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Temperance in the Home

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 2, 1908

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 14.

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Temperance in the Home

By AUGUSTA C. BAINBRIDGE

AUGUSTA C. BAINBRIDGE
OUR brains are like seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.—Oliver Wendell Holmes.
“There’s poor old Mike drunk again,” said Nellie. “You can always tell when he’s drunk. He wriggles his fingers, and mumbles and grumbles. Just see him now; he’s trying to turn the corner.”
“Well, I wonder why liquor makes people act so queerly, and say and do such strange things. Dear me! how glad I am that none of my folks ever act that way!” said Kate Meyers, as the two girls walked home from school together.
“People think with their brains, and all actions proceed from the brain, so it must be that whisky affects the brain,” said Nellie, meditatively.
“In our lectures on physiology, Professor Mann told us that the brain is very delicately constructed, and is about four-fifths water, and that the brain cells are constantly wasting and building. Whenever we think, or perceive an odor, or hear a sound, or move, some change takes place in a cell of the nerve tissue of the brain,” said Kate. “So the brain, above every other organ of the body, needs good blood, blood full of nourishment from good food, and oxygen from fresh air.”
“O, how glad I’ll be to get in his class, where you learn all these wise things,” said Nellie.
“Yes, but it will be easier for you than for many of us, because you get so much of it at home. I never go to your house but I hear something on the life of the body that does me good, and now, to-day, if you were to ask your father or mother the very selfsame question you asked me just now, they could give you an answer equal to anything Professor Mann could say, and very likely, in words that we should understand on hearing them.”
“Let us try it. To-day is Thursday, and mama will be at home,” said Nellie. “There she is, picking sweet peas.”
“Mrs. Gray,” said Kate, after greetings had been exchanged, “we were wondering about the brain, and the way drunken people act.”
“Yes, and you’ve brought your questions to me? Well, lay your books on this bench, and help me sort these sweet peas while we talk. Put the very long-stemmed ones here in this basket, the medium here, and the short ones in this pan,” cheerily answered Mrs. Gray.
All the sick folks in town knew of Mrs. Gray’s flower mission, so the girls fell to working and talking, explaining their difficulty, and telling of poor Mike.
“Knowing that the brain requires good blood, you can see that it can not act properly when intoxicants are used, because they bring to it poisoned blood, and a very limited supply of oxygen,” said Mrs. Gray. “Then as the brain acts constantly during our waking hours, it is absolutely necessary that the supply of blood be constant, a continuous flow. When intoxicants are used, the nerves regulating this flow become paralyzed, and the blood rushes to the brain, a surging tide, reddening the face, and destroying the power of clear, accurate thought.”
“There! I see two things clearly now,” said Kate—“impoverished blood and irregular flow.”
“That’s right,” said Mrs. Gray. “Now you may tell me the names of the two parts of the brain.”
“The cerebellum, or center for the control of equilibrium, and the cerebrum, which is the seat of our highest mental power,” said Kate, as she had recited in school.
“Right! Now, Kate, you may tell me how this poison, this narcotic poison, would affect the cerebellum,” said Mrs. Gray.
“It would cause our movements to be uncertain; we could not do things in an orderly way.”
“Yes, and now the cerebrum.”
“The centers of thought would be overpowered, judgment and reason would lose control, and we would be like animals,” said Kate, slowly and thoughtfully.
“There, you have answered your own questions; and further we learn, first, that alcohol, having a great affinity for water, deprives the brain of its due proportion of this useful element, and the result is a hardening or degenerating of its tissues; second, this overcrowding of the blood-vessels weakens them, and they often burst, causing apoplexy; and, third, it impairs the substance of the brain itself,” continued Mrs. Gray.
“I suppose one would have to be a hard drinker to reach such a state as that,” said Kate.
“No, indeed! The daily use of intoxicants in what is politely called ‘moderation’ will produce them all.”
“I think my brain is too precious to me, to run any such risk,” said Kate.
“Now, Miss Nellie, you see what it means to have a mother who knows. I wonder what Professor Mann would say if I should put some of this in our next examination in physiology! I’ll try it. Thank you, Mrs. Gray.”
“You’re welcome, Kate, and come again. But here, take a bunch of these sweet peas to your mother, and ask her to come to our mothers’ meeting to-morrow. Our subject is ‘Intoxicants in the Home.’”
“Thank you, I’ll tell her.”
“These long-stemmed ones are for our decorations to-morrow. Are they not handsome?” said Nellie. “And I guess the short ones are for the flower mission, are they not?”
“Yes, we do not have to waste any time being sick, so we have time to help others,” said Mrs. Gray. “The children will soon be here.”
San Francisco, Cal.