Intoxicating liquor

“ The beastly custom of drinking intoxicating liquors, now prevalent throughout the world, is one of the very worst forms of robbing the individual of his physical strength and vitality, as well as his reason and moral character. ”

“ It is only when the body is the servant of a spiritual master that it can develop its greatest strength and prolong its vigour.
Two illustrations suggest themselves. The use of intoxicants has wrought disaster since man came upon the earth. Drink is not only ruinous when used continuously and in large quantities, but it is injurious even when used moderately. The life insurance tables show that a young man who, at the age of twenty-one, begins the regular use of intoxicating liquors, reduces his expectancy by more than ten per cent., or more than four years in forty. ”

“ The distiller’s big hand was thumping on the table.
“You hear what I say, Stetman! I’m goin’ to land this bunch of cranks! On the day you discover the active principle in alcohol they’re done! There’s nothin’ to it, they’re done! The whole country will get drunk and stay drunk! God Almighty couldn’t stop it when you get the kick-drop out of the bottle of water that’s in a quart of alcohol.
“It’ll take an army of agents to stop the smuggling of liquor as it is; how will they stop it if a man can carry the punch of a barrel of whisky in an ounce bottle?” ”

“ It is easy to conceive how hurtful must be the presence of verdigrise to those who make use of whiskey as a constant drink: even those who use it soberly, swallow a slow poison, destructive of their stomach; while to those who abuse it, it produces a rapid death, which would [Pg 21] still be the consequence of abuse, if the liquor was pure, but is doubly accelerated by the poison contained in the whiskey. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having once acquired a liking for it, the victim becomes as much a slave to his appetite as the opium eater or the votary of cocaine. In its effect it is much the most injurious of all such practices, for in the course of time it destroys the coating of the stomach, and dooms its victim to a slow and agonizing death. "The druggist who told me about the thing says that as ginger essence contains about one hundred per cent, alcohol, and whisky less than fifty per cent., the former is therefore twice as intoxicating. ”

“ And yet, here and meanwhile, this glowing orator announced that not one more nor one less than a million human beings had, in the five years past, perished from being poisoned by liquor—by alcohol, an extremely mild toxicant that in some form or other chemists tell us exists in almost all our food, solid or liquid! ”

“ We do not exaggerate the means nor the devotion to drunkenness in what we here state. The inducements to intoxication are double those which we have mentioned, and all vices and passions are made subservient to the work of selling liquor, while the effect of the poison sold is promotive of other vices. ”

“ It was well enough to say this when all men thought that the use of intoxicating drinks was a harmless pleasure, that intoxicating drinks enhanced a man's health and strength; when they did not, as yet, know that wine contained a poison always injurious to the health of men; when men did not, as yet, realize the terrible consequences of drunkenness, which are now patent to all eyes. ”

“ It was the thing for which the world had been going to alcohol to seek—the supreme, moving motive of all drunkenness! It released, and strengthened, and ennobled that thing within the human body which every man thinks of as himself.
Or at least it seemed like that to Arnbush.
And there was with this heavenly taste of liquor the alluring enchantment of a drug. The world softened and became a place of pleasure, but it was the pleasure of a mental dominance, and it was the softness of a plastic kingdom. The individuality in the man was glorified. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The common experience of mankind teaches us the imminent peril that attends the formation of this progressive poison habit. A single glass taken as a tonic may lead to the drunkard's grave.
Worse than this, the alcoholic craving may be transmitted from father to son, and young persons often find themselves cursed with a terrible disease known as alcoholism—a keen, morbid appetite for liquor that demands gratification at any cost—stamped upon their very being through the reckless indulgence of this habit on the part of some one of their ancestors. ”

“ Our detectives swarm everywhere, yet illicit distillation and poisonous adulteration of liquors are on a very rapid increase. Now, a very large number of people, learned and lay, rich and poor, of practical experience in the use of liquor, and deriving their information from the experience of others, or from reading, are strongly of the opinion that the best and most practicable mode of decreasing actual drunkenness, and of mitigating or diminishing the acknowledged evils of drink, would be the furnishing of pure liquors instead of the noxious compounds now on sale. ”

“ The poisonous element in all forms of intoxicating drinks, and the one so fraught with danger to the bodily tissues, is the alcohol they contain. The proportion of the alcoholic ingredient varies, being about 50 per cent in brandy, whiskey, and rum, about 20 to 15 per cent in wines, down to 5 per cent, or less, in the various beers and cider; but whether the proportion of alcohol be more or less, the same element of danger is always present. ”

“ Aside from all considerations of physical, mental, and moral injury wrought by the use of alcoholic drinks, every young man may well take into account the damaging effect of such a dangerous habit upon his business prospects. Careful business men are becoming more and more unwilling to take into their employ any person addicted to liquor drinking. ”

