Mr. Parton treats alcohol much more respectfully than he treats
tobacco. Though equally hostile to it, he apparently considers it a
more formidable enemy. Instead of taking for granted from the outset
that which it is his business to prove, he now condescends to employ
something which to the unpractised eye may look like scientific
argument. He has taken pains to collect such evidence as may be made
to support his view of the case. And he frequently endeavours to
assume an attitude of apparent impartiality by alluding to himself as
a drinker of "these seductive liquids,"—although, in point of fact,
his whole essay is conceived in the narrowest spirit of radical
teetotalism. As for tobacco, it does not seem to occur to him that any
one can be found, so obstinate or so deluded as seriously to maintain
that there is any good in it; and he therefore writes upon that
subject with all the exaggeration of unterrified confidence. But in
dealing with alcohol, his violence of statement is evidently due to an
uneasy consciousness that there is a vast body of current opinion and
of scientific doctrine which may be arrayed in the lists against him.
He brushes away, with a contemptuous sneer, (p. 56) the opinions of
the medical profession; but he is, nevertheless, unable wholly to
ignore them. Propositions of the sort which he formerly alluded to as
if no one could think of doubting them, he now thinks it necessary to
state at length. The poisonous nature of tobacco could be taken for
granted in a subordinate clause; but the poisonous nature of alcohol
needs to be asserted in an independent sentence. "Pure alcohol, though
a product of highly nutritive substances, is a mere poison,—an
absolute poison,—the mortal foe of life in every one of its forms,
animal and vegetable." (p. 64.)
This is the way in which the advocates of total abstinence like to
begin. A good round assertion about "poison" is calculated to
demoralize the inexperienced reader, and to scare him into half giving
up the case at once. But it is not all barking dogs that bite. Morphia
is a deadly poison; but opium, which contains it, is not "the mortal
foe of life in all its forms,"—it is sometimes the only thing which
will keep soul and body together.[1] Theine is no doubt a deadly
poison, but we manage to drink it with tolerable safety in our tea and
coffee. Lactucin is probably a poison, yet people may eat a
lettuce-salad and live. Chlorine is eminently a poison, yet we are all
the time taking it into our systems, combined with sodium, in the
shape of table-salt. Therefore over the verbal question whether a
teaspoonful of pure alcohol is a poison, we do not care to wrangle.
People do not drink pure alcohol, as a general thing. And as for the
beverages into the composition of which alcohol enters, the reader
will have no difficulty in understanding that they are poisons in just
the same sense in which common salt and oxygen are poisons;
i.e., if you take enough of them, they will kill you. This
point was sufficiently cleared up in our first chapter.
Mr. Parton's hostility to this "mortal foe of life in all its forms"
has taken shape in six definite propositions. Concerning alcoholic
liquor of any kind and in any quantity, he asserts, and attempts to
prove, that it does not nourish, that it does not aid digestion, that
it does not warm, that it does not strengthen, that it undergoes no
chemical change in the system, and that it always injuriously affects
the brain. Beginning with the last of these propositions, let us first
see what Mr. Parton has to say for it.
"If I, at this ten A.M., full of interest in this subject,
and eager to get my view of it upon paper, were to drink a glass of
the best port, Madeira, or sherry, or even a glass of lager-bier, I
should lose the power to continue in three minutes; or, if I persisted
in going on, I should be pretty sure to utter paradox and spurts of
extravagance, which would not bear the cold review of to-morrow
morning. Any one can try this experiment. Take two glasses of wine,
and then immediately apply yourself to the hardest task your mind ever
has to perform, and you will find you cannot do it. Let any student,
just before he sits down to his mathematics, drink a pint of the
purest beer, and he will be painfully conscious of loss of power." Did
it ever dimly occur to Mr. Parton that all men may not be constructed
on exactly the same plan with himself?
