Some Things Alcohol Will Do
By T. J. Evans
Its Effect upon the Brain—How It Predisposes a Person to Tuberculosis—Experience Bears Out the Statements of the Ancient Book Concerning It Medical Superintendent, Loma Linda Sanitarium, Loma Linda, California In discussing the uses and evil effects of alcohol, it might be well to state some of its effects upon the mind. I will quote to some extent from C. B. Burr, M. D., on alcoholic intoxication, which is classed as one form of insanity, and the erraticism incident to the use of alcohol: Actions of an Alcoholic Brain
“Varying with the natural disposition, there may be intoxication, exaltation, or depression of emotional tone, belligerency, jealousy, periods of frenzy, stupor, depending upon the amount of intoxicants taken into the system. “Acute alcoholic delirium, or delirium tremens, is of sudden onset, though there is frequently a precedent period of gastric derangement, with reduction in emotional tone, and impaired nutrition, due to the toxic effects of alcohol. “Following the period of insomnia, the derangement of the stomach and alimentary canal, loss of appetite, and restlessness, a condition of mental excitement appears; there are increased sensitiveness and irritability, fretfulness, and impatience. Rapidly a condition of confusion exists, and this goes on to delirium, depending upon the amount of intoxicant consumed, and the susceptibility of the patient to its influence. Hallucinations of sight and hearing take place. Patients hear threatening noises, and misconstrue ordinary conversation and current sounds. They are suspicious. They see rats, vermin, and creeping, crawling things, dogs, cats, horses, and things going round and round. They distort figures in the carpet and wall paper, pick at the bedding, and are by turns incoherent, dazed, frenzied, and completely disoriented. They are apt to exhaust their strength to the border of collapse by struggling with those about them. “The patient may have pallor of the surface of the body, cold sweat, and indications of collapse; loss of appetite, refusing to take food, and delusions of poison; loss of sleep. In a very aggravated state, the patient may even simulate paranoia. They imagine themselves great poets, artists, musicians, authors, and possessed with great wealth. Misconception of the motives of individuals. “One patient who murdered his wife by striking her in the head with an ax, committed the act because he read in lettuce, radishes, and onions served at one time on the table, ‘Let us re-dis-union.’” Stamped Upon His Own Mother
The mind is so distorted that acts of violence may be committed at any time. I was called to see a patient who was reported to have been injured. On entering the house, I found the woman in a small upper room, which was poorly furnished with the bare necessities of life. She was quite elderly; and a young man about twenty-two years of age was standing in the room, with his foot on the stove, leaning his head on his hand, and seemed to be in deep meditation. I asked the woman what the difficulty was, and she stated that her son had been threatening to kill her if she did not sell the furniture in the house so he could use the money to buy drink. These threats had become more violent each day, until finally, two nights before this time, he had come in at two o’clock, and finding his mother sleeping, jumped on the bed, and began to stamp her with heavy hobnailed shoes. In the process of stamping, he had fractured the ulna of the right arm, and the radius of the left, inflicted a severe wound back of the right ear, and skinned the forehead. She was bruised all over her body. No help was near, and the next morning she was left without any care, and it was nearly noon before she was able to call anyone’s attention to her needs. This she did by working her way to the window and bumping her head against the window-pane as a child was passing. This is only one instance of many that might be cited that are very similar. With such instances constantly before us, how can we any longer sanction the presence of the saloon among us? It is demoralizing to the nation, to society, and to the home, and to the individual physically, mentally, and morally. Alcohol, and Its Relation to Legal Medicine
“M. Keschner discusses the relations of alcohol to legal medicine, and gives some statistics of its effect in favoring or producing disease. In Bellevue, for instance, in 1907, out of a total number of 33,224 patients, 6,376 were admitted for alcoholism. In 1904 the total number of patients was 29,741, alcoholic 8,941. Among the alcoholics in these figures, the patients admitted for ailments due to alcohol secondarily, such as chronic Bright’s disease and cirrhosis of the liver, are not included. In the workhouse on Blackwell’s Island, out of 17,471 prisoners committed in 1907, 4,728 were committed for being alcoholic. The average mortality is about ten to every ten thousand. This varies in different countries and climates.” Here, then, we have a product, the abuse of which causes a higher morbidity and mortality than any other known or unknown cause. In committing this ravage, alcohol has all the pathogenic bacilli and cocci individually and collectively bowing to it and pronouncing it supreme in destructive power. Next to heredity, alcohol in forty-two per cent of the cases, according to Kraepelin, is the most prolific cause of insanity, idiocy, and epilepsy. Generally speaking, sixty per cent of all crime is the result, directly or indirectly, of alcohol or association with drinking houses. The alcoholic rounder is one of the best culture media for the tubercle bacillus. Moral depravity finds its best friend in whisky. In the law, the alcoholic is sui generis. It is necessary to establish for him rules of conduct differing from those of ordinary men. His status in the law is as unique as it is on the sidewalk. Drunkenness itself is no excuse for crime; but insanity, which forms a valid defense in other cases, has been held as excusing a criminal although the insanity was originally produced by alcohol. Should Receive More Scientific Attention
