THE EFFECT OF ALCOHOL AND NICOTINE ON SHOOTING
In order to obtain the best results in shooting, a perfect co-ordination
between the brain, nerves, and muscles is necessary.
A man who drinks heavily may for a time be able to shoot well, but this
does not last. He can never be depended on not to “crack up” and he
collapses at critical moments.
Very robust health is not necessary as long as the above conditions are
fulfilled, and pistol shooting in the open air may be of benefit to a man
who is in too delicate health to be able to play even a gentle game.
The old, evil days when a sportsman was not considered acting as a man
unless he drank several bottles of port each evening and had to be carried
home in a wheelbarrow are now, happily, gone for ever. Putting drink
before all else used to be a constant annoyance. A drunkard was not
content till he had reduced every man near him to the same disgusting
mental and physical condition.
If others would not drink with him, he had the utmost contempt for them.
Called them “milksops,” “drinkers of slops,” “unsociable,” and “too
proud.”
I always refused to go out shooting with such people. Besides being very
dangerous, they never would do anything but drink. Sport was a mere excuse
for going out “on the drink.” Every occasion was made the excuse for a
drink. With such people drink was the great event of the day, and if a
stag was shot, there was a ceremony to be gone through of everyone
drinking whiskey neat to “more blood.”
At lunch, after an interminable time spent in drinking--they eat
little--the forester who had been fidgeting to get off, would come up at
last and timidly say, “I’m thinking the sooner we go the best, I am seeing
a verra heavy beast in yon corrie, with the glass.”
The “sportsman” would answer, “Is there? open the other bottle of
champagne and help yourself, it won’t hurt you, there is not a headache in
a dozen bottles.”
Drink used to pose as the twin brother and boon companion of sport.
In these days drink is known as the sportsman’s deadliest enemy.
I consider even minute medicinal doses of alcohol are deleterious to
shooting, entirely apart from drunkenness. Admiral Jellicoe, speaking at
Gibraltar in 1911, quoted with approval a statement of Captain Ogilvy, the
noted gunnery instructor, to the effect that carefully compiled
statistics revealed the fact that the shooting efficiency of the men was
thirty per cent. better before than after the issue of the grog ration ...
one eighth of a pint of rum liberally diluted with water.
In Bavaria the Minister of War carried out tests as to the effect of
alcohol on marksmanship during twenty days on twenty marksmen (shortly
before the war), 80,000 shots were fired, and the trial showed according
to the report of Professor D. R. Kraeplin, that the consumption of forty
grammes of alcohol, corresponding to the amount contained in one and three
quarters pints of beer, made an average reduction in marksmanship of three
per cent. The effect was most perceptible twenty-five to thirty minutes
after absorbing the alcohol.
Most of the marksmen shot even worse, some of them from eight to twelve
per cent. worse.
The Professor continues: “An amusing feature of the tests was that _some
of the riflemen insisted not only that they could, but actually were
shooting better after drinking the spirits, whilst in reality their
marksmanship had fallen off as much as ten per cent_.”
The late Sir Victor Horsley permitted me to quote the following from one
of his lectures.
The cerebral activity of taking alcohol lasts only a few minutes, then
marked slowing sets in, and for the rest of the time during which
alcohol acts, varying from two to four hours according to the
individual, the cerebral activity is diminished. It took longer for a
person who had imbibed small quantities of alcohol to think, the
evidence was overwhelming that alcohol in small quantities had a most
deleterious effect on voluntary muscular work.
These facts bear out in every particular my own observations in watching
others.
I find they are not so active in their movements, especially if they have
to turn round suddenly to shoot, but at the same time they had more
confidence in their ability to shoot.
Who has not seen (to go to the extreme case) when a large dose of alcohol
has been swallowed and a man is “under the influence of liquor” that the
“patient” is ready to fight all comers, although he cannot stand on his
legs.
As Professor Kraeplin says, “the subject experimented on cannot judge--he
thinks alcohol makes him shoot better although the actual facts are the
other way about.”