We wonder how many drops of "seductive fluid," unwisely taken at the
wrong time of day, are to be held responsible for the following
"spurt" of extravagance: "The time, I hope, is at hand, when an
audience in a theatre, who catch a manager cheating them out of their
fair allowance of fresh air, will not sit and gasp, and inhale
destruction till eleven P.M., and then rush wildly to the
street for relief. They will stop the play; they will tear up the
benches, if necessary; they will throw things on the stage; they will
knock a hole in the wall; they will have the means of
breathing, or perish in the struggle." Is this the way in which
"well-groomed" people are expected to behave? Fancy an audience
following this precious bit of advice. When Mlle. Janauschek, for
instance, is finishing the third act of "Medea" or the second act of
"Deborah," amid the tragic solemnity of the scene, fancy the audience,
because of bad air in the theatre, getting up and flinging their canes
and opera-glasses on the stage, in the heroic struggle for oxygen or
death! Fancy four or five hundred grown-up, educated people behaving
in this way! If these are to be the manners of the Coming Man, we
trust it will be long before he comes.
Such is one of the "spurts of extravagance" which Mr. Parton
apparently thinks will "bear the cold review of to-morrow
morning." Having survived this, we may philosophically resign
ourselves to the infliction of another, more nearly akin to our
subject. "How we all wondered that England should think so
erroneously, and adhere to its errors so obstinately, during our late
war! Mr. Gladstone has in part explained the mystery. The adults of
England, he said, in his famous wine-speech, drink, on an average,
three hundred quarts of beer each per annum!" Another choice bit of
radical philosophy: if your neighbour happens not to agree with your
most cherished opinions, he must be idiotic, immoral, or
drugged! The English failed to sympathize with us, because they
are such beer-drinkers! What a rare faculty of disentangling causal
relations! We believe that the working people, who drink the most
beer, were just those who, as a class, were most ready to sympathize
with us in the time of need. But Mr. Parton has "grounds" for his
opinion. "It is physically impossible for a human brain, muddled every
day with a quart of beer, to correctly hold correct opinions, or
appropriate pure knowledge." "The receptive, the curious, the candid,
the trustworthy brains,—those that do not take things for granted,
and yet are ever open to conviction,—such heads are to be found on
the shoulders of men who drink little or none of these seductive
fluids." Mr. Parton has doubtless forgotten that the head of "the
nearest approach to the complete human being that has yet appeared,"
the head of the "highly-groomed" Goethe—rested upon the shoulders of
a man who drank his two or three bottles of wine daily.[2] But we are
now rapidly getting into the æthereal region of certainties. "Taking
together all that science and observation teach and indicate, we have
one certainty: that, to a person in good health and of good life,
alcoholic liquors are not necessary, but are always in some degree
hurtful." So it is not an open question, after all! Certainty has been
arrived at,—by Mr. Parton, at least. And it is so difficult to
suppose that any sane mind, after due investigation, can come to a
different opinion, that all persons who mean to keep on using alcohol
are advised in pathetic language never to look into the facts:
"If ignorance is bliss, 't is folly to be wise."
The candid reader must admit that Mr. Parton has not, so far, made out
a very overwhelming case in support of his opinion that alcohol always
injures the brain. A personal experience, a "spurt of extravagance," a
"physical impossibility," and a "certainty," are, on the whole, not
very rocky foundations upon which to build a scientific conclusion.
But this is all Mr. Parton has to offer.
In attempting to describe the influence of alcohol upon the brain and
nervous system, it will be well for us to keep steadily in mind the
fundamental difference between stimulant and narcotic doses, which was
described at some length in our chapter on Tobacco. It is hardly
necessary to state that Mr. Parton neither recognizes, nor appears
dimly to suspect, the existence of any such distinction. His is one of
those minds in which there are no half-way stations. With him, to rise
above zero is inevitably to fly to the boiling-water point. But
without keeping in mind this all-important distinction, any inquiry
into the physiological effects of alcohol must end in confusion and
paradox. Remembering this, let us examine first the narcotic, and then
the stimulant effects of alcohol upon the nervous system.
