The effect of alcohol upon ability to do mental work.
Attention—that is, the power of the mind to grasp and consider impressions obtained through the senses—is weakened by drink. The ability of the mind to associate or combine ideas, the faculty involved in sound judgment, showed that when the persons had taken the amounts of alcohol mentioned, the combinations of ideas or judgments expressed by them were confused, foggy, sentimental, and general. When the persons had taken no alcohol, their judgments were rational, specific, keen, showing closer observation.
"The words of Professor Helmholtz at the celebration of his seventieth birthday are very interesting in this connection. He spoke of the ideas flashing up from the depths of the unknown soul, that lies at the foundation of every truly creative intellectual production, and closed his account of their origin with these words: 'The smallest quantity of an alcoholic beverage seemed to frighten these ideas away.'"—Dr. G. Sims Woodhead, Professor of Pathology, Cambridge University, England.
Professor Von Bunge (Textbook of Physiological and Pathological Chemistry) of Switzerland says that:
"The stimulating action which alcohol appears to exert on the brain functions is only a paralytic action. 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 first effect of drinking alcoholic liquors is that of exhilaration. After the feeling of exhilaration is gone, for this is a temporary state, the subject feels depressed and less able to work than before he took the drink. To overcome this feeling, he takes another drink. The result is that before long he finds a habit formed from which he cannot escape. With body and mind weakened, he attempts to break off the habit. But meanwhile his will, too, has suffered from overindulgence. He has become a victim of the drink habit!
"The capital argument against alcohol, that which must eventually condemn its use, is this, that it takes away all the reserved control, the power of mastership, and therefore offends against the splendid pride in himself or herself, which is fundamental in every man or woman worth anything."—Dr. John Johnson, quoting Walt Whitman.
Self-indulgence, be it in gratification of such a simple desire as that for candy or the more harmful indulgence in tobacco or alcoholic beverages, is dangerous—not only in its immediate effects on the tissues and organs, but in its more far-reaching effects on habit formation. Each one of us is a bundle of appetites. If we gratify appetites of the wrong kind, we are surely laying the foundation for the habit of excess. Self-denial is a good thing for each of us to practice at one time or another, if for no other purpose than to be ready to fight temptation when it comes.
The Economic Effect of Alcoholic Poisoning.—In the struggle for existence, it is evident that the man whose intellect is the quickest and keenest, whose judgment is most sound, is the man who is most likely to succeed. The paralyzing effect of alcohol upon the nerve centers must place the drinker at a disadvantage. In a hundred ways, the drinker sooner or later feels the handicap that the habit of drink has imposed upon him. Many corporations, notably several of our greatest railroads (the Pennsylvania and the New York Central Railroad among them), refuse to employ any but abstainers in positions of trust. Few persons know the number of railway accidents due to the uncertain eye of some engineer who mistook his signal, or the hazy inactivity of the brain of some train dispatcher who, because of drink, forgot to send the telegram that was to hold the train from wreck. In business and in the professions, the story is the same. The abstainer wins out over the drinking man.
Effect of Alcohol on Ability to do Work.—In Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem, Professor Hodge, formerly of Clark University, describes many of his own experiments showing the effect of alcohol on animals. He trained four selected puppies to recover a ball thrown across a gymnasium. To two of the dogs he gave food mixed with doses of alcohol, while the others were fed normally. The ball was thrown 100 feet as rapidly as recovered. This was repeated 100 times each day for fourteen successive days. Out of 1400 times the dogs to which alcohol had been given brought back the ball only 478 times, while the others secured it 922 times.