condition,—intoxication by alcohol, and by stimulants generally, plays the greatest rôle. Such abuse is especially noxious to children, and causes an enormous number of diseases with psychopathic results.” ”

“ Across our country, millions of Americans suffer from the debilitating effects of alcohol and drug abuse. Substance abuse shatters lives, divides families, and robs people of their promise and potential. ”

“ We understand by alcoholism the social phenomenon which consists of the chronic abuse of alcoholic beverages.181 Before touching upon the etiology of this phenomenon we must decide the biological question, why does a man consume alcohol? Always and everywhere it has been established that the liking for narcotics is natural to man. Those who believe that human nature is inclined to evil, and that the tendency to excess is innate, find the solution of the problem very simple. ”

“ The Abuse of Alcohol.—Several writers have remarked that habitual drinkers are more likely to be affected than those who used spirits moderately or not at all. It is stated by the director of the work at Douchy9 that the attacks from which the men suffered were "almost always coincident with some excess committed in the interval of the shifts." It is easy to perceive that, as the disease is characterized by cerebral congestion, the abuse of alcohol, which has a tendency to produce the same result, would act as a predisposing cause. ”

“ Use and Abuse of Alcohol.
The evils caused by theiabuse of alcoholic liquors have always been recognized by mankind; they are too obvious to be ignored. Intoxication produces imbecility, bestiality, violence and crime; continued excess produces incapacity, Eovertfy, misery, disease, delirium, insanity and death. But all t ese e ects are produced b other causes and it is very difficult to estimate the precise share of, this particular agent. In modern times scientific investigation has attempted to do this and to give precision to the conclusions d;'al;1n from ordinary observation. ”

“ By reason of this contact with the effects of inebriety they learned many sad tales of ruined lives, blighted homes and lost souls, through the appetite for strong drink created, or aroused, by alcoholic prescription. They saw, as time passed, that some of the drunkards reclaimed through their influence lapsed again into their evil habits because a little beer, or wine, “for the stomach’s sake,” or some other sake, had been advised them. Some of the workers had this trouble in their own homes, husband, son or other relative enslaved to alcohol through prescription in disease. ”

“ They suffer ultimately from physical ailments, which surely follow the prolonged contact of alcoholic poison with the delicate structures of the body, many of a painful character, and shorten the term of their natural lives; but still they are able to drink without an increase of appetite so great as to reach an overmastering degree. They do not become abandoned drunkards.
NO MAN SAFE WHO DRINKS.
But no man who begins the use of alcohol in any form can tell what, in the end, is going to be its effect on his body or mind. ”

“ Whether they take a large quantity of liquor every day, or an immense quantity periodically, makes no great difference, the disease is essentially the same; the difficulties in the way of cure are the same; the remedial measures must be the same. A drunkard, in short, is a person so diseased by alcohol, that he cannot get through his work without keeping his system saturated with it, or without such weariness and irritation as furnish irresistible temptation to a debauch. ”

“ While differences are held on some points, as, for instance, whether drunkenness is a disease for which, after it has been established, the individual ceases to be responsible, and should be subject to restraint and treatment, as for lunacy or fever; a crime to be punished; or a sin to be repented of and healed by the Physician of souls, all agree that there is an inherited or acquired mental and nervous condition with many, which renders any use of alcohol exceedingly dangerous. ”

“ Consequently, we can see distinctly and with painful clearness that repeated indulgence in alcoholic stimulation, not necessarily extending to visible intoxication, must tend, by virtue of this law, to modify and mould the character. Under alcohol the individual becomes sanguine, reckless, careless of consequences, boastful, and indisposed to sober calculation; he also becomes self-assertive, arrogant, and boisterous; there exist a certain impulsiveness and impatience of control, and a distinct tendency to reach certain ends by violence, if other measures do not seem likely to be successful. ”

“ Thousands and tens of thousands, once wholly unconscious of danger from this source, go down yearly into drunkards' graves. There is no standard by which any one can measure the latent evil forces in his inherited nature. He may have from ancestors, near or remote, an unhealthy moral tendency, or physical diathesis, to which the peculiarly disturbing influence of alcohol will give the morbid condition in which it will find its disastrous life. That such results follow the use of alcohol in a large number of cases, is now a well-known fact in the history of inebriation. ”

“ It may arouse in a susceptible patient a dormant, inherited tendency to drink. He may, by authorizing its use during the period of convalescence, fix a habit upon a patient of feeble will, which the latter will never be able to shake off. No physician who realizes this great moral responsibility will be willing to accept it habitually. He certainly knows that the best medical authorities agree that alcoholic intoxicants are rarely useful as a medicine; that at best they are dangerous remedies, and that the less they are resorted to, the better for both brain and body. ”

