THE DRUNKARD’S ARGUMENTS ANSWERED.
1.	ALCOHOL IS FOOD.
The aristocratic toper, who wishes to give an air of respectability to his vice, will claim that alcohol is a food* He will cite in proof instances in which persons have lived for weeks by the aid of no other nutriment, taking nothing but alcohol and water. This semblance of argument scarcely needs exposure; for the most that can be claimed is that it proves merely that persons have lived several weeks while taking only alcohol and water. The fact that individuals have in several instances been known to live from thirty to sixty days while taking only water, shows conclusively that those persons who lived a shorter time on brandy and water lived in spite of the alcohol instead of by the aid of it. A conclusive evidence that alcohol is not a food is found in the fact that when taken into the system it undergoes no change. It is alcohol in the still, alcohol in the stomach, alcohol in the blood, alcohol in the brain, in the liver, in all the tissues and alcohol in the breath, in the perspiration, and in all the excretions. In short, alcohol is not used in the body, but leaves it as it enters, a rank poison.
2.	ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES PRESERVE THE BODY.
Alcohol is a powerful antiseptic. An apple or the body of an animal placed in the fluid, cannot undergo decomposition. From this, some lovers of the article are very ready to infer that the use of alcohol will prevent decomposition of the tissues of the body, and thus tend to its preservation. A greater fallacy could not be conceived. Corrosive sublimate, blue vitriol, copperas, and carbolic acid are excellent antiseptics; but who would think of taking either of these articles for the purpose of prolonging life]
2	THE DRUNKARD’S ARGUMENTS ANSWERED.
But if alcohol did really hinder the destruction of the tissues, so as to prevent the natural process of disintegration, it would still be very injurious; for all the processes of life are dependent upon destructive changes of tissue; and hence, anything which would hinder this process would hinder vital action, would interfere with the life processes which are essential to the manifestation of life.
But it can be shown that the evidence upon which the scientific advocates of the use of alcohol base their arguments is quite unsatisfactory. They claim to find that the body wastes less while a person is using alcohol than when abstaining, the other conditions being the same. Hence, they tell us alcohol prevents vital changes, and so saves the body from wearing out. With this view they recommend the use of liquor to those who are obliged to undergo any hardship, or to perform any severe physical labor.
Let us examine this argument. It is found that the urine and other excretions contain less of the worn-out material of the tissues when a person is using alcohol, than when he is abstaining. From this alone it is concluded that alcohol prevents the wearing out or disintegration of tissue—a most .astonishing conclusion. No one but a man stoutly prejudiced in favor of alcohol would think of forming such a conclusion. A far more .rational deduction from the premises would be that the presence of alcohol in the system prevents the excretory organs from eliminating from the body the dead and poisonous products which result from the wearing out of the tissues. This conclusion would seem to be far more reasonable, since alcohol itself is a poison which is thrown out by the same organs whose proper function it is to remove the debris of the tissues. These organs cannot perform more than a certain amount of labor. If most of their activity is expended in eliminating alcohol, of course they can perform less of their proper labor, and so the dead products of disorganization wiII be left to accumulate in the body and produce a deceptive increase of weight. It is by this means that the drunkard often
ALCOHOL STRENGTHENS THE MUSCLES.
3
acquires a bloated appearance. Every one knows that such an accumulation of tissue is not healthy flesh; yet it is of the same character as that which leads some prejudiced scientists to pronounce in favor of alcoholic beverages as a preventive of waste.
Surely, such science must be of the kind referred to by the apostle Paul when he spoke of “ science falsely so-called.”
3.	ALCOHOL STRENGTHENS THE MUSCLES.
The laborer, the traveler, and the soldier use alcohol under the delusion that it strengthens. When fatigued, the laborer takes a glass of grog and feels better, or thinks he does. He imagines himself stronger. His increased strength, however, is wholly a matter of the imagination. Alcohol cannot strengthen the muscles; it simply paralyzes a man’s nerves so that he does not know he is tired, just as chloroform paralyzes the nerves so that a limb may be severed from the body without the patient’s knowledge.
Numerous experiments have shown that alcohol decreases muscular strength. Says Dr. Brin ton, “The smallest quantity takes somewhat from the strength of the muscles.” Says Dr. Edmunds, of London, “ A stimulant is that which gets strength out of a man instead of putting it into him.”
4.	ALCOHOL WARMS THE BODY.
The sensation of warmth produced by taking a glass of wine or brandy is delusive. The circulation is unbalanced, and for a few moments there is a seeming increase of heat; but the thermometer shows that the temperature is lessened. Says Dr. Parkes, the eminent English sanitarian, " All observers condemn the use of spirits, and even of wine or beer, as a preventive against cold.” The names of Dr. King, Dr. Kane, Captain Kennedy, and Dr. Hayes, may be cited as holding to this opinion. In the last expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, the whole crew were teetotalers. In the Russian army no soldier who has taken spirits is allowed to march in cold weather.
