Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why Part 9

_Foods build up the tissues of the body._ All physiologists are agreed that since alcohol contains no nitrogen it cannot be a tissue-forming food; there is no difference of opinion here. Dr. Lionel Beale, the eminent physiologist, says that alcohol is not a food and does not nourish the tissues.

"There is nothing in alcohol with which any part of the body can be nourished."--Cameron's _Manual of Hygiene_.

"Alcohol contains no nitrogen; it has none of the qualities of the structure-building foods; it is incapable of being transformed into any of them; it does not supply caseine, alb.u.men, fibrine or any other of those substances which go to build up the muscles, nerves and other active organs."--SIR B.

W. RICHARDSON.

"It is not demonstrable that alcohol undergoes conversion into tissue."--DR. W. A. HAMMOND.

If it is a food why do all writers and experimenters exclude it from the diet of children, and why is the caution always given people to not take it upon an empty stomach? Foods are supposed to be particularly suited to an empty stomach.

_Foods induce healthy, normal action of all the bodily functions._

The chapter upon "Diseases Produced by Alcohol" is evidence that by this test alcohol shows up in its true nature as a poison, and not a food.

Alcohol destroys healthy normal action of all the bodily functions, and builds up impure fat, fatty degeneration, instead of strong, firm muscle. Dr. Parkes, one of the most famous of English students of alcohol, says:--

"These alcoholic degenerations are certainly not confined to the notoriously intemperate. I have seen them in women accustomed to take wine in quant.i.ties not excessive, and who would have been shocked at the imputation that they were taking too much, although the result proved that for them it was excess."

Dr. Ezra M. Hunt, late secretary of New Jersey State Board of Health, remarks:--

"The question of excess occurs in sickness as well as in health, and all the more because its determination is so difficult and the evil effects so indisputable. The dividing line in medicine, even between use and abuse, is so zigzag and invisible that common mortals, in groping for it, generally stumble beyond it, and the delicate perception of medical art too often fails in the recognition."

All non-alcoholic writers a.s.sert that the continuous use of alcohol as a medicine is equally injurious to all the bodily functions as the employment of it as a beverage. Calling it medicine does not change its deadly nature, nor does the medical attendant possess any magical power by which a destructive poison may be converted into a restorative agent.

Dr. n.o.ble, writing recently to the _London Times_, said:--

"The internal use of alcohol in disease is as injurious as in health."

Since foods induce healthy, normal action of all the bodily functions, and alcohol injures every organ of the body in direct proportion to the amount consumed, by this test it is proved to not be a food.

_Foods give strength._ Alcohol weakens the body. This has been determined again and again by experiments upon gangs of workmen and regiments of soldiers. These experiments always resulted in showing that upon the days when the men were supplied with liquor they could neither use their muscles so powerfully, nor for so long a time, as on the days when they received no alcoholic drink. Of the results of such tests Sir Andrew Clark, late Physician to Queen Victoria, said:--

"It is capable of proof beyond all possibility of question that alcohol not only does not help work but is a serious hinderer of work."

So satisfied are generals in the British army of the weakening effect of alcohol that its use is now forbidden to soldiers when any considerable call is to be made upon their strength. The latest example of this was in the recent Soudan campaign under Sir Herbert Kitchener. An order was issued by the War Department that not a drop of intoxicating liquor was to be allowed in camp save for hospital use. The army made phenomenal forced marches through the desert, under a burning sun and in a climate famous for its power to kill the unacclimated. It is said that never before was there a British campaign occasioning so little sickness and showing so much endurance. Some Greek merchants ran a large consignment of liquors through by the Berber-Suakim route, but Sir Herbert had them emptied upon the sand of the desert. A reporter telegraphed to England:--

"The men are in magnificent condition and in great spirits. They are as hard as nails, and in a recent desert march of fifteen miles, with manoeuvring instead of halts, the whole lasting for five continuous hours, not a single man fell out!"

This was in decided contrast to the march in the African war some years before when, as they pa.s.sed through a malarial district, and a dram was served, men fell out by dozens. Dr. Parkes, one of the medical officers, prevailed upon the commander-in-chief to not allow any more alcoholic drams while the troops were marching to k.u.ma.s.si.

Experiments in lifting weights have also been tried upon men by careful investigators. In every case it was found that even beer, and very dilute solutions of alcohol, would diminish the height to which the lifted weight could be raised. As an ill.u.s.tration of the deceptive power of alcohol upon people under its influence, it is said that persons experimented upon were under the impression, after the drink, that they could do more work, and do it more easily, although the testing-machine showed exactly the contrary to be true.