“ Truly a homœopathic dose of genuine brandy! And even that whisky when it left Wisconsin was only half whisky; for there are men in the whisky-making States who make it a business to take whisky direct from the distillery, add to it an equal quantity of water, and then bring it up to a bead and the power of intoxication, by mixing in a variety of the villainous drugs and deadly poisons enumerated in this chapter. The annual loss of strength, health, and life caused by the adulteration of liquor is truly appalling. ”

“ When the report was made, alcohol headed the list. Now by order of the government linen posters are put up in public buildings, and on these in blood red letters are these warnings: "Alcohol dangerous; alcohol chronic poison; alcohol leads to the following diseases; alcohol is the enemy of labor; alcohol disrupts the home!"
Who would have thought an Emperor of Germany would ever "go back" on beer? Emperor William in an address to the sailors recommended total-abstinence and forbid under penalty the giving of liquor to soldiers in the world's greatest war. ”

“ Wine ought not to be given to a child unless it be ordered by a medical man: it is even more injurious than beer. Wine, beer, and spirits principally owe their strength to the alcohol they contain; indeed, nearly all wines are fortified (as it is called) with brandy. Brandy contains a large quantity of alcohol, more than any other liquor, namely, 55.3 per cent. If, therefore, you give wine, it is, in point of fact, giving diluted brandy—diluted alcohol; and alcohol acts, unless it be used as a medicine, and under skillful medical advice, as a poison to a child. ”

“ The accepted scientific view of alcohol is that it is a poison, and its administration should be as guarded as that of any other poison used as a medicine. Perhaps the hardest thing a physician finds in his effort to restore his patients to health without the use of liquors is the common, but erroneous, belief that they are ‘strengthening,’ and that the convalescent, by their use, reaches recovery more quickly. The error is in supposing that any alcoholic liquor is nourishing, or strengthening. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Intoxication they admit to be an evil, but defend the moderate use of a liquor as infallibly injurious in the smallest as in the largest dose; they underrate the progressive tendency of their vice and overrate their power of resistance; they cling to the tradition that alcohol, discreetly enjoyed, may prove a blessing instead of a curse. We must banish that fatal delusion. We must reveal the true significance of the poison habit before we can hope to suppress it as a life blighting vice. ”

“ Where the great danger lies is that the widely heralded reduction of the alcoholic content and the claim of the brewers that beer is now to be classed as a true temperance drink will tend to greatly deceive the public and thus largely increase its consumption, in most cases to cause "the same intoxicating effect as before." ”

“ 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. ”

“ A very large percentage of deaths would have been materially delayed except for excessive eating. The statements ascribing crime to intoxicating drinks have generally been made by those who are obsessed with a hatred of alcohol. As a rule if one lands in prison and has not been a total abstainer, his downfall is charged to rum. ”

“ 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." ”

“ As the law now stands, a brewer may use hops, quassia, wormwood, gentian, or any other simple bitter; but he is forbidden to use any substitute for malt, such as unmalted grain, sugar in a liquid state, molasses, or any substance which would give pungency or intoxicating properties to the beer, such as cocculus indicus, grains of paradise, tobacco, &c. It is a well-known and authenticated fact, that beer is commonly and sometimes dangerously adulterated. ”

“ The adulteration and false strength of spirituous liquors, as brandy, rum, and malt spirit, are detected by diluting the suspected liquor with water, when the acrimony of the capsicum, or the grains of paradise, or pepper, may be easily discovered by the taste. Or by taking about a quart of the suspected liquor, and pouring it into a retort, or small still, and boiling it gently, until the whole of the spirituous part is evaporated, the residuum, if capsicum, grains of paradise, &c. have been present in the liquor, will retain a hot pungent taste. ”

“ Alcoholic beverages are to be avoided, and more especially those which are rich in extractives as well as in alcohol. For this latter reason, beer and champagne are harmful, whilst spirits and liqueurs are to be condemned on account of the high percentage of alcohol they contain. ”

“ The newspapers frequently contain items regarding the death of children who have had access to whisky, and drunk freely of it. Cases are reported, too, of men, habituated to drink, who after tossing off several glasses of brandy at the bar of a saloon have suddenly dropped dead. ”

“ Even rum and brandy, of the first proof, contain only about fifty parts of alcohol in the hundred; and even the high wines, as they are called, are by no means pure alcohol; yet less than an ounce of proof spirits, given to a rabbit, killed it in less than an hour. Three quarters of an ounce of alcohol, introduced into the stomach of a large and robust dog, killed him in three and a half hours. In larger quantities, as almost every one knows, this same substance has proved immediately fatal to men. Do you say that many drink spirits for years, and are not destroyed ”

“ The extent of the evil effects upon the human body resulting from the consumption of alcoholic liquors is as yet far from being fully known, and stands in need of scientific verification. Many other injurious influences such as unsanitary dwellings, bad feeding, excessive toil, and toxic agents like nicotine, etc., may produce somewhat similar morbid effects. ”