82 LC
ALCOHOLIC POISON,
recognizes the drug as something which has no
place in the blood and ought to be removed :
and, as it cannot directly effect the removal itself
it pumps a little harder at the circulation in | i
der to hurry the impure blood along to those or-
gans which are especially designed to remove
purities. Hence the increased force and fr
quency of the pulse.
. The fist of these organs which the hastening
00 reaches, 18 the lungs, and here the volatile
poison 1s sent out in volumes. Every one knows
that a drunkard’s breath smells like a beer sho
It is also expelled by the kidneys and the skin
and can be found in the urine and the pers; ira.
tion. In fact, every excretory organ of the bod
1s engaged in getting rid of this poison. :
A food or a friendly substance is not treated
in this way. If alcohol is a good thing, it is
certainly very much abused by the vital in.
sinets. But the vital instincts are not easily
deceived. They recognize food in an entirely
o erent manner, An apple, a potato, milk, or
read, when taken into the body, is utilized It
disappears, and never re-appears as milk, or bread
or apple, or potato. Not so with alcohol It
enters the system alcohol, and leaves it precisel
the same as it entered, remaining the same al
the way through. Instead of retaining the drug
digesting and assimilating it, the system hurries
1t out in every possible way. The escapin oi.
son can be detected in the breath for mor than
twenty-four hours after a small quantity has
ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION.
heen taken. It is long retained in the body, and
has been distilled from the brains of drunkards
thirty-six hours after its reception into the body.
If after eating apples, potatoes, and sundry
other articles, the same articles should be found
upon a post-mortem examination, in various por-
tions of the body, apples in the brain, potatoes in
“the liver, and other articles in other parts, it
would be considered as the most indubitable ev-
idence that those articles—apples, potatoes, etc.,
were not food, since they were not used or
changed in the body. If we found these same
articles passing out of the body, we should be led
to the same conclusion. This is just the experi-
ence with alcohol. The conclusion, then, is una-
voidable, that it is not food, but poison, as emi-
nent physicians have declared.
Says Dr. Parker, again, of alcohol, “It is not a
food, nor should "it be used as a common bev-
erage.”
All Medicines Are Poisons.
We need not adduce further evidence that al-
cohol is a poison, for all must admit this point.
But, says the advocate of alcoholic medication,
« All medicines are poisons, and the worst poi-
sons are the most powerful remedies.”
We willingly grant that “all medicines are
poisons.” We have good authority to support
"us in so doing. Said Prof. A. Clark, of the New
York College of Physicians and Surgeons, “All
our curative agents are poisons,” “ every dose di-