“Consistency is the Test of Truth.”—WILBERFORCE.
Among the strange legends of the Middle Ages there are certain traditions
which have evidently a figurative significance, and whose origin has
often been traced to the allegorical mythology of an earlier age. An
allegory of that sort is the legend of the “Marvel of Nikolsburg,” near
Vienna; a miraculous image that appeared always an inch higher than
the person standing before it. “It overtopped a giant, and all but
condescended to the stature of a dwarf,” says the tradition.
That image is a symbol of nature. The lowest savage must dimly recognize
the fact that man can not measure his cunning against the wisdom of
the Creator, and the highest development of science has only revealed
its own incompetence to imitate, or even comprehend, the structural
perfection of the simplest living organism. The Author of life deals
only in masterpieces; the marvelous fitness of his contrivances is as
infinite in his smallest as in his greatest works, and the apparent
exceptions from that rule can nearly all be traced to the influence of
abnormal circumstances. Our own interference with the order of nature has
caused the discords in the harmony of creation which furnish the chief
arguments of pessimism. The winter torrents which devastate the valleys
of southern France with a fury which Condorcet calls the “truculence of
a vainly worshiped heaven,” flowed in harmless brooks till the hand of
man destroyed the protecting forests that absorbed and equalized the
drainage of the Alpine slopes, the same imprudence has turned the gardens
of the East into deserts and obstructed with sandbars the channels of
once navigable rivers. The wanton extermination of woodbirds has revenged
itself by insect plagues. Consumption, that cruel scourge of the human
race, is the direct consequence of the folly which makes us prefer the
miasma of our tenement-prisons to the balm of God’s free air. We are too
apt to confound the results of our sins against nature with the original
arrangements of Providence. But the strangest instance of that mistake
is the fallacy which has long biased our dealings with the curse of the
alcohol habit. Drunkards plead their inability to resist the promptings
of an imperious appetite. Their friends lament the antagonism of nature
and duty, the weakness of the flesh frustrating the resolves of a
willing spirit. Even temperance orators dwell on the dangers of “worldly
temptations,” of “selfish, sensual indulgences,” as if the alcohol habit
were the result of an innate propensity—deplorable in its collateral
consequences, but withal entitled to the compromising concessions which
ascetic virtue owes to the cravings of an impetuous natural instinct.
In other words, we palliate a flagrant crime against the physical laws
of God, as if nature herself had lured us to our ruin; the votaries of
alcohol plead their ignorance, as if the Providence that warns us against
the sting of a tiny insect and teaches the eye to protect itself against
a mote of dust, had provided no adequate safeguards against the greatest
danger to health and happiness.
And yet those safeguards would abundantly answer their protective purpose
if persistent vice had not almost deadened the faculty of understanding
the monitions of our physical conscience. It is true that the
stimulant-thirst of the confirmed drunkard far exceeds the urgency of the
most impetuous instincts, but by that very excessiveness and persistence
the far-gone development of the alcohol habit proves what the mode of
its incipience establishes beyond the possibility of a doubt, namely,
the radical difference of its characteristics from those of a natural
appetite. For,
1. UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF ALIMENTARY SUBSTANCES
IS PROPORTIONED TO THE DEGREE OF THEIR HEALTHFULNESS AND THEIR NUTRITIVE
VALUE.—To the children of nature all hurtful things are repulsive,
all beneficial things attractive. Providence has endowed our species
with a liberal share of the protective instinct that teaches our dumb
fellow-creatures to select their proper food, and even in this age
of far-gone degeneration the dietetic predilections of children and
primitive men might furnish the criteria of a general food reform. No
creature is misled by an innate craving for unwholesome food, nor by an
instinctive aversion to wholesome substances. Our natural repugnance
to nearly all kinds of “medicines,” _i. e._, virulent stimulants, has
already begun to be recognized as a suggestive illustration of that rule.
A child’s hankering after sweetmeats is only an apparent exception,
for, as Dr. Schrodt observes, the conventional diet of our children is
so deficient in saccharine elements that instinct constantly strives to
supply an unsatisfied want. Human beings fed chiefly on fruit syrups
would instinctively hanker after farinaceous substances. The savages
of our northwestern prairies are as fond of honey as their grizzly
neighbors. Nurslings, deprived of their mothers’ milk, instinctively
appreciate the proper component parts of artificial surrogates. Sailors
in the tropics thirst after fruit, after refrigerating fluids, after
fresh vegetables. In the arctic seas they crave calorific food—oil or fat.
