It is the solemn duty of those to whom the people look for instruction in matters of health to undeceive the toiling masses as to the food-value of alcoholic liquids. Some of the medical profession are faithful in this regard, but too many others are themselves deceived, or care not for the destruction of the people.
IS ALCOHOL A STIMULANT?
A lady asked her family physician several years ago what he thought of the views of those medical writers who class alcohol as a narcotic, and not a stimulant. He answered with some heat, “Any one who says alcohol is not a stimulant is either a fool or a knave!” He could not have been aware that some of the most distinguished professors in American medical colleges teach that alcohol is not, properly speaking, a stimulant, but a narcotic.
The accepted definition of a stimulant in medical literature is some agent capable of exciting or increasing vital activity as a whole, or the natural activity of some one structure or organ.
Dr. N. S. Davis has said repeatedly that both clinical and experimental observations show that alcohol directly diminishes the functional activity of all nerve structures, pre-eminently those of respiration and circulation, thus decreasing the internal distribution of oxygen, which is nature’s own special exciter of all vital action.
“Consequently it is antagonistic to all true stimulants or remedies capable of increasing vital activity. Instead, therefore, of meriting the name of stimulant, alcohol should be designated and used only as an anæsthetic and sedative, or depressor of vital activity.”
The following is taken from an editorial article in the American Medical Temperance Quarterly for January, 1894:—
“Drs. Sidney Ringer and H. Sainsbury in a carefully executed series of experiments on the isolated heart of the frog, found that all the alcohol when mixed with the blood circulating through the heart, uniformly diminished the action of that organ in direct proportion to the quantity of alcohol used, until complete paralysis was induced. In closing their report in regard to the action of different alcohols, they say that ‘by their direct action on the cardiac tissue these drugs are clearly paralyzant, and that this appears to be the case from the outset, no stage of increased force of contraction preceding.’
“Professor Martin, while in connection with the Johns Hopkins University, performed an equally careful series of experiments in regard to the action of ethylic, or ordinary alcohol, directly on the cardiac structures of the dog, and with the same results. He makes the following explicit statement of the results obtained by him. ‘Blood containing one-fourth per cent. by volume, that is two and a half parts per 1000 of absolute alcohol, almost invariably diminishes, within a minute, the work done by the heart; blood containing one-half per cent. always diminishes it, and may even bring the amount pumped out by the left ventricle to so small a quantity that it is not sufficient to supply the coronary arteries.’