CHAPTER XXVIII.
A scientific article on the effects of alcohol on the human system. If any doctor should try to deceive you here is the proof of his malicious intent to drug you.
LIQUOR DRINKING IN HEALTH AND DISEASE.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE UPON THE PROGRESS MADE IN MEDICAL SCIENCE IN FAVOR OF TEMPERANCE DURING THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 1, 1902—A. W. GUTRIDGE, CHAIRMAN. READ AT THE THIRTY-FIRST ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE CATHOLIC TOTAL ABSTINENCE UNION OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF ST. PAUL, AND ORDERED PUBLISHED BY THE CONVENTION.
In order to understand what progress has been made during the year, it is necessary to note the condition of affairs at the commencement of the period.
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." Man has been irreverently described as "about 30 pounds of solids set up in 13 gallons of water." So it is quite natural for us to hunger for water; "death by thirst is more rapid and distressing than by starvation." "It is through the medium of the water contained in the animal body that all its vital functions are carried on." Dr. W. B. Richardson of England has pointed out more than fifty characteristics of the action of a natural drink upon the system. The action of alcohol is the opposite of these in every particular, and therefore it is not a real or natural drink. Of course the water which is found in mixture in all alcoholic liquors serves to quench thirst, even though it is often foul water.
IS IT A FOOD!
We also found, upon taking up the work imposed upon us, that alcohol had been demonstrated not to be a food. Many classifications of foods have been made, but about the best is that which divides them broadly into two classes: to use homely language, flesh formers and body warmers; those which build up or repair the bodily waste, and those which sustain the animal warmth. The slow fire within us being necessary to life we hunger for that only which will replace the substance destroyed by the burning. "To the child of nature all hurtful things are repulsive, all beautiful things attractive," As to flesh formers, it had been noted that all foods useful in repairing bodily waste contain the element nitrogen. Alcohol contains no nitrogen, and so could not be classed among body builders. The chief body warmer is sugar. Alcohol being a product of sugar, people were all misled for years into thinking that it does in some kind and degree feed the system. The mistake was easy, since after taking alcohol there is a temporary increase in vivacity of mind and manner and in surface temperature, and a lessened requirement for regular foods. These opinions had been tested in the light of truth and proved erroneous. Axel Gustafson, in his Foundation of Death, considers this subject at length. As early as 1840 French physicians discovered that alcohol actually reduced the temperature of the body. Prominent German and English medical men soon confirmed the statement, and in 1850, Dr. N. S. Davis of Chicago, the founder of the American Medical Association, in speaking of a number of observations during the active period of digestion after ordinary food, whether nitrogenous or carbonaceous, the temperature of the body is always increased, but after taking alcohol, in either the form of the fermented or the distilled drinks, it begins to fall within half an hour and continues to decrease for from two to three hours. The extent and duration of the reduction was in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol taken." The most prominent physicians in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Russia reached similar conclusions shortly after this. In explorations in the Arctic regions where the cold is intense, no alcoholic drinks are permitted. Dr. Nansen, the great Norwegian, attributes the fatalities of the Greely expedition to the use of liquor, and this is the only expedition of recent years which permitted the use of alcoholic drinks. As a matter of fact it was long ago proved that "Alcohol does not warm nor cool a person, but only destroys the sensation and decreases the vitality." Superficial observers, however, have upheld the use of alcohol as a food, saying, "See how fleshy it makes people." Well, healthy fat is not always an advantage, but beer drinkers' fat is not the genuine article. Healthy fat represents a stock of body warming food laid up for a time of need and is formed only in health. The "fat" usually exhibited by beer drinkers is not a fat at all; oil is not its chief factor. It consists of particles of partly digested flesh forming food which the system required, but which it was unable to assimilate owing to the presence in the body of the alcohol which the beer contained. This sort of fat instead of indicating health points to disease. This general teaching as to the worthlessness of alcohol as a food had been set forth by the leaders in medical profession, and accepted largely by the rank and file of practitioners for about twenty-five years. An occasional cry came from the other side, however, and late in 1899 Dr. W. O. Atwater, professor in Wesleyan University, announced that he had, by an extended series of experiments, proved the truth of the claims of those experimentors who believed alcohol to have value as a food. Dr. Atwater's reports were widely published by the whiskey press, and a state of some unrest amongst thinking physicians followed, which had not been wholly quieted when this committee began work.
IS IT A MEDICINE?
At the time we began work, however, it had been demonstrated that alcohol is not a medicine. Many years ago Dr. Nottinghham, a great English physician, said: "Alcohol is neither food nor physic." Dr. Nicols, editor Boston Journal of Chemistry, long ago wrote, "The banishment of alcohol would not deprive us of a single one of the indispensable agents which modern civilization demands. In no instance of disease in any form, is it a medicine which might not be dispensed with." Dr. Bunge, professor of physical chemistry in the University of Basle, Switzerland, said: "In general let it be understood that all the workings of alcohol in the system which usually are considered as excitement or stimulation are only indications of paralysis. It is a deep-rooted error sense of fatigue is the safety value of the human organism. Whoever dulls this sense in order to work harder or longer may be likened to an engineer who sits down on his safety valve in order to make better speed with his engine." Dr. F. H. Hammond of the U. S. army said: "Alcohol strengthens no one. It only deadens the feeling of fatigue." Dr. Sims Woodhead, professor in Cambridge University, England, had given the following list of conditions in which alcohol should not be used: In those (1) who have any family history of drunkenness, insanity or nervous disease. (2) Who have used alcohol to excess in childhood or youth. (3) Who are nervous, irritable or badly nourished. (4) Who suffer from injuries to the head, gross disease of the brain and sunstroke. (5) Who suffer from great bodily weakness, particularly during convalescence from exhausting disease. (6) Who are engaged in exciting or exhausting employment, in bad air and surroundings, in work shops and mines. (7) Who are solitary or lonely or require amusement. (8) Who have little self-control either hereditary or acquired. (9) Who suffer from weakness, the result of senile degeneration. (10) Who suffer from organic or functional diseases of the stomach, liver, kidney or heart. (11) Who are young.
