SAIL EEY Gh ss
52 ALCOHOLIC POISON.
is only another name for poison. Stimulation
means poisoning. When alcohol, or any other
one of a hundred poisons which might be men-
tioned, 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 drunkards
breath smell like a distillery; the skin pours it
out as sweat; the kidneys do their part in ex-
pelling the vile drug; and all the time the heart
pumps away with violence to hasten the depart-
ure of the intruder. This great commotion in
the vital economy is called “stimulation.”
These are the first effects of alcohol, or the ef-
fects of small doses—such effects as the moderate
drinker feels. The later effects, and those which
result from larger doses, are depressing. The ex-
citement is followed by a corresponding degree of
depression, or partial paralysis, since the drug
supplies no force in return for that which it ex-
pends. Many of the ablest physicians pronounce
alcohol a narcotic.
[f 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 great quantities in the theory that it
will fortify his system against the ravages of
small-pox or cholera. Another takes liberal
THE DRUNKARD'S ARGUMENTS, 53
doses of brandy to “keep off the chills” An-
other 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 opin-
ion 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, Hen-
ry Martin, and others of equal eminence, all con-
cur 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, in-
stead 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-insur-
ance statistics.
We have already enumerated more than forty
distinct diseases which are the direct result of the
use of aleoholic 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