But in no climate of this earth is man afflicted with an instinctive
hankering after alcohol. To the palate of an unseduced boy rum is as
repulsive as corrosive sublimate. I do not speak only of the sons of
nature-abiding parents, but of the children of vice, left to the guidance
of their enfeebled, but not intentionally perverted, instincts. The
intuitive bias even of such is in the direction of total abstinence from
all noxious stimulants, for nature has willed that all her creatures
should begin the pilgrimage of life from beyond the point where the
roads of purity and vice diverge. In their projects for the abolition of
the stimulant habit, temperance people are, indeed, rather inclined to
underrate the difficulties of a total cure of a confirmed poison vice,
but equally apt to _overrate the difficulty of total prevention_. The
supposed effects of an innate predisposition can generally be traced
to the direct influence of a vicious education. Jean Jacques Rousseau
expressed his conviction that a fondness for intoxicating liquors is
nearly always contracted in the years of immaturity, when the deference
to social precedents is apt to overcome the warnings of instinct, but
that those who have escaped or not yielded to the temptations of that
period would ever afterward be safe. Dr. Zimmerman, too, admits that
“home influences are too often mistaken for hereditary influences.” And
boy topers are not always voluntary converts. The year before I left my
native town (Brussels), I found a drunken lad on the platform of the
railway depot and carried him to the house of a medical friend, who put
him to bed and turned him over to a policeman the next morning. The
little fellow was recognized as an old offender, but when the court was
going to send him to a house of correction my friend offered to take
him back, and, on condition of keeping him away from his parents, was
permitted to take care of him, and finally made him his office-boy.
His parents were ascertained to be both habitual drunkards, but their
son (_æt. 11_), showed no inclination to follow their example, and
voluntarily abstained from the light wines which now and then made their
appearance on the doctor’s table—though he never missed an opportunity
to rejoin his old playmates, and, as his patron expressed it, “was a
dangerous deal too smart to be entrusted with the collection of bills.”
Six months after his last scrape I found him alone in the doctor’s
office, where he had collected a private library of picture papers and
illustrated almanacs. “What made you get so drunk last Easter?” I asked
him, “are you so fond of brandy?”
“_Nenni, mais Pa m’en fit prendre_,” he replied—“father _made_ me drink
it.”
2. THE INSTINCTIVE AVERSION TO ANY KIND OF POISON CAN BE PERVERTED
INTO AN UNNATURAL CRAVING AFTER THE SAME SUBSTANCE.—Poisons are either
repulsive or insipid. Arsenic, sugar of lead, and antimony, belong to
the latter class. To the first-born children of earth certain mineral
poisons were decidedly _out of the way substances_, against which nature
apparently thought it less necessary to provide special safeguards. But,
though less repulsive than other poisons, such substances are never
positively attractive, and often (like verdigris, potassium, etc.),
perceptibly nauseous. Vegetable poisons are either nauseous or intensely
bitter. Hasheesh is more unattractive than turpentine. Opium is acrid
caustic. Absinthe (wormwood extract) is as bitter as gall. Instinct
resists the incipience of an insidious second nature.
But that instinct is plastic. If the warnings of our physical conscience
remain unheeded, if the offensive substance is again and again forced
upon the unwilling stomach, nature at last chooses the alternative of
compromising the evil, and, true to her supreme law, of preserving
existence at any cost, prolongs even a wretched life by adapting the
organism to the exigencies of an abnormal habit. She still continues her
protest in the feeling of exhaustion which follows every poison-debauch,
but permits each following dose of the insidious drug to act as a
temporary re-invigorant, or at least as a spur to the functional
activity of the exhausted organism, for the apparent return of vital
vigor is, in fact, nothing but a symptom of the morbid energy exerted
by the system in its efforts to rid itself of a deadly intruder, for
each new application of the stimulus is as regularly followed by a
distressing reaction. And _only then_ the slave of the unnatural habit
becomes conscious of that peculiar craving which is entirely distinct
from the promptings of a healthy appetite—a craving uncompromisingly
directed toward a special—once repulsive—substance, a craving defying the
limiting instincts which indicate the proper quantum of wholesome foods
and drinks, a craving which each gratification makes more irresistible,
though for the time being each indulgence is followed by a depressing
reaction. The appetite for wholesome substances—however palatable—is
never exclusive. A child may become passionately fond of ice cream, yet
accept cold water and fruit cake as a welcome substitute. A predilection
for honey, strawberries, or sweet tree fruits will not tempt the admirers
of such dainties to commit forgery and highway robbery to indulge their
penchant—as long as their kitchen affords a supply of savory vegetables.
Unnatural appetites have no natural limits; but the art of the best
pastry cook would hardly induce his customers to stupefy and bestialize
themselves with his compounds. There are no milk topers, no suicidal
potato eaters, no victims of a chronic porridge passion. In spite of
occasional surfeits the craving for alimentary substances increases
and decreases with the needs of the organism, while that of the poison
drinker yields only to the temporary extinction of consciousness.
