Alcohol

“ Daily experience convinces us that the same quantity of alcohol, applied to the stomach under the form of natural wine, and in a state of mixture with water, will produce very different effects upon the body, and to an extent which it is difficult to comprehend; it has, for instance, been demonstrated that Port, Madeira, and Sherry, contain from one-fourth to one-fifth their bulk of alcohol, so that a person who takes a bottle of either of them, will thus take nearly half a pint of alcohol, or almost a pint of pure brandy! ”

“ A careful survey of the contents of a well-appointed modern pharmacy leads to the conclusion that there is no one indispensable medicinal preparation which requires alcohol as a free constituent.
“The catalogue of modern remedies is almost endless, and many of them hold alcohol in some form; but every intelligent physician knows that 90 per cent. of these alleged remedies have little or no intrinsic value. The nostrums of the quack, the bitters, elixirs, cordials, extracts, etc. nearly all contain alcohol, and this is the ingredient which aids their sale. ”

“ As a beverage the use of alcohol, particularly in excess, is attended with definite and well-known dangers.”—Dr. A. A. Eshner, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates in Medicine.
“I agree with you altogether in your agitation against the use of alcohol in any form. I believe that wine is a mocker, and belief in wine as a benefit, mockery.”—Dr. Mathew Woods, Philadelphia, Pa.
“It is extremely seldom that I ever advise the use of alcohol in any form for my patients.”—Elliot P. Joslin, M. D., Professor in Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass. ”

“ It might have been ground and made into barley-cakes, or into pearl barley to thicken our soups, and then it would have been good food. Now, it is a drink containing alcohol, and alcohol is a poison.
You should not drink beer, because there is alcohol in it.
Two boys of the same age begin school [48] together. One of them drinks wine, cider, and beer. The other never allows these drinks to pass his lips. These boys soon become very different from each other, because one is poisoning his body and mind with alcohol, and the other is not.
A man wants a good, steady boy to work for him. ”

“ All alcoholics are intoxicating in just the degree that they contain alcohol. The exhilaration of wine is but the first step of intoxication, and that means always an accompanying lack of judgment, a lessening of the sense of propriety. ”

“ Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. ”

“ The paralyzing action of alcohol is not generally produced by less than half a wine-glassful of brandy or whisky, or twice that quantity of wine, and often much more is required. The relief to uneasy sensations which much smaller quantities sometimes produce is due to their anæsthetic or benumbing action, by which the nerves of the patient are rendered less sensible, although the danger is by no means diminished. ”

“ The ruling stimulant of the world today is not the coffee, tea, beer nor even whisky—but the innocent-looking, pleasant-tasting, alluring white powder known as sugar. Its stimulating power is greater than that of the alcohol, because it is the parent and generator of the alcohol. ”

“ I rarely or never prescribe alcohol as a medicament or a food, or sanction its use as a beverage. Physiologically I look upon alcohol as a narcotic, with perhaps a primary stimulating effect, but I believe that such desired action as it is capable of producing can be equally well brought about by other agents. ”

“ You say whiskey, but it may have been wine, or beer, or hard cider that he drank. Anything that contains alcohol will make a man drunk, for it is the alcohol which does all the mischief.
3. The Whiskey Flush.—You can almost always tell when a man has been drinking, even when he has not taken enough to make him drunk. You know by his flushed face and red eyes. When a man's face blushes from the use of alcohol, his whole body blushes at the same time. His muscles, his lungs, and his liver blush; his brain and spinal cord blush also. ”

“ It is as a sedative that alcohol is so insidious and seductive in cases of chronic disease, as, if frequently resorted to, the drink craving is almost certainly developed. Hence the importance in many cases of rather bearing the ills we have than of flying to others that we know not of. ”

“ Indeed, thousands of those who advocate the prohibition of the sale of [Pg 97] liquor as a beverage, use alcohol in some form quite freely as medicine, and are as determined and earnest in defence of their favorite “tipple” as any old toper could well be. Many use it in the guise of cordials, tonics, bitters, restoratives and the thousand and one nostrums guaranteed to cure all ills to which human flesh is heir. ”

“ And yet, strange to say, men of good sense, clear judgment and quick perception in all moral questions and in the general affairs of life, are often so blind, or infatuated here, as to affirm that this substance, alcohol, which they use under the various forms of wine, brandy, whisky, gin, ale or beer, is not only harmless, when taken in moderation—each being his own judge as to what "moderation" means—but actually useful and nutritious! ”

“ Chemistry seems to agree with the temperance society, that wine, beer, brandy, gin, whiskey, and rum are alcohol and water, mixed in different proportions, and with some slight differences of flavoring and coloring matter. In all these drinks, teetotalers maintain, alcohol is power, the other ingredients being mere dilution and flavoring. Wine, they assure us, is alcohol and water flavored with grapes; beer is alcohol and water flavored with malt and hops; Bourbon whiskey is alcohol and water flavored with corn. ”

“ The first appreciable effect of the alcohol after entering the blood is that of an anæsthetic; that is, it diminishes the sensibility of the brain and nerve structures, in the same direction as ether and chloroform. And, as the brain is the material seat of man’s consciousness, the alcohol renders him less conscious of cold or heat, of weariness or pain, and less conscious of his own weight or of any external resistance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It nourishes him, and the alcohol it contains, of so small a quantity as to be absolutely harmless, invigorates him and causes the too often miserable surroundings to appear bright and cheerful. Contentedly he smokes his pipe, chats sociably with his wife, and forgets for awhile the many long days of hard work in store for him. ”