Much has been said concerning the stimulating effect of alcohol upon the heart, and this had been treated at length. There is an increased action of about four thousand beats in twenty-four hours for every ounce of alcohol used. This fact still misleads some physicians into prescribing it to strengthen the weak heart, but the increase is not due to new force. The heart action normally is the result of arterial pressure and nervous action, two forces mutually balancing each other. The nervous action is diminished by the introduction of the alcohol; this destroys the balance and deranges the arterial pressure. Dr. James Edmunds, a great English physician, years ago said: "When we see a man breathing with great vigor, does it occur to us that he must be in good health? Is it an indication that he gets more air? We all know better. It simply shows that he has asthma or some such disease, and that his breathing is strained and imperfect. He is making use of less air than the person who breathes quietly. This is the case with the blood, work, so it plunges and struggles in the effort. And the cause of both cases is the same. There is more carbonic acid in the blood than either the heart or the lungs can handle. If for example I were suffering from general debility and milk were the food best suited to my needs, and if I should discover a tramp in my apartments drinking of my already too limited supply, would it be reasonable to assert that the exhibition of strength which I made in forcing him to desist is an indication that the entrance of the vagrant bettered my enfeebled condition? The greater activity of the heart is not due to the added strength resulting from recruits of friends but to a desperate struggle to beat back a reinforced enemy."
That alcohol does not allay pain had been established when this committee was organized. The only proper method of allaying pain is to remedy the disorder which produced it. It is no remedy to deaden the nerves so that we cannot feel it. This reasoning had been found good in the case of alcohol as a remedy in "colds." Whiskey does not relieve the uneasiness and oppression we experience when ailing from a cold, it only benumbs the nerves so we do not feel the trouble. The cure is not hastened but delayed in this way.
IS IT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE?
Besides the fact that alcohol had, before this committee's existence, been proved to be neither a drink nor a food nor a medicine, it had also been shown to be the cause of disease. Over five thousand of the most prominent physicians in this country had so stated it, and the proportion was equally great in all the enlightened countries of Europe. The most pronounced in this way, perhaps, have been the great leaders in medical science in Austria, Germany and France. Some of the points made against the use of alcohol were that it interferes with digestion by rendering insoluble the active principle of the gastric juice, and especially by preventing the solution of body-building foods. The natural action of various organs of the body is more or less arrested by alcohol, thus reducing the temperature. This from Dr. Edmunds already quoted: "The blood carries certain earthy matters in it in a soluble state, these earthy matters being necessary for the nutrition of the bones and other parts of the body. You all know that when wine is fermented and turned from a weak sweet wine into a strong alcoholic wine, you get what is called a 'crust' formed on the inside of the bottle. What is that crust? That crust consists of saline or earthy matters which were soluble in the saccharine grape juice, but which are insoluble in the alcoholic fluids. We find in drunkards that the blood vessels get into the same state as the wine bottles from the deposit of earthy matter which has no business to be deposited, and forms the 'beeswing' or crust in the blood vessels of the drunkard, in his eye and in all of the tissues of the body." Alcohol had been found to prevent the elimination of waste, thus the body is loaded with worn and decaying tissues, leaving the system an inviting field for all sorts of diseases. Life insurance companies, influenced by business interests wholly, make a distinction between liquor users and non-users. Nelson, a distinguished actuary of England, employed as an expert by life insurance companies, found after investigating over 7,000 cases, none of which were drunkards, that between the ages of 15 and 20 the proportion of deaths in total abstainers to those in moderate drinkers is as 10 to 18; between the ages of 25 and 30, as 10 to 31; between 30 and 40 as 10 is to 40.
With reference to the effect on the offspring of drinking parents, the medical profession had accepted the teaching of the French specialist, Dr. Jaccound, that "of the children of drinkers some of them become imbeciles and idiots; others are feeble in mind, exhibit moral perversion, and sink by degrees into complete degeneration; still others are epileptics, deaf and dumb, scrofulous, etc.," and of the English teacher, Dr. Kerr, that "long continued habitual indulgence in intoxicating drink to an extent far short of intoxication is not only sufficient to originate and hand down a morbid tendency, but is much more likely to do so than even repeated drunken outbreaks with intervals of sobriety between."
Thus the men who have been of the greatest honor to the profession in every land were a unit in opposing the use of alcohol in health or disease and in holding that if people are determined to use it there is less danger in health, as then the system is in better condition to throw off its evil effects.