Among the poisons which must be kept out of the body should be mentioned habit-forming drugs, such as opium, morphine, cocain, heroin, chloral, acetanilid, alcohol, caffein, and nicotin. The best rule for those who wish to attain the highest physical and mental efficiency is total abstinence from all substances which contain poisons, including spirits, wine, beer, tobacco, many much-advertised patent drinks served at soda-water fountains, most patent medicines, and even coffee and tea. Many so-called patent or proprietary medicines contain habit-forming drugs, especially morphine, coal-tar preparations, caffein, and alcohol, and depend largely for their sale upon the effects of these harmful substances. Harmful preservatives and adulterants in foods, such as saccharin, should also be avoided.
Reducing the Habit
For some persons the inevitable mode of improvement will be by substituting the milder drugs for the stronger—beer for spirits, weak tea for beer. The exact extent to which the milder poisons are injurious has not yet been scientifically settled. Tea, for instance, if very weak and used moderately, is, presumably, not injurious to any marked degree to healthy persons. The trouble is, however, that sensitive people do not keep moderate. In fact, the natural tendency of drug-craving is in the opposite direction, from weak drugs to strong ones, as from beer to spirits. In actual fact, it is much easier to abstain than to be moderate. It should also be noted that the lax spirit in which many people make an exception to the rules of health in favor of some mild indulgence is very likely to lead to the making of many other exceptions until they are, without knowing it, carrying a heavy load made up of scores of little items of harmful indulgence. Moreover, experiments at the Pasteur Institute have shown that the long-continued use of very minute doses of poison ultimately produces appreciable harm. Each person must decide for himself how far he chooses to depart from previous habits or common customs for the sake of physical efficiency. The object here is to state exactly what, in our present state of knowledge, is believed to be the truth.
Those with feeble digestions or unstable nervous systems are especially harmed by these poisons. A family history of nervously inclined people calls for rigid care in such matters.
Alcohol
Scientific experiments have resulted in the interesting discovery that the alleged “strength” obtained from beer, ales, and all intoxicating beverages is a delusion and a snare. The poison simply gives a temporary feeling of greater strength through paralysis of the sense of fatigue. But the strength does not exist. On the contrary, the user of alcohol in excess is weaker after taking it. Special classes of workmen have been tested as to their efficiency under liquor in small amounts and without it entirely, and it was invariably found that the liquor was a handicap, but that, also invariably, the workmen thought they could work harder by its aid! Alcohol numbs the sense of fatigue and so deceives the user. It is not a stimulant but a narcotic. The habit of taking a cocktail before meals is doubly harmful, because it is often taken on an empty stomach and because it poisons the system more quickly than when mixed with food and retained in the intestines.
Alcohol and Infectious Diseases
It is well known that people who indulge in alcohol show less resistance to infectious diseases than abstemious individuals. The paralysis of the white blood-corpuscles is one of the strong arguments against the use of alcohol. The experience of life insurance companies in England and America has clearly shown that even the “moderate” use of alcoholic beverages shortens human life. (See “[Alcohol]” in [Supplementary Notes].)
Dr. Stockard has also shown in mice, on which he has experimented, that the effect of alcohol on the germ-plasm is distinctly injurious. It is a fair inference that the use of alcohol by parents tends to damage their offspring.
Tobacco