ALCOHOL — WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT: THE USE OF PLEDGES.
By Kate Lindsay, M. D.
Alcohol, the chemist tells us, is a product of fermentation whereby sugars are decomposed, and alcohol and carbonic acid are formed from the rearrangement of the original elements,—carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen,—which form what are called the carbohydrate foods, commonly known as the starches and sugars. The sugars contain the same elements as the starches, but in a more soluble form. The ultimate natural transformation of starch is either into some of these more soluble forms of matter for use as food, or else into cellulose, gums, and woody fiber, as in the growing tree. In fruit and many vegetables, like the beet, it changes into sugar. From this we see what useful elements oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen are when arranged as nature intended they should be for the good of man. In starch and sugars, they are the foods from which much of the heat and working energies of the body are derived. Even the infant’s food is composed of more than half the solids, in the form of sugar of milk. In the adult also, the most needed and abundant food elements are the carbohydrates. At any age of life much more of the food consumed by the body is used up in forming heat and working energy than in tissue building and repair. From all forms of sugar subjected to fermentation, alcohol can be made. The effect of the action of yeast ferment on these sugars is to decompose, or disarrange, the elements of which they are made up, and form alcohol,—a substance from which the body derives neither working energy nor heat, and which acts as an irritant poison, causing, even in moderate doses, a lowering of bodily temperature, and loss of physical strength, as well as degeneration of all the tissues of the body, especially of the brain and nervous system. In plain words, this rearrangement of these food elements by fermentation, or decomposition, produces a poison from what nature had intended for a food. I do hereby solemnly affirm that, with the help of God, I will totally abstain from the voluntary use, as a beverage, or in any equivalent manner, of all liquids or substances containing alcohol, The Anti-Whisky Pledge, of the International Health and Temperance Association, known as the first pledge of that society of temperance workers, is a promise and resolution to abstain from imbibing this poison. Many object to the signing of a pledge, because they feel that it means the surrendering of personal liberty and freedom, and the entering into a sort of self-imposed slavery. The young man boasts that he can “either take liquor or let it alone.” He finds that the repeated taking of alcohol in any form, and under whatever name the liquor may be known, soon creates an appetite for the poison, so that he is impelled to take the drug, even against his best and strongest resolutions. He awakes to the painful fact that he is a slave indeed, impelled by an irresistible impulse to swallow the poison, but powerless to resist strong drink, even though he is aware that it is destroying his body and debasing his mind. Taking this pledge, and with the help of God living up to its principles, will not abridge personal liberty, but extend its power over the appetites, so that reason, not impulse, shall dictate what is to be eaten and drunk for the health and comfort of the body, and the strength and soundness of the mind. It is a step in the direction of making him the great ruler spoken of in Prov. 16: 32; “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.” The lesson of life is to attain this control of self, which means the truest freedom, and makes man supreme among his fellow men. It was this power, so plainly exemplified in the life of the Saviour, which made him our great example. “Get thee behind me, Satan,” was always how he met and vanquished the enemy. So must weaker man conquer with His help the lust of the flesh. Then shall he be a freeman indeed and in truth, and no pledge to abstain from sin will be to him a yoke of bondage, but rather a badge of freedom, an example of the greatest liberty man can attain on this earth,—the ability to resist the evil and to choose the good.