4
THE DRUNKARD’S ARGUMENTS ANSWERED.
5.	ALCOHOL PROTECTS AGAINST EXCESSIVE HEAT.
The advocates of drinking, like the man in the fable, “ blow both hot and cold,” in their arguments. They love the beverage, and so it must be useful in some way. Dr. Parkes says on this point, “ Not only is heat less well borne, but insolation (sunstroke) is predisposed to.” “ The common notion that some form of alcoholic beverage is necessary in tropical climates is, I firmly believe, a mischievous delusion.” His statements are supported by all the best authorities on tropical diseases—Dr. Carpenter and others.
Said Stanley, the African traveler: “ A drunkard cannot live in Africa.”
It has been observed that among English soldiers in India those who are strict teetotalers endure long marches under exposure to a tropical sun much better than those addicted to the Use of liquor.
6.	ALCOHOL STIMULATES.
So it does; opium, strychnia, and prussic acid stimulate. What is a stimulant] “Stimulant” is only another name for poison. Stimulation means poisoning. When alcohol, or any other one of a hundred poisons which might be mentioned, 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 drunkard’s breath smell like a distillery; the skin pours it out as sweat; the kidneys do their part in expelling the vile drug ; and all the time the heart pumps away with violence to hasten the departure of the intruder. This great commotion in the vital economy is called “ stimulation.”
These are the first effects of alcohol, or the effects of small doses—such effects as the ’moderate drinker feels. The later effects, and those which result from larger doses, are depressing. The excitement is followed by a corresponding degree of depression, or partial paralysis, since the drug supplies no force in return for that which it expends. Many of the ablest physicians pronounce alcohol a narcotic.
ALCOHOL AIDS DIGESTION.
5
If 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 oi large quantities in the theory that it will fortify his sys tem against the ravages of small-pox or cholera. Another takes liberal doses of brandy to “ keep off the chills.” Another 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 opinion 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, Henry Martin, and others of equal eminence, all concur 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, instead 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-insurance statistics.
We have elsewhere enumerated more than forty distinct diseases which are the direct result of the use of alcoholic, 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 breakfast. Im-mediately after breakfast, he must have another glass to assist digestion. But how does alcohol assist digestion ? Not by dissolving the food, for its effect is to harden tissues. It does not render the gastric juice more efficient, for it destroys it and causes its active element, pepsin, to
6	THE DRUNKARD’S ARGUMENTS ANSWERED.
be deposited as a white powder. In dogs to which alcohol was given with food, it was found that the process of digestion had not begun, twelve hours after eating. The stomach is obliged to remove all the alcohol before digestion can begin. This, then, is a monstrous fallacy.
9.	ALCOHOL IS MADE FROM GRAIN.
“ But,” says one, “ alcohol is made from grain, and if it is so very bad, why should not the grain be injurious also] There is a little poison in everything, any way.”
Alcohol is made from grain, but it is not found in it. Smoke is made from wood, yet there is no smoke in wood; it is made by the destruction of the latter. Alcohol is made by the destruction of fruits and grains.
It is an absurd popular notion that there is, necessarily, poison in everything. In these days of wholesale adulteration it is often difficult to obtain food unmixed with poisonous products, but nature does not serve us so badly. Poison is not essential to life.
10.	WHISKY DOES NOT HURT ME.
The opium smoker, the absinthe taker, the arsenic eater, all use the same argument, yet each falls a victim to his vice. You do not know what alcohol is doing for you.
" Wine is a mocker [deceiver].” You cannot see its depredations. Your blunted sensibilities cannot feel its ravages. Your friends see it. Your wife notes it and mourns over it. You can yourself see it in others. Are your tissues different from those of every other man 1 Are they marie of iron that they cannot be destroyed] Is the alcohol you drink different from all other alcohol ] No; your good sense tells you, No. Then reform before it is too late.
11.	PURE LIQUOR IS NOT BAD.
“ If we only had such pure liquor as they used to make, it would not be so very bad,” says one. “ Only take a little of my wine; I made it myself, and it cannot hurt any one,” says the good housewife.
These are two mischievous errors. Alcohol is the worst poison found in liquor. No drug added by adul-
MODERATE DRINKING NOT HARMFUL.
7
teration is so bad as the fiery liquid itself. Pure liquor is simply pure poison. Alcohol is always the same, and its effects are always identical, whether it is found in the whisky barrel, or the cider barrel; in rum, brandy, lager beer, home-made wine, or “temperance bitters.” Alcohol is the horrid fiend we are fighting, no matter under what guise he comes.
