One of the first things that strikes an observer who considers, as impartially as he can, the case put forward by the extreme advocates of abstinence, is that the controversy itself is a very modern one, and that, with the tendency to run into opposite extremes which is a characteristic of human opinion, we pass suddenly from the centuries in which it was held no shame for a man to be drunk, into these present years, when there exists a considerable, and in some sense, an influential body of persons, who not only will not touch alcoholic drink themselves upon any terms, but who think it their duty to press for such legislation as would deprive all men, be they temperate or otherwise, of the power of buying, selling, or drinking any liquor of which alcohol is a constituent. “Poison!” “Touch not the accursed thing!” “Away with it!” and so on—very voluble, occasionally eloquent, sometimes plausible. But will the fierce denunciations of these apostles of a new religion—a religion not of temperance, but, as it has been well called, of “intemperate abstinence,” bear the searching light of calm and quiet argument? We had once a friend who, while fond of his pipe, was always interested in reading about the terrible evils which the weed would, according to the infallible dicta of the anti-tobacco lecturers, be sure in time to bring upon his unfortunate constitution. Before sitting down to read one of these lectures, he used always to light a large and favourite briar; he said it enabled him to follow the lecturer’s points so much better. Now we do not ask our readers to follow the example of our friend mutatis mutandis. We do not say that such a proceeding would of necessity assist him in following our arguments. All we claim {430} is a patient hearing, for there never has been a time in which an unprejudiced discussion of the subject would be of greater advantage than at present.
Human habit of centuries, of thousands of years, of such time that the memory and record of the human race, to use a legal phrase, runneth not to the contrary, is evidence in our favour. Whenever he has had the requisite skill, man has produced, enjoyed, and, we maintain, has been improved by drinks in which alcohol formed a constituent part. The practice of civilised nations for thousands of years is, then, so far as it goes, an argument in favour of temperance as opposed to abstinence. We do not wish to put this part of our case too high, and our meaning cannot be better expressed than by the words of Sir James Paget, who, in an essay on this subject in the Contemporary Review, writes: “The beliefs of reasonable people are, doubtless, by a large majority favourable to moderation rather than abstinence, and this should not be regarded as of no weight in the discussion. For, although the subject be one in which few, even among reasonable people, have made any careful observations, and fewer still have thought with any care, yet this very indifference to the subject, this readiness to fall in with custom, a custom maintained in the midst of a constant love of change, and outliving all that mere fashion has sustained—all this is enough to prove that the evidence of the custom being a bad one is not clear.”
It is an indisputable fact that nations who have used alcohol have attained to a greater perfection in power and will to do good work, and a longer duration of life in which such work can be performed, than those who have used no alcohol; and, confining our attention to Europe, may we not say that these powers of work, these activities of body and mind in enterprise, in invention, and in production, are more remarkably developed in the inhabitants of the northern than of the southern parts of the Continent, that is to say, among those who have habitually drank more than those who have drank less? And may we not ask how it is that, if the use of alcohol in moderation be pernicious, the inherited effects of it have not during these vast periods of time during which it has been used, made themselves apparent in a marked degeneracy of the race, since we know that these results will make themselves very conspicuous indeed in two generations of persons who are habitually intemperate?
We are told that it is unnatural to make use of alcoholic drinks, and we are lectured about what man in his natural state would do, or {431} not do. This is a misuse of terms; the state in which mankind is at any particular period, the point in his path of development which he has then reached, and his then environment, these constitute his natural state, and not some more or less hypothetical state of being which has been now left far behind.
In order to enable them to thrust their theories upon a certainly unwilling audience, it would be very convenient for the abstainers to show, if they could, that alcohol, in any form and no matter how diluted, is in itself a bad thing. First, then, let us consider whether alcohol, as such, is food. On this point Dr. Lander Brunton says: “The argument in favour of alcohol being food is that it is retained in the body and supplies the place of other foods, so that the quantity of food which would without it be insufficient, with its aid becomes sufficient.” He also quotes Dr. Hammond, who observed in his own case that when his diet was insufficient, the addition of a little alcohol to it not only prevented him from losing weight, as he had previously done, but converted this loss into a positive gain.