In a state of nature every normal function is associated with a
pleasurable sensation, and instead of resulting in agonizing reactions
a feast of wholesome food is followed by a state of considerable
physical comfort—“the beatific consciousness of perfect digestion,” as
Baron Brisse describes the pleasures of the after dinner hour. But no
length of practice will ever save the poison slave from the penalties
of his sins against nature. Each full indulgence is followed by a full
measure of woful retributions, while a half indulgence results in a half
depression to the verge of world-weary despondency, or fails to satisfy
the lingering thirst after a larger dose of the same stimulant. And
every poison known to modern chemistry can beget that specific craving.
“Entirely accidental circumstances, the accessibility of special drugs,
imitativeness and the intercourse of commercial nations, the mere
whims of fashion, the authority of medical recommendations, have often
decided the first choice of a special stimulant, destined to become a
national beverage” and a national curse. The contemporaries of the Veda
writers fuddled with _soma-wine_, the juice of a narcotic plant of the
Himalaya foothills. Their neighbors, the pastoral Tartars, get drunk on
_Koumiss_, or fermented mare’s milk, an abomination which in Eastern
Europe threatens to increase the list of imported poisons, while opium is
gaining ground in our Pacific States as fast as lager beer, chloral and
patent “bitters” on the Atlantic slope. The French have added _absinthe_
to their wines and liquors, the Turks _hasheesh_ and opiates to strong
coffee. North America has adopted tea from China, coffee from Arabia (or
originally from Ceylon), tobacco from the Caribbean savages, highwines
from France and Spain, and may possibly learn to drink Mexican aloe-sap,
or chew the coca leaves of the South American Indians. _Arsenic_ has
its votaries in the southern Alps. _Cinnebar_ and _acetate of copper_
victimize the miners of the Peruvian Sierras. The Ashantees are so fond
of _sorghum beer_ that their chieftains have to keep special bamboo cages
for the benefit of quarrelsome drunkards. The pastor of a Swiss colony
in the Mexican State of Oaxaca told me that the mountaineers of that
neighborhood befuddle themselves with _cicuta syrup_, the inspissated
juice of a kind of _hemlock_ that first excites and then depresses the
cerebral functions, excessive garrulity being the principal symptom
of the exalted stage of intoxication. A decoction of the common _fly
toadstool_ (_agaricus maculatus_) inflames the passions of the Kamschatka
natives, makes them pugnacious, disputative, but eventually splenetic
(Chamisso’s “_Reisen_,” p. 322). The Abyssinians use a preparation of
_dhurra-corn_ that causes more quarrels than gambling. It is a favorite
beverage at festivals, and is vaunted as a remedy for various complaints,
though Belzoni mentions that it makes its votaries more subject to
the attacks of the Nile fever. According to Professor Vamberg, the
Syrian Druses pray, though apparently in vain, to be delivered from
the temptation of _foxglove tea_. Comparative pathology has multiplied
these analogies till, in spite of the arguments of a thousand specious
advocates, there is no valid reason to doubt that the alleged innate
craving for the stimulus of fermented or distilled beverages is _wholly
abnormal_, and that _the alcohol habit is characterized by all the
peculiarities of a poison vice_.
3. ALL POISON HABITS ARE PROGRESSIVE.—There is a deep significance in
that term of our language which describes an unnatural habit as _growing
upon_ its devotees, for we find, indeed, a striking analogy between the
development of the stimulant habit and that of a parasitical plant,
which, sprouting from tiny seeds, fastens upon, preys upon, and at last
strangles its victims. The seductiveness of every stimulant habit gains
strength with each new indulgence, and it is a curious fact that that
power is proportioned to the original repulsiveness of the poison. The
tonic influence of Chinese tea is due to the presence of a stimulating
ingredient known as _theïne_, in its concentrated form a strong narcotic
poison, but forming only a minute percentage of the component parts
of common green tea. On the Pacific coast of our country thousands
of Chinese immigrants carry their thrift to the degree of renouncing
their favorite beverage, but neither considerations of economy nor of
self-preservation will induce the same exiles to break the fetters of the
opium habit. Not one hasheesh-eater in a hundred can hope to emancipate
himself from the thraldom of his vice. The guests of King Alcohol, too,
would make their reckoning without their host in hoping to take in the
fun of intoxication as a votary of pleasure would engage in a transient
pastime: his palace is an Armida castle, that rarely dismisses a visitor.
“In describing the effects of the alcohol habit,” says Dr. Isaac
Jennings, “I want to impress the reader with another feature of
it—its perpetuity. It can never be put off during the lifetime of the
individual; it may be covered up to appearance, but it can not be
effaced.… It seems to be a common impression that alcohol circulates
through the body, excites the action of the heart and liver, quickens and
enlivens the animal spirits, and then passes off, and leaves no trace
of its visitation, or at most only a temporary loss of power, which is
soon restored by a self-moved power pump. This is a great and fundamental
error. Every drop of alcohol that enters the stomach inflicts an injury
that will continue as long as the old stock lasts, and reach even to the
young sprouts. It may not be enstamped on them in precisely the same way,
but it will affect essentially the same parts.” (“Medical Reform,” pp.
