Drunkard's Arguments Answered. (Continued.)
5. ALCOHOL PROTECTS AGAINST EXCESSIVE HEAT.
The advocates of drinking, like the man in the fable, "blow both hot and cold," in their arguments. They love the beverage, and so it must be useful in some way. Dr. Parkes says on this point, "Not only is heat less well borne, but insolation (sunstroke) is predisposed to." "The common notion that some form of alcoholic beverage is necessary in tropical climates is, I firmly believe, a mischievous delusion." His statements are supported by all the best authorities on tropical diseases—Dr. Carpenter and others. Said Stanley, the African traveler: "A drunkard cannot live in Africa." It has been observed that among English soldiers in India those who are strict teetotalers endure long marches under exposure to a tropical sun much better than those addicted to the use of liquor. So it does; opium, strychnia, and prussic acid stimulate. What is a stimulant? "Stimulant" is only another name for poison. Stimulation means poisoning. When alcohol, or any other one of a hundred poisons which might be mentioned, is taken into the body, every vital organ sets to work to get it out. The liver filters it out in the bile; the lungs pour out volumes of it in the form of a vapor, making a drunkard's breath smell like a distillery; the skin pours it out as sweat; the kidneys do their part in expelling the vile drug; and all the time the heart pumps away with violence to hasten the departure of the intruder. This great commotion in the vital economy is called "stimulation." These are the first effects of alcohol, or the effects of small doses—such effects as the moderate drinker feels. The later effects, and those which result from larger doses, are depressing. The excitement is followed by a corresponding degree of depression, or partial paralysis, since the drug supplies no force in return for that which it expends. Many of the ablest physicians pronounce alcohol a narcotic. If alcohol is a stimulant, that fact is one of the best arguments against its use. Says Sir B. Brodie, "Stimulants do not create nerve power." 7. ALCOHOLIC DRINKS PROTECT THE SYSTEM AGAINST DISEASE.
One finds an excuse for the use of liquor in small or large quantities in the theory that it will fortify his system against the ravages of small-pox or cholera. Another takes liberal doses of brandy to "keep off the chills." Another keeps his system saturated with alcohol so that he will not take cold. Any one of these diseases, or almost any other, would be infinitely less harmful than alcohol itself, even if the opinion were true that alcohol is a preventive; but alcohol is not a preventive of disease, according to the experience of the most reliable observers. Dr. Parkes, Sir John Hall, Inspector General of the English army, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Mann, Henry Martin, and others of equal eminence, all concur in this opinion. Indeed, the most indubitable evidence can be cited to prove that alcohol is directly the cause of a vast amount of disease, instead of being, as many suppose, a preventive. If alcohol were a preventive of disease, then those who use it ought to be the most healthful; but we find the contrary to be the case. The liquor drinker, instead of living longer than the teetotaler, as he ought to do if this theory were true, lives, on an average, after reaching adult age, only one-fifth as long as the abstainer, as shown by life-insurance statistics. We have elsewhere enumerated more than forty distinct diseases which are the direct result of the use of alcoholic drinks in one form or another. 8. ALCOHOL AIDS DIGESTION.
The moderate drinker takes his morning dram to fortify his stomach for the reception of his breakfast. Immediately after breakfast, he must have another glass to assist digestion. But how does alcohol assist digestion? Not by dissolving the food, for its effect is to harden tissues. It does not render the gastric juice more efficient, for it destroys it and causes its active element, pepsin, to be deposited as a white powder. In dogs to which alcohol was given with food, it was found that the process of digestion had not begun, twelve hours after eating. The stomach is obliged to remove all the alcohol before digestion can begin. This, then, is a monstrous fallacy. 9. ALCOHOL IS MADE FROM GRAIN.
"But," says one, "alcohol is made from grain, and if it is so very bad, why should not the grain be injurious also? There is a little poison in everything, any way." Alcohol is made from grain, but it is not found in it. Smoke is made from wood, yet there is no smoke in wood; it is made by the destruction of the latter. Alcohol is made by the destruction of fruits and grains. It is an absurd popular notion that there is, necessarily, poison in everything. In these days of wholesale adulteration it is often difficult to obtain food unmixed with poisonous products, but nature does not serve us so badly. Poison is not essential to life. 10. WHISKY DOES NOT HURT ME.
The opium smoker, the absinthe taker, the arsenic eater, all use the same argument, yet each falls a victim to his vice. You do not know what alcohol is doing for you. "Wine is a mocker [deceiver]." You cannot see its depredations. Your blunted sensibilities cannot feel its ravages. Your friends see it. Your wife notes it and mourns over it. You can yourself see it in others. Are your tissues different from those of every other man? Are they made of iron that they cannot be destroyed? Is the alcohol you drink different from all other alcohol? No; your good sense tells you, No. Then reform before it is too late. 11. PURE LIQUOR IS NOT BAD.
"If we only had such pure liquor as they used to make, it would not be so very bad," says one. "Only take a little of my wine; I made it myself, and it cannot hurt any one," says the good housewife. These are two mischievous errors. Alcohol is the worst poison found in liquor. No drug added by adulteration is so bad as the fiery liquid itself. Pure liquor is simply pure poison. Alcohol is always the same, and its effects are always identical, whether it is found in the whisky barrel, or the cider barrel; in rum, brandy, lager beer, homemade wine, or "temperance bitters." Alcohol is the horrid fiend we are fighting, no matter under what guise he comes.