By B. W. RICHARDSON, M.D.
It is the business of science to take up the pint and a half of ardent
spirit which, split up through fifteen pints, gives all the zest and
consequence to the thirteen and a half pints of colored water.
Taking this ardent spirit into one of her crucibles or laboratories,
Science compares it with other products on the shelves there, and soon
she finds its niche in which it fits truly. On the shelf where it fits
she has ranged a number of other spirits. There is chloroform, ether,
sweet spirit of nitre, and some other fluids, very useful remedies in
the hands of the physician. These, she sees, are the children of the
spirit, are made, in fact, from it. On the same shelf she has another
set of spirits; there is wood spirit, there is potato spirit, there is a
substance which looks like spermaceti; and these she sees are all members
of the same family, not children, this time, of the ardent spirit, but
brothers or sisters, each one constructed from the same elements, in the
same relative proportions and on the same type. Passionless, having no
predilection for any one object in the universe except the truth, she
writes down the ardent spirit as having its proper place in a group of
chemical substances which are distinctly apart from other substances she
knows of, on which men and animals live, and which are called by the name
of foods or sustainers of life. She says all the members of the spirit
family are, unless judiciously and even skilfully used, inimical to
life. They produce drowsiness, sleep, death. In the hands of the skilful
they may be safe as medicines; in the hands of the unskilful they are
unsafe, they are poisons. To this rule there is not one exception amongst
them. There can be no demur, no doubt now on this particular point; it
may be a blow to poetry of passion; it may make the ancient and modern
bacchanalian look foolish to tell him that wine is a chemical substance
mixed and diluted with water, and that beer and spirits are all in the
same category; but such is the fact. In computing the influence of wine,
men have no longer to discuss anything more than the influence of a
definite chemical compound, one of a family of chemical compounds called
the alcohols—the second of a family group, differing in origin from the
first of the series, which is got from wood, in that it is got from
grain, and is called ethylic, or common alcohol, pure spirit of wine. But
now the world turns properly to ask another question. Admitted all that
is said, why, after all, should the practice of mankind in the use of
this spirit be bad? Man is not guided solely by reason; passion may lead
him sometimes, perchance, in the true path. Tell us then, O Science! why
this ardent spirit may not still be drunken; why may it not be a part of
the life of man?
To this question the answer of Science is straight and to the point. In
the universe of life, she says, man forms but a fractional part. All
the sea is full of life; all the woods are full of life; all the air is
full of life; on the surface of the earth man possesses, as companions
or as enemies, herds and herds of living forms. Of that visible life
he forms but a minute speck, and beyond that visible life there is the
world invisible to common view, with its myriads of forms unseen, which
the most penetrating microscope has not reached. Again, there are other
forms of life; plants innumerable, from gigantic Wellingtonias to lichens
and mosses, and beneath these myriads more so infinitely minute that the
microscope fails to reach them. This is all life, life which goes through
its set phases in due form; grows in health and strength and beauty,
every part of it, from highest to lowest living grade, without a shade of
the use of this strong spirit. What evidence can be more conclusive that
alcohol is not included in the scheme of life?
And yet, if you want more evidence, it is yours. You try man by himself.
Every child of woman born, if he be not perverted, lives without alcohol,
grows up without it; spends—and this is a vital point—spends the very
happiest part of its life without it; gains its growing strength and
vitality without it; feels no want for it. The course of its life is, at
the most, on the average of the best lives, sixty years, of which the
first fifteen, in other words, the first fourth, are the most dangerous;
yet it goes through that fourth without the use of this agent. But if in
the four stages of life it can go through the first and most critical
stage without alcohol, why can not it traverse the remaining three? Is
Nature so unwise in her doings, so capricious, so uncertain, that she
withholds a giver of life from the helpless, and supplies it only to
the helpful? Some men, forming whole nations, have never heard of it;
some have heard of it and have abjured its use. In England and America,
at this time, there are probably near upon six millions of persons who
have abjured this agent. Do they fall or fail in value of life from the
abjuration? The evidence, as we shall distinctly see by and by, is all
the other way. There are, lastly, some who are forced to live without the
use of this agent. Do they fall or die in consequence? There is not a
single instance in illustration.