“ Attacks of sickness.—A quondam inebriate should never employ a physician who drinks, and should always tell his medical attendant that he cannot take any medicine containing alcohol. It is very unsafe to resort to essence of ginger, paregoric, spirits of lavender or burnt brandy, and friends very injudiciously, sometimes, recommend remedies that are dangerous in the extreme. We saw one man driven into insanity by his employer recommending him a preparation of rhubarb, in Jamaica spirits, which he took with many misgivings, because, six years before he had been a drunkard. ”

“ I find one system of special horror in this treatment of inebriates—committing a man for three months, then for six months, and then for twelve. No more certain means could be devised to increase the harm done by alcohol to the community. Not only does this course fail to help the man in any measure whatsoever, but it increases the unspeakable harm which his misfortune must inflict upon his family. ”

“ The action of alcohol on the nervous tissues constitutes, in the eyes of the majority, the main injury that alcohol does to a human being. Certain it is that the action of alcohol on the brain does more to distort and pervert a man’s relationship with his environment than any other action which alcohol has on the body. It is through the poison of this organ that the personality of the individual is so changed and so poisoned that a degeneration of the individual in character and morals is brought about. ”

“ The disease of his patients arrested by special remedies or broken by an effort of nature, he too often commenced the administration of alcohol in some one or more of its disguised and attractive forms, in order to give tone and stimulus to the stomach and nerves, and as a general vitalizer and restorative. The evil consequences growing out of this almost universal prescription of alcohol, were of the most lamentable character, and thousands and tens of thousands of men and women were betrayed into drunkenness. ”

“ If we once admit (and unfortunately it cannot be denied) the bad influence of alcohol on bodily and mental health, in the form of spirits as well as of wine—as to which it is not correct to say that the southern departments are not consumers of alcohol—it cannot be maintained that alcohol, which is physically and morally injurious to individuals, is not hurtful to nations, which are but aggregates of individuals. ”

“ But in the brain of the inebriate are found not only the distinct odor but the actual presence of alcohol. Thus we plainly see how all these three vital conditions of a healthy brain are grossly violated by the use of intoxicants.
“I think there is a great deal of injury being done by the use of alcohol in what is supposed by the consumer to be a most moderate quantity, to persons who are not in the least intemperate, and to people supposed to be fairly well. It leads to degeneration of the tissues; it damages the health; it injures the intellect. ”

“ To stimulate a child's imagination by untruths about alcohol is as vicious as to stimulate his body with alcohol. Whisky drinking does not always lead to drunkenness, to physical incapacity, to short life, or to obvious loss of vitality. Beer drinking is not always objected to by employers. Neither crime, poverty, immorality, lack of ambition, nor ignorance can always be traced to alcohol. ”

“ One would suppose, from the marred and scarred, and sometimes awfully disfigured forms and faces of men who have indulged in intoxicating drinks, which are to be seen everywhere and among all classes of society, that there would be no need of other testimony to show that alcohol is an enemy to the body. ”

“ The recorded experience of men in all situations and climates, under all kinds of labor and exposure, prove that abstinence from alcoholic drinks gives increased ability to go through the labors of the farm and the workshop, to resist heat and cold, to encounter hardships on sea and land, beyond what has ever been done under the unnatural excitement of alcohol, followed, as it is, by depression and debility, if not by fever and disease. ”

“ Is it not evident, then, that in combating the use of alcohol we are attacking only one member of a numerous family of enemies to human life and happiness, every one of which must be exterminated before the evil of intemperance will be uprooted? ”

“ The secret of its success, however, is not any marvelous drug or other mode of treatment that is employed, but is because the victims of alcoholism are given an opportunity to retrieve their physical condition and then to brace up their moral characters so as to resist their craving for alcohol. ”

“ Since all this is true, wise children will let cider, lager, ale, wine, and every other kind of alcoholic drink alone, and never, NEVER,
"Put an enemy into their mouths,
To steal away their brains."
MORE ABOUT THE HARM DONE BY ALCOHOL.
In the lessons you have learned you have been taught about the harm done by alcohol to the body and the mind; can you tell, from what you have seen of drunken people, in what other way alcoholic liquors hurt them?—"They make people waste their money; they make them waste their time; they make them cross; they make them fight ”

“ We suppose they must die out, and be replaced by men less prejudiced and bound by the chain of alcoholic habit. We can only regret that they should be doing so much harm in fastening the fetters of drink on other people, and hindering their emancipation from the evil customs which play havoc amongst us.”—Medical Pioneer.
Alcohol and Children:—“Parents often labor under the delusion that alcoholic drinks are good for children and act as tonics. Mothers will put drops of brandy into the milk with which their children are fed, increasing the quantity with the age of the recipient. ”

“ When, at last, he reached land he told how the young prince and his sister had been drowned, and also a hundred and forty noble youths and girls, and the Captain and the fifty rowers, and everyone else on board except himself—all because of wine.
What a dangerous drink this alcohol is, and how many accidents it has caused! It sends the [92] brain to sleep so that it cannot do its work, and when that is the case we never know what dreadful thing may happen next.
When anything puts the brain to sleep, we call it narcotic. Alcohol is a narcotic poison. ”