“ In consequence of the temporary relief so obtained, the patient develops a craving for alcohol, which in many cases can end only in one way, and, as I felt compelled to tell an assembly of ladies a short time ago, the very symptoms for the alleviation of which alcohol is usually taken are those, the presence of which renders it exceedingly desirable that alcohol should not be taken."—Dr. ”

“ An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association said:
“The fallacy of the reasoning which would place alcohol among the foods is very apparent when we put it in the form of a syllogism: All foods are oxidized in the body; alcohol is oxidized in the body; therefore alcohol is food. ”

“ It is by its sedative action that alcohol has obtained its position in public opinion. It will render persons insensible to various uneasy sensations, and the majority prefer to continue the bad habits which produce the uneasy sensations, and then to take them away by a dose or two of some alcoholic liquor, or, indeed, to take this before the uneasy sensations come on. ”

“ We urge the chemical truth that the alcohol, given to promote support, is of such a nature as to prevent that which would nourish, from effecting the end so much to be desired, and for which true food is adapted. ”

“ If alcohol had become a candidate for recognition years ago instead of centuries ago it is safe to say that its application in medicine would have been very much more limited than we find it at the present time. ”

“ The one real value of alcohol, we have said, lies in its temporary mental effects. It raises the hedonic tone of consciousness; it brings about, when taken in proper amounts, the well-known happy-go-lucky, scruple-free, expansive state of mind. ”

“ French and German specialists have denounced spirits both as a beverage and a medicine, and shown by actual demonstration that alcohol is a poison and a depressant, and that any therapeutic action it is assumed to have is open to question. ”

“ In the treatment of diseases of women, alcohol has been considered a very important remedy. Because it affords relief from pain, many resort to its use during painful menstruation. Each month either whisky, or some medicine containing a liberal supply of alcohol, is considered a necessity. ”

“ Professor Martin states that blood containing 1⁄4 per cent, by volume of absolute alcohol, almost invariably diminishes, within a minute, the work done by the heart." (This estimate would equal in an adult man an amount equal to the absolute alcohol in two or three ounces of whisky or brandy.) ”

“ We shall learn, as we study the influence of alcohol upon the human system, that one of its most subtle characteristics is the progressive appetite for itself (p. 185) which it induces, an appetite which, in many cases, is formed long before its unhappy subject is aware of his danger. The intelligent pupil, who knows how to reason from cause to effect, needs hardly to be told, in view of this physical truth, of the peril that lies in the first draught of any fermented liquor, even though it be so seemingly harmless as a glass of home-brewed beer or "slightly-beaded" cider. ”

“ The use of alcohol as a beverage or therapeutically, is in either case a habit of the user. The stimulation is but temporary, the reaction leaving the nerve cells of the individual with less resisting power than before the ingestion of alcohol. ”

“ Whether the alcohol be in the form of whisky or brandy or gin or in such milder forms as wines, beers, and hard cider, the continued use of even a small quantity acts adversely on the memory, on the will, on the intellect, on the inventive power, and on all the mental processes. It has a deteriorating effect on all the muscular tissue throughout the body, and while this is sufficiently deplorable, its effect on the mind is by far the more serious. ”

“ It is only because alcohol possesses this combination of properties, by which it operates on various organs, and affects several functions in different ways at one and the same time, that its potency is so dreadful, and its influence so fascinating, when once the appetite is thoroughly depraved by its use. ”

“ Medical men who doubt the value of spirits are no more considered fanatics or extremists, but as leaders along new and wider lines of research. Alcohol in medicine, except as a narcotic and anaesthetic, is rapidly falling into disfavor, and will soon be put aside and forgotten. ”

“ What is the difference between the alcohol present in beer and cider, and that in gin and whiskey? Name another dangerous effect of alcoholic drinks. What business consideration should deter young men from liquor drinking?
141-143. Illustrate the general effect of alcohol upon the circulation. Upon the heart. Is alcohol a stimulant or a narcotic? Describe how alcohol becomes the "Genius of Degeneration." ”

“ The cells and tissues of the body which are touched by alcohol are more or less hardened and injured by it, hence are less perfectly nourished than they are when alcohol is not present in the blood. Even a teaspoonful of alcohol to a 1⁄2 gallon of water hinders natural growth. ”

“ The more the drinker takes, the more he often wants, and thus he goes on from drinking cider, wine, or beer, to drinking whiskey, brandy, or rum. Thus drunkards are made.
People who are in the habit of taking drinks which contain alcohol, often care more for them than for any thing else, even when they know they are being ruined by them. ”

“ The principal active agent in all of these remedies was {93} found to be alcohol. In most of them it exists in a proportion about equal to that in which it is supposed to occur in ordinary whiskey. Some of them are even stronger in alcoholic contents than the whiskey usually sold in our large cities. ”

“ Alcohol, which, from its portable qualities, containing the greatest quantity of fiery spirit in the smallest compass, is the only liquor carried across the mountains, is the inflammatory beverage at these carousals, and is dealt out to the trappers at four dollars a pint. ”

“ The majority of medical men, without making any searching investigation into the abundant recent literature upon the subject of alcohol, are disposed to regard it with less and less favor as the years go by, while those who have closely followed the thorough investigations into the physiological action of alcohol recently made by scientists, have repudiated it altogether. ”

“ Long before this committee began work the leading physicians of every enlightened country, the men to whom the entire profession looks for guidance, had declared against the use of alcohol both in health and in disease.
IS ALCOHOL A DRINK! One reason why all the greatest physicians believed it harmful was because it had been found that alcohol was not a drink. The most abundant substance found in the human body, is water. About 130 pounds of the weight of a 160-pound person is water, "Quite enough if rightly arranged to drown him." ”