On all these points, Science, when she is questioned earnestly, and
interpreted justly, is decisive and firm, and if you question her in
yet another direction, she is not less certain. You ask her for a
comparison of alcohol and of man, in respect to the structure of both,
and her evidence is as the sun at noon in its clearness. She has taken
the body of man to pieces; she has learned the composition of its every
structure—skin, muscle, bone, viscera, brain, nervous cord, organs of
sense! She knows of what these parts are formed, and she knows from
whence the components came. She finds in the muscles fibrine; it came
from the fibrine of flesh, or from the gluten or albumen of the plants on
which the man had fed. She finds tendon and cartilage, and earthy matter
of the skeleton; they were from the vegetable kingdom. She finds water
in the body in such abundance that it makes up seven parts out of eight
of the whole, and that she knows the source of readily enough. She finds
iron, that she traces from the earth. She finds fat, and that she traces
to sugar and starch. In short, she discovers, in whatever structure she
searches, the origin of the structure. But as a natural presence, she
finds no ardent spirit there in any part or fluid. Nothing made from
spirit. Did she find either, she would say the body is diseased, and, it
may be, was killed by that which is found.
Sometimes, in the bodies of men, she discovers the evidences of some
conditions that are not natural. She compares these bodies with the
bodies of other men, or with the bodies of inferior animals, as sheep and
oxen, and finds that the unnatural appearances are peculiar to persons
who have taken alcohol, and are indications of new structural changes
which are not proper, and which she calls disease.
Thus, by two tests, Science tries the comparison between alcohol and
man. She finds in the body no structure made from alcohol; she finds in
the healthy body no alcohol; she finds in those who have taken alcohol
changes of the structure, and those are changes of disease. By all these
proofs she declares alcohol to be entirely alien to the structure of man.
It does not build up the body; it undermines and destroys the building.
One step more. If you question Science on the comparison which exists
between foods and alcohol, she gives you facts on every hand. She shows
you a natural and all-sufficient and standard food—she calls it milk.
She takes it to pieces; she says it is made up of caseine, for the
construction of muscular and other active tissues; of sugar and fat,
for supplying fuel to the body for the animal warmth; of salts for the
earthy, and of water for the liquid parts. This is a perfect standard.
Holds it any comparison with alcohol? Not a jot. The comparison is the
same with all other natural foods.
Man, going forth to find food for his wants, discovers it in various
substances, but only naturally, in precisely such substances, and in
the same proportions of such substances as exist in the standard food on
which he first fed. Alcohol, alien to the body of man, is alike alien to
the natural food of man.
Some of you will perhaps ask: Is every use of food comprised in the
building up of the body? Is not some food used as the fuel of the engine
is used, not to produce material, but to generate heat and motion, to
burn and to be burned? The answer is as your question suggests. Some
food is burned in the body, and by that means the animal fire—the _calor
vitalis_, or vital heat, of the ancients—is kept alive. Then, say you:
May not alcohol burn? We take starch, we take sugar into the body, as
foods, but there are no structure of starch and sugar, only some products
derived from them which show that they have been burned. May not alcohol
in like manner be burned and carried away in new form of construction of
matter?
What says Science to this inquiry? Her answer is simple. To burn and
produce no heat is improbable, if not impossible; and if probable or even
possible, is unproductive of service for the purpose of sustaining the
animal powers. Test, then, the animal body under the action of alcohol,
and see your findings. Your findings shall prove that, under the most
favorable conditions, the mean effect of the alcohol will be to reduce
the animal temperature through the mass of the body. There will be a
glow of warmth on the surface of the body. Truly! but that is cooling of
the body. It is from an extra sheet of warm blood brought from the heart
into weakened vessels of the surface, to give up its heat and leave the
whole body chilled, with the products of combustion lessened, the nervous
tone lowered, the muscular power reduced, the quickened heart jaded, the
excited brain infirm, and the mind depressed and enfeebled. Alcohol,
alien to the structure of man and to the food of man, is alike alien to
living strength of man, and to the fires which maintain his life.