Health and Temperance by Helen Campbell

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 11, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 23.

Health and Temperance.

By Helen Campbell

Food and Intemperance.

In the conflicting theories of temperance agitators, and the hot disputes of prohibitionists and non-prohibitionists, essential facts at times slip out of sight. With an evil so enormous there seems to be no remedy save in striking at the root—the root being taken to be always the existence of facilities for obtaining the stimulant. The desire for such stimulant is regarded by a large proportion of workers in this field as only another manifestation of that total depravity of mankind which can find no salvation save in, first, the grace of God, and, second, the abolition of the saloon.

For some of more ardent faith, the man who swears off, if honest and believing, is proof against even the saloon, conversion having rendered temptation innocuous; and now and then a case occurs which seems to bear out this theory. But for the most part it is understood that indulgence has created a craving, excited often to madness by the sight or smell of liquor, and that one of the first essentials in common-sense work is to remove temptation, and thus prevent the possibility of relapse.

This, and much more in the same line of thought, is all true, but it seems seldom to occur to even the most ardent worker that, though cure of an existing appetite is now the prime consideration, prevention might have taken its place. The appetite is there, and apparently an instinct; and for many this is the fact. Inheritance has given generation after generation the craving, and made perpetual battle the only safeguard against it. And so, in every home where the curse has found resting place, women are weeping and praying and planning—now indignant at the weakness and shameful fall of those for whom they pray; now melting into pity, and gathering all forces for a fresh fight and perhaps a fresh defeat. The proportion of drinkers increases, and with it the ever-increasing percentage of paupers, criminals, idiots, lunatics, made so by this liquor fiend which threatens every home, and, directly or indirectly, has power in every home. No blue ribbon bars the way so completely that admittance cannot be had; no prayer has power enough to stay the fall that may at any moment be the fate of the most earnest struggler.

For one who looks for other than surface reasons it soon becomes apparent that there is some cause not yet reached, nor likely to be reached, by present methods. A little investigation shows that the drinker of the more common stimulants,—whisky, gin, or beer,—is usually in the class fed on coarse food, improperly prepared. Exactly what connection this food has with a morbid thirst is not asked. There is a general feeling that the poor man in large cities must have better lodging, better air, and better food, before he can fight his propensity successfully; but better food is taken to mean, generally, not greater variety, but meat in one form or another, in larger amount, and at every meal. What the direct effect of a preponderance of animal food may be is never asked, and the one question of diet is considered only in Inebriate Homes or under special treatment. It is known that the stomach of the confirmed drinker is weakened, and rendered almost incapable of digestion, but the restoration of power is supposed to come with signing the pledge; and that long waiting and utmost care are necessary never occurs.

For the masses who must deal with intemperance there is but the smallest understanding, often none at all, of what part food plays in repressing or creating the dreaded appetite. And even the most ardent student of laws, has small faith in any laws that govern the body. Unaccountable tendencies must be beyond our own control. They are simply mysterious dispensations of Providence, and intemperance part of the general perversity of mankind, never to be accounted for by any natural cause.

In the limits assigned it is impossible to go into the history of food or of national dietaries and their effects. Yet it is certain that national food has created national tendencies ever since the story of food began. The speculative and mystical tendencies of all East Indian races are the direct result of an abstinence which leaves the brain unclouded by any fumes of food. In fact, there is not substance enough in the favorite food to give full body either to life or thought, for as the dietary enlarges, thought grows with it, a varied diet proving itself essential to complex and sustained thought. But whenever the food is too strongly stimulating—and this occurs whenever meat is used too freely—there is felt at once, as the inevitable consequence, an abnormal and craving thirst.

The ambition of the day-laborer in our cities is to have plenty of meat, and this is preferred as steak fried to a crisp, and swimming in fat. For the South, and much of the West, “hog and hominy” rule; the former as bacon, used three times a day, and also swimming in fat; the latter as pone, rank with saleratus. In each case there is far more heat-food than can possibly be assimilated. The result is an irritated stomach, overheated blood, and thus a drying of every tissue over which it passes, thirst being the natural consequence. True nourishment has not been given. The tissues are stimulated, but not fed. The stomach does its work as it can, sending on the half-digested mass, and ending, an hour after food has been taken, in a “gone-ness” and craving that only stimulant can satisfy.

Nothing appears to soothe and quiet such cravings so well as alcohol in some form. For the Southern or Western man it is likely to be whisky, made from the corn that has already proved his enemy in one form, and now turns to a still more deadly one in another. For the city laborer there are many forms, lager beer appearing always the most innocent, because so much is required to bring about any effect, the amount of alcohol in each glass being too small to afford much sense of stimulation. But the quantity taken must always increase. All natural craving for food ceases, a glass of something to whip up the stomach and incline it to work being the first thought of the morning. So the miserable course goes on, till constant thirst, impossible to quench or satisfy, is the self-induced state of every drinking man.

Whatever may be thought of stimulating the appetite of the exhausted brain-worker, for instance, by the use of a glass or so of light wine, in which there is but the smallest proportion of alcohol, it is certain that any cruder form in time destroys all susceptibility, and at last all power to work in natural ways. The effect of alcohol is shown in a passage from Dr. William Robert’s lecture on “Digestion,” in which he mentions certain facts in connection with the eating of raw oysters, a method preferable to any other, for reasons which he states as follows:

“The fawn-colored mass, which is the delicious portion of the fish, is its liver, and is simply a mass of glycogen. Associated with the glycogen, but withheld from actual contact with it during life, is its appropriate digestive ferment—the hepatic diastase. The mere crushing of the oyster between the teeth brings these two bodies together, and the glycogen is at once digested without any other help than the diastase. The raw, or merely warmed, oyster is self-digestive. But the advantage of this provision is wholly lost by cooking; for the heat immediately destroys the associated ferment, and a cooked oyster has to be digested, like any other food, by the eater’s own digestive powers.

“‘My dear sir, do you want to ruin your digestion?’ asked Professor Houghton, of Trinity

College, one day, of a friend who had ordered brandy and water with his oysters in a Dublin restaurant.

‘Then he sent for a glass of brandy and a glass of Guinness’s XX, and put an oyster in each. In a very short time there lay in the bottom of the glass of brandy a tough, leathery substance resembling the finger of a kid glove, while in the porter there was hardly a trace of the oyster to be found.’”

This “kid-glove” condition covers also the stomach steeped in alcohol, which responds more and more feebly to any demand upon its powers. Larger and larger doses become a necessity, and thus the evil effects are cumulative, and each glass a stronger reason for another.

Is the pledge any sufficient guarantee against the inevitable working out of natural laws? and can any ribbon hold power enough to quiet a craving increased at every meal, and which, unless there be a struggle horrible to all who must witness it, proves master in the end? Yet it is certain that in right food is the solution of the difficulty, and that for those in whom there is inherited tendency this is the only method of suppressing the insistent desire.—Helen Campbell, in Christian Union.