Keschner deplores the lack of attention to alcoholism in this country. He says of New York: “In this state both the public and authorities are woefully indifferent as to the disposition of this unfortunate class of patients. The only law there exists concerning him is to lodge him in jail. Millions are spent annually to eradicate infectious diseases; great stress is laid on the prevention and treatment of bubonic plague and pellagra; most sumptuous sanatoria are constructed to harbor persons afflicted with the ‘white plague’; yet the damage inflicted physically and economically by alcohol is far greater than that inflicted by all the infectious diseases put together. “Jails, workhouses, and penitentiaries in this state cost millions to maintain; and these harbor criminals, sixty per cent of whom owe their origin in crime to alcohol; yet, to the shame of us physicians and citizens of the Empire State, we have no provision such as a ‘home for inebriates’ to treat scientifically and intelligently these alcoholics before they become criminals.” W. J. H. Sinclair states, in the Glasgow Medical Journal, that “alcoholism is a frequent cause of unfitness both directly and indirectly, but some persons attach too much importance to heredity in alcoholism. Alcoholism is not rarely a symptom of some deep-seated, serious defect. The dipsomaniac or alcoholic who is a drunkard as a result of neuropathic or psychopathic defect has probably inherited such defect, and is likely to transmit it, and his progeny is likely to manifest such inheritance by emotional, volitional, or intellectual defect or any combination of these defects. But most drunkards are drunkards not from inherited defect, but because of lack of self-discipline; and also because of the attitude of the class to which they belong towards drunkenness, and perhaps more than to any other cause, because of the habits of their social stratum. Such people do not transmit such a condition of the nervous system as produces a dipsomania, nor are their progeny likely to be mentally defective as a result of the drinking habits of their parents.” J. Abadie and H. Grenier de Cardenal draw the following conclusions from an investigation of the social relations of tuberculosis and alcoholism at Bordeaux: “In more than half the pleuro-pulmonary tuberculosis patients examined, the prolonged use of alcoholic drinks was found as an element of their social or pathologic past.15 “In all cases without exception the alcoholic habits preceded the tuberculosis. “Men were attacked by tuberculosis more frequently than women, because, among other reasons, perhaps less important, they contract the habit of drinking more readily. “Tuberculosis in adult age or at the commencement of old age is frequently the result of intoxication, sometimes indeed of slight extent, but prolonged. “The adolescent or the young man who becomes intemperate may become rapidly tuberculous. The adult who takes to drink resists tuberculosis for a longer time. “The resistance of the alcoholic to tuberculosis appears to be inversely proportional to the amount of alcoholic liquors consumed. “The alcoholic who has an alcoholic or tuberculous heredity exhibits less resistance to tuberculosis than alcoholics without hereditary taint.” “Children of tuberculous parents seem predisposed to the use of alcohol in their youth. Likewise the children of alcoholics seem predisposed to contract tuberculosis in their youth.” “Alcoholic habits in the husband predispose to the tuberculosis of the wife, either because the husband becomes tuberculous and himself a focus of contagion, or because the vice of the husband causes the worry, overexertion, and privations of the wife, and thus secondarily determines her tuberculosis. These conclusions are true for the conditions and surroundings of the patients investigated, but should be confirmed by other investigations before being generally accepted.” Experience Shows the Book to Be Right
The investigations of scientific men are in harmony with the statements of the Bible. It declares that “wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” Deception is couched in every bit of intoxicant that is taken into the system; for it is a substance that gives a sense of energy and strength without the real endurance. The instruction given to the mother of John the Baptist is also in harmony with this, for he was to give one of the most important messages that was ever to be proclaimed to the human race: “He shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost.” Fresh grape juice is refreshing and wholesome; but when fermentation is allowed to take place, and alcohol has been formed in the wine, then it is unfit for the system, because it becomes a poison. The effect of this poison is well known to medical men. The evil effects of this drug can be found in the insane asylum, in the prison, and on the streets during the dark hours of the night. So all sane arguments would bear a direct testimony against the use of alcoholic preparations in any form whatsoever. It is an established fact that alcohol can be eliminated from commerce, from the factory, from the laboratory, and from the practice of medicine, without any serious inconvenience to any, but a great blessing to thousands of homes whose inmates have suffered privation, abuse, and indigence from the vileness of drunkards who have sunk to the lowest level under the influence of the greatest curse in the land.