p. 10 | Auto-Intoxication From Beer and Spirits

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 12, 1908

Auto-Intoxication From Beer and Spirits

By T. D. Crothers, M. D.

THE common theory that spirits increase or in some way aid digestion, and can be used with foods with comparative safety, has no support in modern research. Persons who drink wine and beer only at meals are never types of health, and never free from digestive disorders so common to this class. Moderate users of spirits at meals only are not common in this country; for the reason that they are unable to confine the use of spirits to the time of food-taking. Literally, such persons soon begin to drink at other times and occasions, and often to excess.

The average moderate drinking man, whether using spirits at meals or on other occasions, very soon becomes an invalid. Often this invalidism is called rheumatism, malaria, etc., and is marked by local palsy, headaches, irregularity of the heart’s action, insomnia, dyspeptic symptoms, catarrhal difficulties, with alternate constipation and diarrhea. These and other obscure symptoms are referred to various causes, and are rarely recognized as having any connection with the use of beer or spirits. The disappearance of all these symptoms, after periods of total abstinence from spirits is usually, of course, ascribed to some other cause.

The ordinary beer-drinker is the most prominent example of auto-intoxication. The fatty degeneration so characteristic in beer-drinkers, associated with increase of flesh, loss of vigor, and enfeebled action of the heart, is common in most cases. Enfeebled vigor and slow vitality are noticeable, particularly among the English workmen in large cities and towns. Such persons have every appearance of health, but when injured or attacked with disease, have no resisting power, and die from apparently the most trivial causes. In this country beer-drinkers usually are dyspeptics and have catarrhal and other local inflammations. They suffer from influenza, malaria, are sluggish, exhibit mental feebleness, and

are great patrons of the doctors and free dispensaries.

The use of wines and strong liquors in moderation or excess is followed by neuralgias, insomnia, and obscure pains which are called rheumatism and malaria or sequelae of the grip. Other symptoms of disability which are noted in persons who use spirits to excess are apparent in disorders of the nervous system. Some of the most obscure symptoms pointing to changes in the brain disappear rapidly after the discontinuance of spirits. In clinical studies this fact is so apparent that careful inquiries are always directed toward the habits of the patient to determine the influence of alcohol, if possible.

The habitual use of alcohol by the people is becoming of greater significance clinically, and next to syphilis is a contributory variety of disease, and should be inquired into in every obscure case. Recent pathologic studies have cleared away much of the obscurity concerning the action of alcohol on the organism. We now know that alcohol, even in small quantities, has a peculiar corroding action both on cells and tissues, impairing their power of growth and repair, and diminishing their functional activity. The nutriment which would naturally be used to repair cell and tissue is diverted, changed, and becomes waste products.

The action of alcohol on the nerves, particularly those which control the blood-vessels, lessens the power of control, and permits the blood to pass with greater force and volume, putting greater strain on the walls of the minute arteries, and is probably followed in many instances by minute hemorrhages. Alcohol in the blood diminishes the oxygen-carrying property, destroying the hemoglobin, and is followed by states of starvation. The waste products are retained, and become sources for the growth of pathogenic germs. Both the liver and the kidneys are subjected to increased activity with diminished nutrition.—T. D. Crothers, M. D.