THE GREATEST OF ALL CURSES
By John O. Corliss
Scientifically Demonstrated — A Narcotic and Deadly Poison — A Transmittable Blight FACTS differ from opinions in that they are undebatable. The truth about alcohol has been as thoroughly substantiated as has the law of gravitation, or as have the facts of astronomy. Alcohol has no food value; and he who would assert that it has, but displays ignorance of late scientific discoveries. In his Paris laboratories, the celebrated French chemist, Louis Pasteur, settled the fact that the formation of alcohol is not a simple chemical process, but that this drug is the waste product of the life processes of living organisms, the toxic excretion of ferment germs. ITS POISONOUS NATURE ESTABLISHED
The moment this fact was determined, the poisonous nature of alcohol was also established. What, then, is the errand of toxin? There is a well-established law in nature's processes, that the waste product of one form of life will not only, when retained, poison the form of life that produces it, but will also, when transplanted, poison any form of life that is higher and more delicate. Every living creature forms toxin in its life processes; and this must be eliminated, or the creature soon dies. To cover an animal completely with varnish or with any substance that prevents this elimination of toxin, causes death in a short time. The reason for this is that life processes are carried on through regular changes of minute living cells, which are known to science as protoplasm. When permitted, toxins greatly interfere with the functions of these life guardians. For the purpose of this brief article, however, it is only necessary to refer to the mission of what are termed the white blood corpuscles. These, as veteran sentinels, keep watch over every part of the body, to fight and expel disease. But when saturated with alcohol taken into the system, they become entirely incapacitated, and so nature's processes are halted, to the detriment of life's functions. If results were confined to the one violating nature's law, the terrible curse of alcohol might be erased with the death of the first transgressor. But besides the degeneracy wrought upon the original offender, the blight is transmitted to the offspring, which consequently pass but a short and handicapped existence. In this the deadly effect of alcohol is strikingly manifest; for in the embryonic stage, the tissues are tenderest and most susceptible to harm, while the alcohol maintains its poisonous power. Every process, therefore, which touches the matter of reproduction, whether in male or in female, is affected by alcoholic influence. For example, it has been well established, by animal tests, that one part of alcohol in a thousand parts of water will seriously attack an embryo, while one part of alcohol in two hundred parts of water will kill an embryo. This becomes a11subject for grave consideration, when one thinks that a prospective mother may, at a dinner, partake of a one two-hundredth solution of alcohol, and produce a miscarriage without even becoming intoxicated. The good of future society demands that children shall be well born. As it is, however, innocent children come forth with inferior minds, in feeble bodies, without the power to enjoy life's advantages in any particular. And they have, on the debit side, an inherited appetite for the accursed stuff that has made them what they are. Why should such conditions control the citizenship of an enlightened commonwealth? Why should human vultures be permitted to fatten at the expense of community welfare? Why, in the name of loyalty to Heaven, and patriotism to one's country, may not men and women unitedly rise up to sweep from the state the greatest curse that ever befell society?