Sober

“ Some of them have succeeded in lengthening the sober interval, and they will live with strictest correctness for six months or more, and then, taking that first fatal glass, will immediately lose their self-control, and drink furiously for days and nights; drink until they are obliged to use drunken artifice to get the liquid into their mouths,—their hands refusing their office. ”

“ AFTER GETTING DRUNK, BECOMING SOBER IN THE NIGHT
Our party scattered at yellow dusk and I came home to bed;
I woke at midnight and went for a walk, leaning heavily on a friend.
As I lay on my pillow my vinous complexion, soothed by sleep, grew sober ”

“ To say truth, nothing is more erroneous than the common observation, that men who are ill-natured and quarrelsome when they are drunk, are very worthy persons when they are sober: for drink, in reality, doth not reverse nature, or create passions in men which did not exist in them before. It takes away the guard of reason, and consequently forces us to produce those symptoms, which many, when sober, have art enough to conceal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I think I might fairly say that among the comfortable middle classes of society the views at present held on this question are so deplorable that a large proportion of children are never sober from the first moment of their existence until they have been weaned; while often after a few years the use of alcohol is again introduced to the children as a 'medical comfort,' as a part of their regular diet, or as an invariable accompaniment of all their juvenile visitation, and company-keeping. ”

“ I am glad to have drunk water so long, as I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater’s heaven,—would keep sober always, and lead a sane life not indebted to stimulants. Whatever my practice may be, I believe that it 70 is the only drink for a wise man, and only the foolish habitually use any other. ”

“ What is most astonishing is to see how strictly [111] the rules are observed, and even those who in ordinary times take wines and spirits are not only completely sober for thirty days, but do not touch any intoxicant for some weeks before the fast begins. Some men suffer physically a good deal and their faces become pinched; others who are heavy smokers develop jumpy nerves. ”

“ It has already been demonstrated that 'alcoholics' suffer far more seriously from microbic affections than do those of sober life, and it is now accepted that amongst them the mortality from this class of disease is higher than amongst those who are not accustomed to take alcohol regularly or to excess. ”

“ The drinking man is never less himself than during his sober intervals. ”

“ But he hated to be sober. It made him conscious of the people around him, of that air of struggle, of greedy ambition, of hope more sordid than despair, of incessant passage up or down, which in every metropolis is most in evidence through the unstable middle class. ”

“ There is more of Turn than of Truth in a Saying of Seneca, That Drunkenness does not produce but discover Faults. Common Experience teaches us the contrary. Wine throws a Man out of himself, and infuses Qualities into the Mind, which she is a Stranger to in her sober Moments. ”

“ Did some more sober Critics come abroad? 155
If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod. ”

“ There are also differences depending on drunkenness and sobriety, as that which we consider ugly when we are sober does not appear ugly to us when we are drunk. Again, 110 there are differences depending on predispositions, as the same wine appears sourish to those who have previously eaten dates or dried figs, but agreeable to those who have taken nuts or chickpeas; the vestibule of the bath warms those who enter from without, but cools those who go out, if they rest in it. ”

“ The retention of these poisonous matters within the body is highly injurious. Let the drinker suffer from any wound or injury and this effete matter in his blood is ready at a moment's notice to prepare and set up actions called inflammatory or erysipelatous, or some other kind; by means of which too often the drinker is hurried into eternity, although, perhaps, he may have been regarded as a perfectly sober man, and have never been drunk in his life. ”

“ alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick—
BARBARA. It does nothing of the sort.
UNDERSHAFT. Well, it assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. ”

“ The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest. ”

“ And here one may note a curious comparison which can be made between this life-history and that of many a respectable pinnacle and gargoyle on the social fabric. Every respectable citizen of the professional classes passes through a period of activity and imagination, of "liveliness and eccentricity," of "Sturm und Drang." He shocks his aunts. Presently, however, he realizes the sober aspect of things. He becomes dull; he enters a profession; suckers appear on his head; and he studies. Finally, by virtue of these he settles down—he marries. ”

“ The Men of Faith will play the cup-bearers at this lifelong bacchanal, filling and ever filling again with the warm liquor that the Intelligences, in sad and sober privacy behind the scenes, will brew for the intoxication of their subjects.” ”

“ I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.” ”

“ And with this word the person that I spake to waxed all sober and marvelled. And anon I was sore ashamed and astonished for my recklessness, and I thought: This man taketh in sober earnest [3] the least word that I might say. ”

“ For let a man be ne'er so wise, He may be caught with sober lies; ”

“ He would not give money to sober people, he said they would only eat it and send their children to school with it. ”

“ Her eyes wandered back to the campus again, and she suddenly grew sober as the thought swept over her that in a few weeks more it would be hers no longer. This happy, irresponsible community life, which had come to be the only natural way of living, was suddenly at an end. ”

“ sober science, scarcely less wonderful, tells us it is a vast collection of electric charges in violent motion. ”

“ To their own second and sober thoughts (v. ”

“ The Commission has given a great many no doubt worthy persons the opportunity of airing in public their individual opinions on the folly or wisdom of total abstinence, on the exact number of ounces of alcohol it is wise to consume in a day, and on other equally absorbing themes. ”

