What Alcohol Does by Louise C. Purrington

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 25, 1908

What Alcohol Does

By Louise C. Purrington

FIRST, for the moderate drinker who never really gets drunk! Dr. Pierret says of unconscious alcoholism, the result is a successive giving out of vital organs, the stomach, liver, kidneys, etc., and the worst effects are found in the children of these moderate drinkers,—a special race, weak and constantly deteriorating. The moderate drinker because of his daily alcoholic dose is undergoing incipient paralysis; his appetite is the gradual enslaver of his entire organism; every organ and tissue is involved, and some day an accident or illness lays him low, and the life goes out or trembles in the balance because the enfeebled system has no rallying power.

To illustrate: a man high in authority, lovable and beloved, and wise in public affairs, lay for many days with death hovering over him, his case being considered by the physicians as almost, if not altogether, hopeless. The complication of diseases might possibly be resisted, but the complication of alcohol would not easily be overcome. “Unconscious alcoholism” suddenly becomes regnant in the history of the patient, the vitality is lowered, and the patient is without recuperative force. This slowly acquired deterioration from the alcoholic poison is not only inimical to recovery, but is transmitted, and children are likewise susceptible and without rallying power.

The craving for drink is unquestionably hereditary.—Louise C. Purrington, M. D.