Alcoholism

“ At the same time we must remember that when a man has been in hard training for a boat race, or anything of that sort, or if he has been reading hard on tea, which is almost as vicious a habit as alcoholism, he can get drunk on very little alcohol when the strain is taken off. ”

“ Many try to react on this and cheat themselves by the aid of water or mucilaginous substances, which shows, as several writers on the subject have remarked, that alcoholism properly so called is only a paroxysm: under the pressure of a progressively intensified craving the decisive step is taken. ”

“ Alcoholism [3] is a major problem in the United States. [4] In 1956 the American Medical Association for the first time designated alcoholism as a major medical problem and urged that alcoholics be admitted to general hospitals for care. ”

“ Of deaths of adult men, 18 in every 100 were due, directly or indirectly, to alcoholism. In middle life, between the ages of 40 and 50, 29; and between 50 and 60 years of age, 25.6 out of every 100 deaths had alcohol as one cause, thus agreeing with other statistics we have been quoting.—From the Metropolitan, Vol. ”

“ No, indeed! you think; but probably no one who has become a drunkard ever intended to do so. They all began [92] with one glass, a few drops of some alcoholic liquor,—cider, wine, or beer perhaps,—and thus learned to love the taste of alcohol, and soon became its slaves. For this poison has the strange power of making those who drink it want more and more of itself, though they know it is doing them harm.
The only safety is in letting alcoholic liquors alone, forever. ”

“ But let me tell you, there are companies of men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober.
Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt, - sometimes a misfortune, - as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it, - but oftenest of all a punishment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We said nothing about the number who drink, nor did we refer to the quantity of spirits or beer which may be taken with impunity by the individual or that may be distributed and consumed by the community at large, these considerations being in our opinion quite beside the question. The fact should be sufficiently obvious that the principal evil connected with the use of alcoholic liquors lies in that excess which is commonly known as drunkenness, the marked tendency toward which is one of the most characteristic features of the drinking habit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ It requires only your own experience, and observations, to convince you that it is upon the medical profession, upon their prescriptions and recommendations for its use upon many occasions, that the habitual dram-drinker depends for the seeming respectability of his drinking habits. It is upon the members of the medical profession, and the exceptional laws which it has always demanded, that the whole liquor fraternity depends, more than upon anything else, to screen it from opprobium, and just punishment for the evils which the traffic entails upon society ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every one who suffers from alcohol should have our pity. You have learned in our past talks how it does harm to the stomach, the liver, the muscles, and the lungs, and, most of all, to the brain and nerves. Just as this alcohol hardened the meat and egg, so alcohol works in our bodies to hurt and destroy the wonderful living rooms of which the body-house is made.
Alcohol is a liar. Listen to what the wisest man who ever lived says about it: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging ”

“ 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. ”

“ The cider, wine, and beer had but little alcohol in them. The brandy, rum, whiskey, and gin are nearly one-half alcohol.
A glass of strong liquor which has been made by distilling, will injure any one more, and quicker, than a glass of cider, rum, or beer.
But a cider, wine, or beer-drinker often drinks so much more of the weaker liquor, that he gets a great deal of alcohol. People [51] are often made drunkards by drinking cider or beer. The more poison, the more danger. ”

“ Among the townspeople as in the country parts drunkenness from alcohol is almost unknown. Instinctively this race has a fear and horror of it; it feels itself intoxicated from its birth—drunk without drinking. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Alcoholic Paralysis.—The immediate and transient effects of an excessive quantity of alcohol upon the human nervous system, whether they are manifested in the form of drunkenness, or of delirium tremens, or of an acute attack of insanity, are well known. Scarcely less evident are the effects produced upon the nervous system by a less excessive, but a more prolonged, abuse of alcoholic drinks. ”

“ Beginning with physical intolerance for alcohol, for years drinking only for the sake of comradeship and because alcohol was everywhere on the adventure-path, I had now reached the stage where my brain cried out, not merely for a drink, but for a drunk. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The physician should have blazoned before him, 'If you can do no good, do no harm.' If this rule is adhered to, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred the physician will give no alcohol. In the medical wards of the Pennsylvania Hospital I have found that in acute as well as chronic disease we can do without alcohol. It does harm rather than good. ”

“ 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. ”