At the Olympic Games which take place each four years, the members of the
United States Rifle and Revolver Teams which compete are water-drinkers
and non-smokers, and they are practically unbeaten to date.
Major Smith W. Brookhart of the Ordnance Department, United States
National Guard, writing in _Arms and the Man_, May 4, 1918, says:
“Civilization has advanced so much in the past decade, that it is now
almost superfluous to write a caution against the use of stimulants.
Every rifleman will admit that alcohol is an enemy. Total abstinence,
_bone dry_, is the only safe rule. Tobacco or any other stimulants should
also be avoided. They may not be so fatal as alcohol, but they all tend in
the wrong direction. The man who wants to climb into the championship
class and stay there must be a normal man. The proper attitude of mind
will give every man more pleasure in conquering a habit than in submitting
to it. To win over the smoking habit is an achievement of which to be
proud and it improves the scores.”
Those who make a moderate use of alcohol and tobacco are gradually reduced
as to the quantity they use some weeks or even months before the actual
Games, until all the members of the teams are non-smokers and
water-drinkers.
There is this to be said of the smoker, as long as you do not try to
prevent his stifling you with his smoke he does not pester you to imitate
his example like a drinker does.
He merely pityingly informs you that “you do not know what you have
missed.”
As the “joy” missed consists of chronic sore throat, palpitating heart,
and shaky nerves, I cannot see that much is missed by the non-smoker.
The invariable answer to the question “what pleasure do you find in
smoking” is “it soothes the nerves.”
Healthy normal nerves need no soothing.
When an automatic function of the body is normal and healthy, it does not
indicate its presence.
A man does not feel his heart when it is healthy, only when it is
diseased.
In the same way a man who has not injured his nerves by nicotine or
alcohol does not know that he has any nerves, but on the other hand,
nerves being destroyed by narcotics fight back, and make their agony
known.
A man would fight against his headache being “soothed” by being clubbed
over the head.
As well might one say a man half insensible from concussion needs
“soothing” by being knocked completely out. If this soothing of the nerves
is persisted in, a man sinks lower mentally than an animal.
A man in the last stage of nicotine poisoning, when told by his doctor,
“you must either give up smoking or you will die” answered “then I prefer
to die.”
What a glorious death! How true the dictum of Sir Oliver Lodge that the
supreme outcome of 500,000 years of effort by the Universe has been, man!
The following appeared in the _Daily Mail_ of September 25, 1917. It shows
how men risk not only their own lives but hundreds of other lives rather
than give up smoking. What a blessing if Dr. Furlong’s suggestion of
nicotine tablets is adopted.
We non-smokers will no longer have to walk the streets, eat our meals,
sit in theatres, and travel in railway trains breathing an atmosphere of
tobacco, and burnt paper smoke.
SHELLWORKERS’ CRAVING TO SMOKE.
_To the Editor of the Daily Mail_:
SIR: As some men in munition factories will run the risk of smoking in
spite of their liability to fines and as others, even if they do not
smoke during working hours, carry matches in their pockets, it is
necessary to consider what is best to be done to prevent explosions.
I believe that if tablets of nicotine were manufactured, each one
representing the drug value of say one cigarette, they would
constitute a real safeguard against such accidents. One or two of
these tablets would remove the craving for a smoke and check the
irritability caused by the want of it.
I do not wish to convey that nicotine tablets would ever take the
place of smoking, but they would have the advantage of safety, and no
disadvantage that I know of except that they are a little slower in
action.
Early in the war I advocated the introduction of these tablets for use
in special circumstances, but unfortunately up to the present the idea
has not been utilized.
WM. VERNER FURLONG, M.D.
16, Pembroke Road, Dublin.
The smoker does not see the selfishness of his behaviour. He looks on the
non-smoker as selfish if he protests against being nauseated.
The nicotine tablets will enable the taker to poison himself without also
poisoning others.