The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
and nervous action, two forces mutually balancing each other. The
nervous action is diminished by the introduction of the alcohol; this
destroys the balance and deranges the arterial pressure. Dr. James
Edmunds, a great English physician, years ago said: "When we see a
man breathing with great vigor, does it occur to us that he must be in
good health? Is it an indication that he gets more air? We all know
better. It simply shows that he has asthma or some such disease, and
that his breathing is strained and imperfect. He is making use of less
air than the person who breathes quietly. This is the case with the blood,
work, so it plunges and struggles in the effort. And the cause of both
cases is the same. There is more carbonic acid in the blood than either
the heart or the lungs can handle. If for example I were suffering from
general debility and milk were the food best suited to my needs, and if I
should discover a tramp in my apartments drinking of my already too
limited supply, would it be reasonable to assert that the exhibition of
strength which I made in forcing him to desist is an indication that the
entrance of the vagrant bettered my enfeebled condition? The greater
activity of the heart is not due to the added strength resulting from
recruits of friends but to a desperate struggle to beat back a reinforced
enemy."
That alcohol does not allay pain had been established when this committee
was organized. The only proper method of allaying pain is to
remedy the disorder which produced it. It is no remedy to deaden the
nerves so that we cannot feel it. This reasoning had been found good
in the case of alcohol as a remedy in "colds." Whiskey does not relieve
the uneasiness and oppression we experience when ailing from a cold,
it only benumbs the nerves so we do not feel the trouble. The cure is
not hastened but delayed in this way.
IS IT THE CAUSE OF DISEASE?
Besides the fact that alcohol had, before this committee's existence,
been proved to be neither a drink nor a food nor a medicine, it had also
been shown to be the cause of disease. Over five thousand of the most
prominent physicians in this country had so stated it, and the proportion
was equally great in all the enlightened countries of Europe. The most
pronounced in this way, perhaps, have been the great leaders in medical
science in Austria, Germany and France. Some of the points made
against the use of alcohol were that it interferes with digestion by rendering
insoluble the active principle of the gastric juice, and especially by
preventing the solution of body-building foods. The natural action of
various organs of the body is more or less arrested by alcohol, thus reducing
the temperature. This from Dr. Edmunds already quoted: "The
blood carries certain earthy matters in it in a soluble state, these earthy
matters being necessary for the nutrition of the bones and other parts of
the body. You all know that when wine is fermented and turned from
a weak sweet wine into a strong alcoholic wine, you get what is called
a 'crust' formed on the inside of the bottle. What is that crust? That
crust consists of saline or earthy matters which were soluble in the
saccharine grape juice, but which are insoluble in the alcoholic fluids.
We find in drunkards that the blood vessels get into the same state as
the wine bottles from the deposit of earthy matter which has no business
to be deposited, and forms the 'beeswing' or crust in the blood vessels
of the drunkard, in his eye and in all of the tissues of the body." Alcohol
had been found to prevent the elimination of waste, thus the body is
loaded with worn and decaying tissues, leaving the system an inviting
field for all sorts of diseases. Life insurance companies, influenced by
business interests wholly, make a distinction between liquor users and
non-users. Nelson, a distinguished actuary of England, employed as an
expert by life insurance companies, found after investigating over 7,000
cases, none of which were drunkards, that between the ages of 15 and
20 the proportion of deaths in total abstainers to those in moderate drinkers
is as 10 to 18; between the ages of 25 and 30, as 10 to 31; between
30 and 40 as 10 is to 40.
With reference to the effect on the offspring of drinking parents, the
medical profession had accepted the teaching of the French specialist, Dr.
Jaccound, that "of the children of drinkers some of them become imbeciles
and idiots; others are feeble in mind, exhibit moral perversion, and sink
by degrees into complete degeneration; still others are epileptics, deaf
and dumb, scrofulous, etc.," and of the English teacher, Dr. Kerr, that
"long continued habitual indulgence in intoxicating drink to an extent far
short of intoxication is not only sufficient to originate and hand down a
morbid tendency, but is much more likely to do so than even repeated
drunken outbreaks with intervals of sobriety between."
Thus the men who have been of the greatest honor to the profession
in every land were a unit in opposing the use of alcohol in health or
disease and in holding that if people are determined to use it there is less
danger in health, as then the system is in better condition to throw off
its evil effects.
PROGRESS DURING THE PAST YEAR.