173-175.)
“If a man was sent to hell,” says Dr. Rush, “and kept there for a
thousand years as a punishment for drinking, and then returned, his first
cry would be, ‘Give me rum, give me rum!’”
“The infernal powers blindfold the victims of their altars,” says
Lessing, and the stimulant vice seems, in fact, to weaken not only
the physical constitution of its votaries, but their moral power of
resistance, and often even the faculty of realizing the perils of their
practice, as if the poison had struck its roots into the very souls of
its victims.
But the alcohol habit grows outward, as well as inward. We have seen
that each gratification of the poison vice is followed by a depressing
reaction. But his feeling of exhaustion is steadily progressive, and the
correspondingly increased craving for a repetition of the stimulant dose
forces its victim _either to increase the quantity of the wonted tonic,
or else to resort to a stronger poison_. The experience of individual
drunkards probably corresponds to the international development of the
alcohol habit. Its first devotees contented themselves with moderate
quantities of the milder stimulants: must, hydromel and light beer. But
such tonics soon began to pall, and the jaded appetite of the toper soon
resorted to strong wines, to hard cider, and finally to brandy and rum.
Others increased the quantity, and learned to drink horse-pails full of
beer, in which “diluted and harmless form” many German students manage to
absorb a quart of alcohol per day.
“People sometimes wonder,” says Dr. Jennings, “why such and such men,
possessing great intellectual power and firmness of character in other
respects, can not drink moderately and not give themselves up to
drunkenness. They become drunkards _by law_—fixed, immutable law. Let a
man with a constitution as perfect as Adam’s undertake to drink alcohol,
moderately and perseveringly, with all the caution and deliberate
determination that he can command, and if he could live long enough he
would just as certainly become a drunkard—get to a point where he could
not refrain from drinking to excess—as he would go over Niagara Falls
when placed in a canoe in the river above the falls and left to the
natural operation of the current. And proportionally as he descended the
stream would his alcoholic attraction for it increase, so that he would
find it more and more difficult to get ashore, until he reached a point
where escape was impossible.” (“Medical Reform,” p. 176.)
Now and then the votaries of the stimulant habit exchange their tonic
for a stronger poison. Claude Bernard, the famous French pathologist,
noticed that the opium vice recruits its female victims chiefly from the
ranks of the veteran coffee drinkers. In Turkey, too, strong coffee has
prepared the way for tobacco and opium; in Switzerland arsenic eaters
have exchanged their kirschwasser for a more potent tonic; many French
and Russian hard drinkers have learned to prefer ether to brandy.
But no poison vice can be cured by milder stimulants. The Beelzebub
of alcohol does not yield to weaker spirits; hence the fallacy of the
_antidote plan_. Nothing was formerly more common with temperance people
of the compromise school than to comfort converted drunkards with
stimulating drugs and strong coffee, in the hope that the organism might
somehow be induced to acquiesce in the _quid pro quo_. That hope is a
delusion. The surrogate may bring a temporary relief, but it can not
satisfy the thirst for the stronger tonic, and only serves to _perpetuate
the stimulant diathesis_—the poison hunger which will sooner or later
revert to the wonted object of its passion. Unswerving loyalty to
the pledge of the total abstinence plan is not at first the easiest,
but eventually the surest way. For even after weeks of successful
resistance to the importunities of the tempter, a mere spark may rekindle
the smothered flames. “What takes place in the stomach of a reformed
drunkard?” says Dr. Sewall—“the individual who abandons the use of all
intoxicating drinks? The stomach by that extraordinary self-restorative
power of nature gradually resumes its natural appearance. Its engorged
blood-vessels become reduced to their original size, and a few weeks or
months will accomplish this renovation, after which the individual has no
longer any suffering or desire for alcohol. It is nevertheless true, and
should ever be borne in mind, that such is the sensibility of the stomach
of the reformed drunkard that a repetition of the use of alcohol, _in
the slightest degree, and in any form, under any circumstances_, revives
the appetite; the blood vessels again become dilated, and the morbid
sensibility of the organ is reproduced.”
The use of any stimulating drug may rewaken the dormant propensity, and
it will not change the result if the stimulant has been administered in
the form of a medical prescription. Strong drink is a mocker, in disease
as well as in health, and the road to the rum shop leads through the
dispensary as often as through the beer garden.
The logical conclusion of all these premises thus reveals the two-fold
secret of the alcohol habit: _the anomaly of its attractiveness and the
necessity of its progressiveness_, and we at last recognize the truth
that the road to intemperance is paved with mild stimulants, and that the
only safe, consistent and effective plan of reform is total abstinence
from all stimulating poisons.