Alcohol—The Destroyer of Men
By David H. Kress
Alcoholic Liquors Not Nutrient—Pathological Effects—Degeneration and Destruction Everywhere
A Brood of Curses Threatening Civilization
By DAVID H. KRESS In many of our civilized countries, especially among the ignorant classes, alcoholic beverages have in the past been considered highly nutritious; and because they increased bodily weight, physicians recommended their use to the emaciated and the sick. The nursing mother took beer to increase the flow of milk, or because of the quieting influence it exerted on the nursing child. As a result of these erroneous ideas, drunkenness among women increased, until this has become one of the most serious problems that confront Great Britain. Beer and wine produce body weight, but this is no evidence that they are nutrients. The increase in weight is a pathological process, not a physiological one. While in appearance the drinker may be the picture of health, in reality he is a physical degenerate. He is incapable of recovering, often, from the mildest disorders. Alcoholic drinks produce a species of degeneration of all the organs of the body, but they affect chiefly the heart, the liver, and the kidneys. Dr. Bollinger, of Munich, a city that has the reputation of consuming more beer than any other city in the world, says it is a rare thing to find a normal heart or a normal kidney in an adult resident of that city. The degenerative effect on the organs mentioned is not the worst feature of this excessive consumption of alcohol. Alcohol affects the brain in the same manner that it affects the heart and the kidneys. It causes brain degeneracy, and moral degeneracy is always associated with brain degeneracy. In speaking of the influence of beer on the German nation, Prof. Edward von Hartmann says, "Although of all nations, the German has the highest capacity for culture, the general culture of its higher classes is undergoing frightful retrogression, because of the beer consumption of its students." Dr. A. Forel, of the university of Zürich, says: "To be convinced of its moral effect, one needs only to study in Germany the beer jokes, the beer conversation, and the beer literature. Among the academic youth of Germany, the drinking of beer has truly killed their ideals and their ethics, and has produced an indescribable vulgarity." Twenty years ago I was connected with a medical mission in one of the most degraded portions of the city of Chicago, where I had opportunity to observe the influence of drink upon the people. The misery, the sorrow, the degradation, physical, mental, and moral, were appalling. The inquiry frequently came to me, "What is responsible for all this wretchedness?" There could be but one answer—alcohol. I recently visited some of the South Sea Islands, where the results of the use of alcohol are much more pronounced. In civilized countries, where the nature of these poisons is understood, their use is confined generally to adults and chiefly to men, and is discouraged among women and youth. It is not so among the natives of those islands. The results are sad indeed. The ungoverned passions stimulated by drink have dragged them down to an appalling state of degradation. When Captain Cook first landed in the islands of New Zealand, he noted that the natives were perfect in form and features. At ninety they were still agile and active, showing little evidence of age or degeneracy. Serious wounds, he said, would heal without having any apparent attention. The Maoris were at that time pronounced the finest specimens with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been brought in contact. Now drunkenness is witnessed everywhere among them, and lewdness and immorality of the worst type exist. The Maoris of to-day are degenerates. They have been reduced in numbers from 120,000 to less than 40,000. Chief Justice Stout, of Wellington, in passing sentence in the case of a drunken native, said, "If this drinking among the Maoris is not checked, we are in measurable distance of the time when the Maori race will be exterminated." The natives of Australia, when first discovered by the white man, were a strong, robust people. They are now almost extinct. The same brood of curses is threatening the existence of civilized races, as well as the savage races mentioned. The death-rate of France exceeds the birth-rate. The French people are dying out, just as certainly as are the natives of New Zealand and Hawaii. America is not securely great. Like Babylon of old, she may say, "I sit a queen, and . . . shall see no sorrow," at the very time when the fearful results of drink and vice are writing her doom. Like causes, if continued, will produce like results.