Athletes and their trainers have learned by experience that alcohol does not give strength, but is, in reality, a destroyer of muscular power. No careful trainer will allow a candidate for athletic honors to drink even beer, not to speak of stronger liquors. When Sullivan, the once famous pugilist, was defeated by Corbett, he said in lamenting his lost championship, "It was the _booze_ did it"; meaning that he had violated training rules, and used liquor. University teams and crews have proved substantially that drinking men are absolutely no good in sports, or upon the water. Football and baseball teams, anxious to excel, are beginning to have a cast-iron temperance pledge for their members. So practical experience of those competing in tests of strength and endurance teach eloquently that alcohol does not give strength, but rather weakens the body, by rendering the muscles flabby.

Sandow, the modern Samson, wrote his methods of training in one of the magazines a few years ago, and stated that he used no alcoholic beverages. The ancient Samson was not allowed to taste even wine from birth.

A question worthy of serious consideration is: how are the sick to be strengthened and "supported" by drinks which athletes are warned to specially shun as weakening to the body? Either the sick are mistakenly advised, or the athletes are in error. Which seems the more likely?

Dr. Richardson says in _Lectures on Alcohol_:--

"I would earnestly impress that the systematic administration of alcohol for the purpose of giving and sustaining strength is an entire delusion."

In another place he says:--

"Never let this be forgotten in thinking of strong drink: that the drink is strong only to destroy; that it never by any possibility adds strength to those who drink it."

Sir William Gull, late physician to the Prince of Wales, said before a Select Committee of the House of Lords on Intemperance:--

"There is a great feeling in society that strong wine and other strong drinks give strength. A large number of people have fallen into that error, and fall into it every day."

Any unprejudiced person can readily see that experience and experiment unite in testifying that alcohol does not give strength, hence differs radically from most substances commonly cla.s.sed as foods. Yet millions of dollars are spent annually by deluded people upon supposedly strength-giving drinks, and thousands of the sick are ignorantly, or carelessly, advised to take beer or wine to make them strong and to _support_ them when solid food cannot be a.s.similated. Truly, "My people is destroyed for lack of knowledge."

_Foods give force to the body._

Dr. Richardson says:--

"We learn in respect to alcohol that the temporary excitement is produced at the expense of the animal matter and animal force, and that the ideas of the necessity of resorting to it as a food, to build up the body or to lift up the forces of the body, are ideas as solemnly false as they are widely disseminated."

Dr. Benjamin Brodie says in _Physiological Inquiries_:--

"Stimulants do not create nerve power: they merely enable you, as it were, to use up that which is left."

Dr. E. Smith:--

"There is no evidence that it increases nervous influence, while there is much evidence that it lessens nervous power."

Dr. Wm. Hargreaves, of Philadelphia:--

"It is sometimes said by the advocates and defenders of alcohol, that by its use force is generated more abundantly. This it certainly cannot do, as it does not furnish anything to feed the blood or to store up nourishment to replenish the expenditure.

For by their own theory, the increase of action must cause an increase of wear and tear; hence alcohol instead of sustaining life or vitality, must cause a direct waste or expenditure of _vital force_."

Dr. Auguste Forel, of Switzerland:--

"All alcoholic liquors are poisons, and especially brain-poisons, and their use shortens life. They cannot therefore be regarded as sources of nourishment or force. They should be resisted as much as opium, morphia, cocaine, hashish and the like."

Dr. W. F. Pechuman, of Detroit, in his valuable little treatise, _Alcohol--Is it a Medicine?_ says clearly:--

"When alcohol or any other irritant poison is put into the system, the conservative vital force, recognizing it as an enemy, at once makes an effort through the living matter to rid the system of the offender;--the heart increases in action and new strength seems to appear. Now, right here is where the great ma.s.s of people and a large number of physicians are deluded.

They mistake the extra effort of the vital force to preserve the body against harmful agencies for an actual increase in strength as the result of the agent given; we wonder that they can be so blind as not to see the reaction which invariably occurs soon after the administration of their so-called stimulant."

Dr. F. R. Lees, of England:--

"All poisons lessen vitality and deteriorate the ultimate tissue in which force is reposited. Alcohol is an agent, the sole, perpetual and inevitable effects of which are to avert blood development, to retain waste matter, to irritate mucous and other tissues, to thicken normal juices, to impede digestion, to deaden nervous sensibility, to lower animal heat, to kill molecular life, _and to waste, through the excitement it creates in heart and head, the grand controlling forces of the nerves and brain_."

If alcohol is a destroyer of bodily force, as any ordinary observer of drinking men can readily see, it is a problem beyond solving, how it is going to give force to, or sustain vitality in, the patient hovering between life and death. Too often has it been the means of hastening into eternity those who, but for its mistaken use, might have recovered from the illness affecting them.

_Food gives heat to the body._

Alcohol does not, but really robs the body of its natural warmth. This finding of science was received with the utmost incredulity when first presented to the medical world, but the invention of the clinical thermometer settled it beyond controversy. It is now believed by all but a very few of those who have knowledge of the physiological effects of alcohol. While Dr. N. S. Davis, of Chicago, was the first to demonstrate this fact, it was Dr. B. W. Richardson, of England, who succeeded in putting it prominently before the attention of physicians.