The narcotic effects of alcohol upon the entire human organism are so
bad that even the teetotaler does not need to exaggerate them. The
stomach is not only damaged, and the cerebrum ruined, but a slow
molecular change takes place throughout the nervous system, which ends
by destroying the power of self-control and utterly demoralizing the
character. Far be it from us, therefore, to palliate the consequences
which sooner or later are sure to follow the wretched habit of
drinking narcotic quantities of alcohol; or to look without genuine
sympathy upon the philanthropic, though usually misguided attempts
which radical aquarians are continually making to diminish the evil.
Their feelings are often as right as their science is wrong. But
because we believe that for a book to be of any value whatever, it
must be true, and that false science can never, in the long
run, be of practical benefit, we are not therefore to be set down as
lukewarm in our abhorrence of alcoholic intemperance. Those who keep
their hearts in subjection to their heads are often supposed to have
no hearts at all. Those who do not forthwith get angry and utter
"spurts of extravagance" whenever any social evil is mentioned, are
often thought to be in secret sympathy with it. But how could we, by
writing reams of fervid declamation, more forcibly express our
disapproval of drunkenness than by recording the cold scientific
statement that the first narcotic symptom produced by alcohol is a
symptom of incipient paralysis?
We allude to the flushing of the face, which is caused by paralysis of
the cervical branch of the sympathetic. This symptom usually occurs
some time before the conspicuous manifestation of the ordinary signs
of intoxication, which result from paralysis of the cerebrum. Of these
signs the most prominent is the weakening of the ordinary power of
self-control. The ruling faculty of judgment is suspended, volition
becomes less steady, and imagination, no longer guided by the higher
faculties, runs riot in such a way as to appear to be stimulated. But
it is not stimulated; it is simply let loose. There is no stimulation
in drunkenness; there is only disorganization. One acquired or organic
power of the mind no longer holds the others in check. Hence the
uncalled-for friendliness, the fitful anger, the extravagant or
misplaced generosity, the ludicrous dignity, the disgusting
amorousness, or the garrulous vanity, of the drunken man. Wine is said
to exhibit a man as he really is, with the conventionalities of
society laid aside. This is only half true, but it suggests the true
statement. Wine exhibits a man as he is when the organized effects of
ancestral and contemporary civilization upon his character are
temporarily obliterated. We need no better illustration of the truth
that drunkenness is not stimulation but paralysis of the cerebrum,
than the order in which, under the influence of alcohol, the powers of
the mind become progressively suspended. As a general rule those are
first suspended which are the most recent products of civilization,
and which have consequently been developed by inheritance through the
least number of generations. These are of course the mind's highest
organic acquisitions. The sense of responsibility, for instance, is a
product of a highly complicated state of civilization, and, when fully
developed, is perhaps chief among the moral acquirements which
distinguish the civilized man from the savage. In progressing
intoxication, the feeling of responsibility is the first to be put in
abeyance. A man need be but slightly tipsy in order to become quite
careless as to the consequences of his actions.[3] On the other hand,
those qualities of the mind are the last to be overcome, which are the
earliest inheritance of savagery, and which the civilized man
possesses in common with savages and beasts. Then the animal nature of
the man, no longer restrained by his higher faculties, manifests
itself with a violence which causes it to seem abnormally stimulated
in vigour. And in the stage immediately preceding stupor, it sometimes
happens that the pupils are contracted,[4] and the whites of the eyes
enlarged, giving to the face a horrible brute-like expression.