Now as to the progress made during the past year. In June, 1901,
the American Medical Association met in St. Paul. The branch of it
giving special study to the temperance question held several sessions,
about one hundred of the most distinguished physicians in the country
attending. Much time was given to considering Dr. Atwater's teaching
to the effect that he had proved alcohol to be a food. During the previous
year he had published the details of his experiments, and at the convention
it was shown that his own experiments upset his conclusions. It
had been held that except in rare instances alcohol taken into the system
passed away from it as alcohol without change. Dr. Atwater's experiments
strengthened somewhat the position of those who held that change
is not infrequent, but he concluded that the portion broken up while in the
body served as a food. A closer examination of his own experiments
showed that the portion oxidized had gone to form other compounds in
the system which were possibly more harmful than if it had all passed
off unchanged. Dr. Max Kassowitz, professor in the University of Vienna,
said, after Dr. Atwater's statement had been published: "For the animal
and human organism, alcohol is not both a food and a poison, but a
poison only, which like other poisons is an irritant when taken in small
doses while in larger ones it produces paralysis." In connection with
the fact that alcohol is simply a poison, it may be worth stating, that the
original meaning of the word "intoxicated" was "poisoned." After reading
Dr. Atwater, the Russian Commission for the study of alcoholism,
after two years' work, said: "The claim that alcohol is a food in any
proper sense of the term is not sufficiently proved." In the St. Paul
convention spoken of, politics obtained a foothold, and some weak resolutions
in favor of the army canteen were adopted but not even the champions
of the canteen were willing to subscribe to the statement that alcohol is
ever a real food.
Just previous to our last convention much noise was made through
the daily press concerning a finding of some English scientist to the effect
that an acquired tendency cannot be transmitted to offspring. We were
told that this would upset the theory that children inherit a craving for
intoxicants from intemperate parents, and "the moralists and reformers
would have to readjust this logic on these points." In the annual report
of the president of the Union a year ago, attention was drawn to the fact
that those who indulge in this sort of sophistry have not read what the
teachings of temperance workers have been on the subject. Such was not
the opinion of the scientists making the report, for it says "Children of
drunkards are liable to be mentally and physically weak and tend to
become paupers, criminals, epileptics and drunkards." It will be seen
from what has been said that this is the position we have held all along.
Dr. Davis, the dean of American physicians opposing the use of alcohol,
has published during the year a number of articles showing the impossibility
of alcohol's being of service as a medicine, and has dwelt especially
upon its harmful effects in fevers, diseases in which it is still much
prescribed. The two influential temperance societies composed of American
physicians have, during the past year, kept up the agitation against
alcohol as a medicine, and good is coming from it, as gradually medical
journals are giving more and more space to the question. The following
international manifesto has been issued by the leading physicians of the
world:
INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL MANIFESTO.
"The following statement has been agreed upon by the Council of
the British Medical Temperance Association, the American Medical Temperance
Association, the Society of Medical Abstainers in Germany, the
leading physicians in England and on the continent. The purpose of this
is to have a general agreement of opinions of all prominent physicians
in civilized countries concerning the dangers from alcohol, and in this
way give support to the efforts made to check and prevent the evils from
this source.
In view of the terrible evils which have resulted from the consumption
of alcohol, evils which in many parts of the world are rapidly increasing,
we, members of the medical profession, feel it to be our duty, as
being in some sense the guardians of the public health, to speak plainly
of the nature of alcohol, and of the injury to the individual and the
danger to the community which arise from the prevalent use of intoxicating
liquors as beverages.
We think that it ought to be known that:
1. Experiments have demonstrated that even a small quantity of
alcoholic liquor, either immediately or after a short time, prevents perfect
mental action, and interferes with the functions of the cells and
tissues of the body, impairing self-control by producing other markedly
injurious effects. Hence alcohol must be regarded as a poison, and ought
not to be classed among foods.
2. Observation establishes the fact that a moderate use of alcoholic
liquors, continued over a number of years, produces a gradual deterioriation
of the tissues of the body, and hastens the changes which old age
brings, thus increasing the average liability to disease (especially to
infectious disease,) and shortening the duration of life.
3. Total abstainers, other conditions being similar, can perform more
work, possess greater powers of endurance, have on the average less sickness,
and recover more quickly than non-abstainers, especially from
infectious diseases, while altogether escape diseases specially caused by
alcohol.
4. All the bodily functions of a man, as of every other animal, are
best performed in the absence of alcohol, and any supposed experience
to the contrary is founded on delusion, a result of the action of alcohol
on the nerve centers.
5. Further, alcohol tends to produce in the offspring of drinkers an
unstable nervous system, lowering them mentally, morally and physically.
Thus deterioration of the race threatens us, and this is likely to be greatly
accelerated by the alarming increase of drinking among women, who
have hitherto been little addicted to this vice. Since the mothers of the
coming generation are thus involved the importance and danger of this
increase cannot be exaggerated.
Seeing, then, that the common use of alcoholic beverages is always
and everywhere followed, sooner or later, by moral, physical and social