EXCUSES FOR ALCOHOL by John Ellis, M. D.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 33.

EXCUSES FOR ALCOHOL.

By John Ellis, M. D.

THE world over, those who love and use wine and intoxicating drinks, who partake of "the social cup," are the men who often prescribe them for patients, and strive to justify their use; and it is wonderful, and very interesting, to see to what shifts they have been driven by the advancing science of this age. It retards the metamorphoses or wasting and repair, or renewal of the structures of the body, they tell us, when every school-boy in physiology, and every man and woman who has ever felt the invigorating effects of active exercise, can see clearly that to retard such changes is the last thing to be desired, if we wish health and strength. The use of opium, and the torpor of hibernating animals, and the sluggishness of lazy and indolent men and women, retard much more fully the metamorphoses of the tissues; but is such a life to be desired when happiness and health depend on activity?

Again, we are told that a small portion of the alcohol taken into the system is actually appropriated to some useful purpose, and is, consequently, actually food—"yes, food, gentlemen." The same is true of a much larger proportion of the opium, tobacco, or deadly nightshade, which can safely be taken into the stomach; but who would think of attempting to justify the use of these poisons by any such argument? These straws are fast being submerged.

Go the world over and the physicians who have either never used wine and alcoholic drinks, or having used, have repented and put away their use, will be found to totally condemn their use during health, and rarely, if ever, to prescribe them as medicine. Need more be said?—John Ellis, M. D.