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SMALL TIPPLING

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 1, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 48.

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SMALL TIPPLING.

By David Paulson, M.D.

THERE are many who are interested in the great temperance reform who would be shocked if the suggestion should be given to them that they are in anywise indulging in stimulants. Yet it is a scientific fact that alcohol is not the only stimulant. There are numerous other stimulants that are just as much so in principle, and pave the way for the curse of the drink habit; and if it were not for the sowing of these, there could not to-day be such a harvest of intemperance.
All the leading medical scientific authorities are beginning to recognize this, and when social and temperance reformers fully grasp the fact that a man reaps what he is sowing, they will find that the temperance reform must begin at the tables. Dr. Alexander Haig, an eminent London medical authority who has been making profound study of this for years, says the following significant things in his valuable book recently published on this subject:—
As regards alcohol, I was much interested to hear it said at a dinner given by the Vegetarian Society of London a few years ago, that the adoption of a vegetarian diet was one of the best means for overcoming the craving for drink, for if this craving is in any way due to the mental conditions of discomfort produced by the circulatory disturbances of uric acid, this is just what I should expect.
Like morphine, cocaine, and alcohol, of which we have been speaking, meat itself is a stimulant, and this is the real cause of the difficulty which so many experience in giving it up. As regards nutrition there is no difficulty, for plenty of things can be found which will nourish the body quite as well or better than meat. Now meat acts as a stimulant in the same way that morphine, cocaine, and alcohol do so, by clearing the blood of uric acid. The uric acid xanthins, and salts it contains diminish the alkalinity of the blood, and for a time keep it clear of uric acid, but as in the case of the drugs, this is followed by a rebound, and then more meat or alcohol, morphine, or cocaine in its place, must be taken to prevent the resulting depression, and the use of the one stimulant leads to that of another, and the more they are used, the more uric acid will be retained, and the more they will have to be used in ever-increasing quantities to hold it back. At last a time arrives when further stimulation is impossible, and then there is an enormous rush of uric acid through the blood, with headache, melancholia, or uræmia as its results. Thus I have been told by a patient of mine whose daughter, among other good works, has a Home for Inebriate Women, that her own experience has taught her that flesh diet is the very worst for them, and she does what she can to tempt them away from meat, but she says, “You can really see joy in their faces if a large joint of meat is brought in,” just, I remark, as you would see joy in their faces if a keg of whisky was placed on the table. I also hear from the same source that if the craving for alcohol is overcome, that for meat goes also. It is stimulation that is wanted, not nutrition.
I would also point out that meat not only produces in this way a craving for stimulants to overcome the rebound from its own stimulation, but it also produces thirst, so that those who use it are driven to drink very considerable quantities of such fluids as beer, and thus introduce ever more and more of the stimulating acids and alcohol.
No doubt those who eat no meat have no stimulation, and the stimulation by meat or drugs is pleasant while it lasts; but this is far more than counterbalanced by the terrible depression that follows, and which, when too late, its victims make violent endeavors to escape from.
But those who have no ups have no downs, and so long as their blood is kept pretty steadily free from uric acid, their general health of function and nutrition is considerably higher than that of those who go in for constantly-repeated stimulation and think it strength.
As we shall see later on, the cerealeans and frugivora among mankind have both greater muscular energy and power of endurance than the carnivora, and we shall see why they have it, tho meat-eaters would fain persuade us that it is all the other way. No doubt all the stimulation is wrong, and we thus merely enjoy to-day by mortgaging to-morrow; and just as we may rise to-day a few inches above our normal level, so shall we fall to-morrow exactly the same amount below it; those who live on the uric-acid-free diet can alone have a steady, high level of function every day, and these never feel the want of any stimulation.
Dr. Haig’s own definition for a “uric-acid-free diet” is one which is free from tea, coffee, and flesh meats. The waste matter in meat, the caffein in coffee, the thein in tea, are all eliminated through the body as uric acid, and thus tend to increase the long list of troubles that the human family suffer as the result of the heaping up of these waste substances in the human system. It must be plain to every reader that all those who eat a pure food, free from these substances, will have no waste matter for the system to eliminate except what is actually produced by the normal work of the body; and God has made provision for the human organs, under normal conditions, to eliminate these sufficiently day by day so that we may be able to live without headaches, nervous disorders, Bright’s disease, and kindred evils which afflict man when once his system is overwhelmed with poisons created in the body by improper food.
David Paulson, M.D.