The late G. H. Lewes, in his Principles of Physiology, also speaks conclusively on this subject, pointing out that alcohol is one of the alimentary principles. “In compliance with the custom of physiologists we are forced to call alcohol food, and very efficient food too. If it be not food, then neither is sugar food.” Mr. Lewes also states that alcohol taken in large quantities is harmful, depriving the mucous membrane of the stomach of all its water, but that taken in small quantities and diluted it has just the opposite effect, increasing the secretion by the stimulus it gives to the circulation.
The general opinion of the medical world appears to be that alcohol as such, is a food in a special sense, viz., that it checks the waste of tissue and enables a person to attain to a high standard of health and strength mentally and bodily while taking less food than would be necessary without the alcohol. Moleschott says that “although forming none of the constituents of blood, alcohol limits the combustion of those constituents, and in this way is equivalent to so much blood. Alcohol is the savings bank of the tissues. He who eats little and drinks alcohol in moderation, retains as much in his blood and tissues as he who eats more and drinks no alcohol.”
The argument to the effect that alcohol must be useless, because chemists have as yet been unable to trace the exact form and manner in which it acts upon the human economy, would seem to be fallacious in the face of the experience, which shows that it does act, and act {432} beneficially, when taken in a suitable form and in suitable quantity. Experience shows, and instances by the hundred could be given, from the works of medical men, that life can be sustained for long periods of time solely upon alcoholic drinks. Dr. Brudenell Carter mentions a case in his own experience of an old gentleman who lived for many months in moderate strength and comfort and without any remarkable emaciation upon alcoholic drinks alone. Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read before the British Medical Association, gives an instance of a lady who twice in succession nursed a child, subsisting upon each occasion during the greater part of twelve months upon brandy and bitter ale alone; the children, he adds, grew up strong and healthy.
Dr. Francis E. Anstie, in an article published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1862, draws attention to the fact that many substances have an action on the body in small doses, totally different in kind to that which they exercise in large doses e.g., common salt, arsenic, and many others which are either food or poisons, according to the dose. “We are compelled, therefore,” he writes, “to believe that in doses proportioned to the needs of the system at the time, alcohol acts as a food;” and he instances several cases of longevity in which alcohol was the only aliment, excepting in some cases a little water, and in others a spare allowance of bread. Decisively vanquished on this ground, our opponents return to the attack: “You must abstain,” say they, “because your practice, which is now moderate, will insensibly become excessive.” Here we again turn to Mr. Lewes’s work on Physiology, and quote the pithy argument by which he refutes this fallacy. A portion is italicised for the benefit of tea drinkers: “To suppose there is any necessary connection between moderation and excess, is to ignore Physiology, and fly in the face of evidence . . . Men take their pint of beer or pint of wine daily, for a series of years. This dose daily produces its effect; and if at any time thirst or social seduction makes them drink a quart in lieu of a pint, they are at once made aware of the excess. Men drink one or two cups of tea or coffee at breakfast with unvarying regularity for a whole lifetime; but whoever felt the necessity of gradually increasing the amount to three, four, or five cups? Yet we know what a stimulant tea is; we know that treble the amount of our daily consumption would soon produce paralysis—why are we not irresistibly led to this fatal excess?”
Let us now return to our authorities, and from the wealth of material which exists in the published opinions of medical men of distinction, choose a few more extracts in favour of temperance as opposed to total {433} abstinence. Professor Liebig, for instance, says that wine, spirits, and beer are necessary principles for the important process of respiration, and it would seem that the stomachs of all mankind, teetotallers included, will secrete alcohol from the food which is eaten. If any man, therefore, is resolved to carry out total abstinence strictly, he must refuse every sort of vegetable food, even bread itself; for all such diet contains more or less of alcohol.