“ Make it an invariable rule, never to prescribe alcohol, nor one of the solinaceus or narcotic drugs, if you can possibly avoid it. The use of alcohol and opium debases the minds and morals of habitués, predisposes especially to Bright's disease and insanity, and lays the foundation in the offspring for the majority of the neuroses and degenerations of modern civilized life. The physical fatigue of long working hours, loss of sleep, mental strain, worry and hunger, invite the tired physician, especially, to their seductive use. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In my investigations, the results of which I am now to lay before you, I have endeavored to select as subjects for my experiments both abstainers from alcohol, and those who indulge more or less in its use, in such a way that their conditions of life and their habits in other respects should be as nearly as possible the same. All persons, for instance, suffering from any acute or chronic disease were rejected, and very few of the persons selected were smokers. ”

“ So I am bound to believe, on the evidence, that if you take alcohol habitually, in any quantity whatever, it is to some extent a menace to you. I am bound to believe, in the light of what science has revealed: (1) that you are tangibly threatening the physical structures of your stomach, your liver, your kidneys, your heart, your blood-vessels, your nerves, your brain; (2) that you are unequivocally decreasing your capacity for work in any field, be it physical, intellectual, or artistic ”

“ In the London Temperance Hospital I have been treating the sick for diseases of all kinds and during all stages, and have never administered a minim of alcohol, or any substitute for it, and we have got on better than when I—feeling it at all times at command made use of it in the ordinary way. ”

“ Such deceptions come through drunkenness and narcotism. In greater or less degree all nerve-affecting drugs produce it; alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, opium, cocaine, and the rest, strong or weak. Habitual use of any of these is a physical vice. ”

“ Every drug capable of producing an artificial exhilaration of spirits, a pleasure which is not the result of the natural play of the vital functions, is necessarily mischievous in its tendencies, and its use is intemperance, whether its name be alcohol, tobacco, opium, cocaine, coca, kola, hashish, Siberian mushroom, caffeine, betel-nuts, mate or any other of the score or more enslaving drugs known to pharmacology. ”

“ The nature of such drugs as alcohol, opium and cocaine is to benumb sensation, so that pain is stilled, and the pain, or functional disturbance forgotten for the time, because the nerves are drugged into insensibility. The person feels better while under the influence of the drug, so thinks it is benefiting him.
2. There are people who imagine they have diseases which they do not have; since trained physicians occasionally err in diagnosis, it is not strange if the laity should do likewise. Such persons are always ready to aver that a certain medicine "cured" them. ”

“ Being drunk, he knows nothing; whilst the physician, although not drunk, knows well in what drunkenness consists, and what are its predisposing conditions. Similarly there is a difference between knowing the nature of abstinence, and being abstinent or having one's soul detached from the world.—Thus I had learned what words could teach of Sufism, but what was left could be learned neither by study nor through the ears, but solely by giving one's self up to ecstasy and leading a pious life. ”

“ The writer does not presume to set forth her own opinions upon a question which is still a subject of dispute among the members of a learned profession; she simply culls from the writings of those members of that profession who, having made thorough examination of the claims of alcohol, have decided that this drug, as ordinarily used, is more harmful than beneficial, and that medical practice would be upon a higher plane, were it driven entirely from the pharmacopœia. ”

“ The stimulation is but temporary, the reaction leaving the nerve cells of the individual with less resisting power than before the ingestion of alcohol. * * * Never permit a verbal or written prescription of yours to give rise to the use of a habit forming drug."—From a lecture to students in Omaha Medical College by J. M. Aiken, M. D., Clinical Instructor and Lecturer upon Nervous and Mental Diseases.
'The use of spirits as a stimulant in diseases, except in a very limited circle, is a mere empiricism for which no good reasons can be given. ”

“ Henceforth that gentleman is said to be one who prescribes alcohol in any quantity. In fact, he never prescribes it, for although when forbidding is hopeless, there is all the difference in the world between prescribing and permitting, permitting goes down as if it were prescribing. Often a patient will try to compromise. On an ocean of whisky and water, brandy and soda, or other poisonous mixture, he is floating into fatal paralysis. ”

“ 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. It is clear that other narcotics, such as opium, morphia, chorodyne, chloral, are open to the same objection, and the victims of these drugs are terribly numerous. ”

“ I defy any one who still adheres to alcohol to show as good results. Equally gratifying results have been obtained with my medical cases, and I fail to understand how any observing and thinking physician can still cling to so prejudicial a drug as alcohol, when he has within his reach a multitude of valuable, exact, and reliable methods for combating, governing, and controlling disease."—Dr. ”

“ The teachings of medical men are no more to be followed blindly and without question. The tests of alcohol as a tonic, as a food, as a stimulant, as a retarder of waste, are all negative. There is no reliable evidence to support these claims, but a constant accumulation of facts to indicate the danger from the use of spirits. To give alcohol or any other drug without some rational theory in accord with the scientific researches of to-day is unpardonable.”—Dr. T. D. Crothers, Hartford, Conn., Editor of the Journal of Inebriety. ”