Alcoholic

“ Meantime, the general rule is established by an incredible amount of experience and testimony, that alcoholic drinks, in no cases, are needed by those in health, and that the indulgence in drinking them awakens a gnawing thirst and longing for them, that leads the vast majority of those who use them, to disease, debility, poverty, folly, crime, and death. ”

“ While it may be true that an adult, of his own free will, and without incentive, or predisposing causes, does occasionally become a drunkard, I am convinced that nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every one thousand individuals who become drunkards are made so in embryo, infancy, or childhood, by the use of alcoholic decoctions, soothing syrups, opiates, calomel, etc. ”

“ Alcoholic liquors are, to my mind, not only not valuable, but distinctly disadvantageous, in the treatment of disease, except in rare instances, as for example in the initial chill of some acute infectious disease. ”

“ 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. In this way they do themselves injury and make themselves unconscious of it. ”

“ Apart from such universal prohibition of alcoholic beverages, the physician has to think of an alcoholic patient under his care as the possible victim of one or more or all of several coöperating influences conducing to intemperance. ”

“ Not many years ago a vast majority of medical men unhesitatingly affirmed, on scientific grounds, that the use of alcoholic drinks is beneficial and even necessary, and much ridicule was lavished on those who, relying upon personal taste and practical experience, took the contrary view. ”

“ Nothing is more false than the belief that the progressive dislodgement of other alcoholic drinks by beer will diminish the destructive influences of alcoholism. * * * It has been conclusively established by thousandfold experiments that soldiers in all climates, in heat, cold and rain, endure best the most fatiguing marches when they are absolutely deprived of alcoholic drinks.”—Prof. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the duty of medical men to direct more attention than formerly to the alcohol question, and by careful study to decide whether recent researches are justified or not in regarding alcohol and alcoholic beverages as a poison and one of the principal causes of degeneration in the human family ”

“ 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." ”

“ INTOXICATING DRINKS.—By all means avoid intoxicating drinks. Immorality and alcoholic stimulants, as we have shown, are intimately related to one another. Wine and strong drink inflame the blood, and heat the passions. ”

“ The most serious derangement is that of the nervous system, and the development in the young, under the influence of alcohol, of what is known as nervousness, to which is added the moral paralysis with which the habit of alcoholic drinking smites its victims in the very spring-time of life."—Prof. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not the drunkard's appetite that is transmitted, but the bias or proclivity which renders the subject of such an inherited tendency more susceptible to exciting causes, and therefore in greater danger from the use of alcoholic drinks than others. ”

“ Hundreds of medical men order alcoholic liquors from habit, from ignorance of their real effect, from fashion, or from a desire to please, or not to offend, their patients. Port-wine is constantly being ordered when persons are recovering from various diseases ”

“ The point we wish to make with the reader is, that no man can possibly know, until he has used alcoholic drinks for a certain period of time, whether he has or has not this hereditary or acquired physical or mental condition ”

“ Pure alcohol, or an excessive quantity of ardent spirits, is an undoubted poison, and has been frequently known to produce fatal results. Stimulants in moderate quantities have been thought to increase strength, and in this view they have been called "alcoholic foods." ”

“ The fact is worth investigation whether or not a liquor dealer who never drinks alcohol, but who lives for years in the presence of volatilised alcohol, has much of the alcoholic degeneracy and a tendency to beget neurotic children. ”

“ That they are a product of the brewery has caused them to be looked upon with suspicion by cautious people, but the multitude has apparently given no thought, or care, as to whether or not they may be alcoholic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since we know that in all fermented beverages there is present the same treacherous element, alcohol, we are truly wise only when we decline to measure arms in any way with an enemy so seductive in its advances, so insidious in its influence, and so terrible in its triumph. ”

“ People who take beer, wine, and cider get a little alcohol with each drink. Those who drink brandy, rum, whiskey, or gin, get more alcohol, because those liquors are nearly one half alcohol.
You may wonder that people wish to use such poisonous drinks at all. But alcohol is a deceiver. It often cheats the man who takes a little, into thinking it will be good for him to take more.
Sometimes the appetite which begs so hard for the poison, is formed in childhood. If you eat wine-jelly, or wine-sauce, you may learn to like the taste of alcohol and thus easily begin to drink some weak liquor. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Alcohol is doomed; it is going it is gone. Yet when I think of a hot Scotch on a winter evening, or a Tom Collins on a summer morning, or a gin Rickey beside a tennis-court, or a stein of beer on a bench beside a bowling-green—I wish somehow that we could prohibit the use of alcohol and merely drink beer and whisky and gin as we used to. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The cerebral functions which are first interfered with are the power of clear judgment and reason. No man ever became witty by aid of spirituous drinks. The lively gesticulations and useless exertions of intoxicated people are due to paralysis,—the restraining influences, which prevent a sober man from uselessly expending his strength, being removed."
The Drink Habit.—The harmful effects of alcohol (aside from the purely physiological effect upon the tissues and organs of the body) are most terribly seen in the formation of the alcohol habit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ We will mention here only one of these effects: alcohol prepares the way for sins against chastity; the enemy of innocence is present in alcohol.
2. The Wise Man in Holy Writ thus addresses the drunkard: "Thine eyes shall look after strange women and thy heart - speak perverse things." And Sirach remarks: "Wine and women make wise men fall off." And in Proverbs it is expressly Stated: "Wine is a luxurious thing, and drunkenness riotous." ”

“ To any one who may reply that he is willing to pay this price for the sake of the pleasurable emotions and passions that are sometimes permitted to hold sway in the absence of those higher faculties of reason which alcohol tends to banish, I would suggest that there is still another aspect of the account which we have not as yet examined. We have seen that alcohol may be a potent disturber of the functions of digestion, of muscular activity, and of mental energizing. ”

“ Ether and chloroform, by which people are made insensible during surgical operations, [Pg 161] are also relatives of alcohol. They are, in fact, made from alcohol. These substances, although really useful, are very poisonous and dangerous. Do you not think it will be very wise and prudent for you to have nothing to do with alcohol in any form, even wine, beer, or cider, since it belongs to such a bad family and has so many bad relations?
18. Some persons think that they will suffer no harm if they take only wine or beer, or perhaps hard cider. ”