12.	MODERATE DRINKING NOT HARMFUL.
Every man, even the drunkard himself, admits that liquor in excess is injurious; but a large and very respectable class claim that it is an evil only in excess, and is a harmless luxury, if nothing more, in moderate quantities. This, too, is an error which has proved fatal to thousands. A small dram soon grows to be a large one; claret is exchanged for grog or toddy; and so, by degrees, the moderate drinker becomes a drunkard, the first “ small drop ” engendering a love for succeeding larger doses.
It is not necessary that a man should be dead drunk to be intoxicated. Intoxication is derived from a Latin word meaning poison, and means, literally, a condition of poisoning. Alcohol is a poison. If a man takes it into his system, he is poisoned, or intoxicated, in proportion to the amount taken.
Moderate drinking produces a disease well known to physicians as chronic alcoholism. It is especially dangerous to the old, as it is one of the most powerful predisposing and exciting causes of apoplexy, as well as of numerous other diseases.
13.	DOCTORS RECOMMEND WINE AND BRANDT.
It is a lamentable fact that a large class of physicians use alcohol in their practice in a most reckless manner. The result is seen in hundreds of drunken sots who haunt saloons and groggeries. That this use of alcohol is wholly unnecessary is shown elsewhere.
14.	SCIENTIFIC MEN RECOMMEND THE USE OF ALCOHOL.
This, too, is a deplorable fact; for it is a sad spectacle when science stoops to cater to the demands of morbid appetites and vices. It is a significant fact that those
8	THE DRUNKARD’S ARGUMENTS ANSWERED.
scientific authorities who recommend the use of alcohol are themselves addicted to its use. It is not an unjust inference that their judgment, in this case, is biased by their appetite. But there are a great many of the most eminent scientists who are the strongest advocates of total abstinence. Among them are Dr. W. B. Carpenter, Dr. Parkes, Dr. Richardson, Dr. Parker, and Sir John Hall.
15.	THE BIBLE SANCTIONS THE USE OP WINE, AND GOOD MEN USE IT.
The Bible has been quoted to sustain polygamy, slavery, and other evil institutions, as well as intemperance. Rightly understood, it supports none of these practices. In another place we have considered this point at greater length.
Good men, even ministers, do many evil things. All men are human. One man’s transgression is no apology for another’s sin. This argument is only a subterfuge. It has no weight.
16.	ALL NATIONS USE STIMULANTS.
Some will argue from the fact that the use of liquor of some kind is almost universal that the appetite for it is a natural one. Admitting that inheritance may have made it such, the argument is still worthless; for what nation is there among whom lying, stealing, and other crimes and vices do not also exist! If intemperance is a universal evil, the fact should be most deeply deplored, instead of being made an excuse for perpetuating the vice.
But intemperance is not universal. Until taught the use of liquor by white men, the North American Indians were wholly unacquainted with the fiery beverage which they have appropriately named “ fire water.” And the introduction of liquor among these savages has done more toward their extermination than any other cause. Many other barbarous tribes are still in happy ignorance ot this enticing poison.
Again, the appetite for fermented drinks is not a natural one. Offer an infant brandy; it is repulsed at once,
USE AND SALE OF LIQUOR.
9
as it should be. No beast naturally loves alcohol, though there are several animals which, like men, may be taught to love liquor and demand it as imperiously as any old toper. The hog is an animal of this kind. The resemblance of man to this animal, in this respect, is not flattering, at least.
Even though an artificial appetite has in some cases been created, this fact does not change the relation of alcohol to the system in the least. Alcohol is a poison still; and the system will treat it as such, in spite of an inherited or an acquired appetite for it.
1 7. THE USE AND SALE OF ALCOHOLIC LIQUORS IS A SOURCE OF GREAT REVENUE TO THE GOVERNMENT.
Says the liquor dealer, The manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks gives employment to more than 500,000 men. It furnishes a market for more than 40,000,000 bushels of grain each year, and pays to the government an annual tax of $60,000,000, or about two-fifths the whole revenue of the country.
Such arguments are actually urged by the dram-sellers ..nd their infatuated customers. What a damage to the government would be the loss of $60,000,000 of revenue ! and what a pity that 500,000 poor laborers should be thrown out of employment! Ah ! yes; and what a pity that 40,000,000 bushels of grain, equivalent to 600,000,-000 four-pound loaves of bread, should be wasted—worse than wasted, manufactured into poison. The same liquor which brings to the government a revenue of $60,000,000, makes 800,000 paupers, who require for their maintenance $100,000,000. There is very little profit in this, surely. The cost of crime resulting from drink is still greater. The expense of caring for 30,000 idiots and lunatics must also be charged to alcohol. Where then are the profits? We have said nothing of the loss resulting from the unproductive labor of those employed by the liquor business, or from the idleness, disease, and death occasioned by drink, which aggregate an enormous sum.
18.	THE MODERATE USE OF WINE IS NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN NERVOUS ACTIVITY IN OLD AGE.
Many, even of those who profess to be instructors of
10 THE DRUNKARD’S ARGUMENTS ANSWERED.
the people in the laws of health, advocate the use of wine in old age, on the ground that age renders the system somewhat sluggish in its activities, and hence a little stimulus is needed to maintain its functions, and especially nervous activity.
A consideration of this argument will show that the use of alcohol is not only unnecessary in old age, but absolutely hazardous. Why are the bodily functions less active in old age than in youth ? Why is the mind less brilliant ? Because the organs of the body have become worn and disabled by long usage and imperfect repair. The tissues are not kept intact by assimilation. The reason why they are less active, then, is that they are less qualified to act. They are incapable of that vigorous action which they sustained in youth and middle age.
This decreased activity is an admirable provision of nature for the prolongation of life to the utmost limit. The waste of tissue depends upon its activity ; the more action, the more waste and wear, the sooner worn out. Using alcohol produces an increased activity, but does not increase the capability of the system to sustain action. In other words, it tears down tissue, but does not build it up. It interferes with the repair of tissues. The increased vigor seemingly imparted by alcohol, therefore, is dangerous, rather than desirable. If alcohol enables a man to live faster, it shortens his existence by so doing.
Again, alcohol, even in moderate quantities, produces a peculiar degeneration of the walls of the blood vessels, by which they become weakened, the muscular tissue composing the small vessels being replaced by particles of fat or carbonate of lime. This kind of degeneration is also a frequent incident of old age, even in those who are not spirit drinkers, and is especially liable to occur in the small arteries of the brain. The use of alcohol not only facilitates this morbid process, but adds to the danger which is always present with it under the most favorable circumstances. When the arteries are thus weakened, a little extra supply of blood in the brain, a “ rush of blood to the head,” will often occasion rupture of some one of them, and apoplexy, with paralysis or immediate death, is
I CANNOT REFORM.
11
the result. Alcohol, even in very small quantity, produces congestion of the brain, and thus renders an aged person doubly liable to death from apoplexy.
Are we not justified, then, in the position that alcohol is not only less desirable for the old than for the young, but is far more dangerous 1
19.	ALCOHOL DRIVES AWAY DULL CARE.
It will not be disputed that alcohol will dissipate cares, pains, and sorrows. It makes a poor, homeless, friendless, poverty-stricken wretch feel as rich as a king. It makes the doomed murderer forget that he is soon to swing into eternity from the gallows. It makes the fallen outcast from society forget her shame. In short, it makes the user momentarily oblivious to all that is unpleasant in life.
But the release thus obtained is only for a moment, and it is inevitably succeeded by a return of the same old burden, rendered more galling and onerous by the stings of conscience and the goadings of remorse.
When a man’s brain is so benumbed that he does not know his real condition, and loses sight of the realities of life, he is likewise incapable of appreciating any of those higher experiences and sentiments which constitute the highest enjoyments, the true realities of life. Only gross and sensual pleasures can be experienced when the mind is befogged by alcohol.
20.	ALCOHOL IS A GOOD MEDICINE J AND IF IT WILL MAKE A MAN WELL WHEN SICK, WILL IT NOT KEEP HIM WELL ? Alcohol is not a good medicine, as elsewhere shown It is a poison, always, under all circumstances. But it it were a medicine, this would certainly be reason enough for discarding it; for a medicine is supposed to be a substance peculiarly adapted to meet the demands of the system when in a state of disease. Almost any one of those substances popularly known as medicines will make a man sick if used habitually.
21.	I CANNOT REFORM.
One more oft-repeated argument requires notice. It is the argument which the confirmed, besotted drunkard
12 THE DRUNKARD’S ARGUMENTS ANSWERED.
uses. He admits all we claim concerning the sin of drunkenness and the direful effects of the vice, for he sees himself a wreck in consequence of its use. He deplores his wretchedness, and curses the man who first placed the burning liquid to his lips. He contrasts what he is with what he might have been, and weeps over his condition; but if you speak to him of reform, he wails, “ Alas! it’s now too late. I can’t reform.”
“Never too late to mend” is as good a motto for the drunkard as for any other person. It is true his will is nearly paralyzed, his conscience blunted, and his faculties obscured. It is true that his life is nearly wasted, and that, at best, he has but a few more days to live; and yet, reform is possible, and he may yet escape the stigma of a drunkard’s grave. Let him summon to his aid all his few remaining energies. Let him call to his rescue every spark of manhood still glowing in his dilapidated soul; and let him make one desperate strike for liberty from the slavery of his loathsome vice.
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