One apparent exception to this generalization needs only to be
explained in order to confirm the rule. Memory, which usually figures
as a high intellectual faculty, is often, even in deep drunkenness,
capable of performing marvellous feats. While in college we once heard
a tipsy fellow-student repeat verbatim the whole of that satire
of Horace which begins "Unde et quo, Catius?"—which he had read over
the same day before going to recitation, but which, as we felt sure,
he could never designedly have committed to memory. It appeared,
however, that, in the literal though not in the idiomatic sense of the
phrase, he had "committed it to memory" to some purpose, for as we,
struck with amazement, took down our Horace and followed him, we found
that he made not the slightest verbal error. This performance on his
part was almost immediately followed by heavy comatose slumber. On
afterward questioning him, it appeared that he remembered nothing
either of the Satire or of his remarkable feat. Several analogous
cases are cited by Dr. Anstie.[5]
This certainly looks like stimulation, but on comparing it with other
instances of abnormal reminiscence differently caused, we shall find
reason for believing that it is nothing of the kind. There is no doubt
that insanity may in the most general way be described as a species of
cerebral paralysis, yet in many kinds of insanity there is an abnormal
quickening of memory. Likewise in idiocy, which differs from insanity
as being due to arrested development rather than to degradation of the
cerebrum, the same phænomenon is sometimes witnessed. We remember
seeing a child who, though generally considered quite "foolish,"
could, as we were assured, accurately repeat large portions of each
Sunday's sermon. Dr. Anstie mentions a boy, absolutely idiotic, who
nevertheless "had a perfect memory for the history of all the farm
animals in the neighbourhood, and could tell with unerring precision
that this was So-and-so's sheep or pig among any number of other
animals of the same kind." Similar phænomena have been observed in
epileptic delirium, and in the delirium of fevers. Every one has heard
Coleridge's story of the sick servant-girl who repeated passages from
Latin, Greek and Hebrew authors which she had years before heard
recited by a clergyman in whose house she worked. A gentleman in
India, after a sunstroke, utterly lost his command of the Hindustani
language, recovering it only during the recurrent paroxysms of
epileptic delirium to which he was afterward subject. Equally
interesting is the case of the Countess de Laval, who in the ravings
of puerperal delirium was heard by her Breton nurse talking baby-talk
to herself in the Breton language,—a language which she had known in
early infancy, but had since so entirely forgotten as not to
distinguish it from gibberish when spoken before her.[6] A similar
exaltation of memory not unfrequently precedes the coma produced by
chloroform; and it has been known to occur in cases of acute poisoning
by opium and haschisch. Finally it may be observed that drowning men
are said to recall, as in a panoramic vision, all the events of their
lives, even the most trivial.
We may conclude therefore that the extraordinary memory sometimes
observed in drunken persons, however obscure the interpretation of it
may at present be, is at all events a symptom, not of mental
exaltation, but of mental disorganization consequent upon cerebral
disease. We may search in vain among the phænomena of intoxication for
any genuine evidences of that heightened mental activity which is said
to be followed by a depressive recoil. There is no recoil; there is no
stimulation; there is nothing but paralytic disorder from the moment
that narcosis begins. From the outset the whole nervous system is
lowered in tone, the even course of its nutrition disturbed, and the
rhythmic discharge of its functions interfered with.
Another remarkable effect of alcoholic narcotism—the most hopelessly
demoralizing of all—yet remains to be treated. We refer to the
perpetual craving of the drinker for the repetition, and usually for
the increase, of his dose. It is a familiar fact that the drunkard is
urged to the gratification of his appetite by such an irresistible
physical craving that his power of self-control becomes after a while
completely destroyed. And it is often observed that those who begin
drinking moderately go on, as if by a kind of fatality, drinking
oftener and drinking larger quantities, until they have become
confirmed inebriates. But in the current interpretation of these facts
there is, as might be expected, a great deal of confusion. On the one
hand, the teetotalers declare that the use of alcohol in any amount
creates a physical craving and necessitates a progressive increase of
the dose. On the other hand, the common sense of mankind, perceiving
that nine persons out of ten are all their lives in the habit of using
alcoholic drinks, while hardly one person out of ten ever becomes a
drunkard,[7] declares that this physical craving is not produced save
in peculiarly organized constitutions. We believe that neither of
these opinions is correct. In all probability, the demand for an
increased narcotic effect is due to a gradual alteration in the
molecular structure of the nervous system caused by frequently
repeated narcosis; and if narcosis be invariably avoided, in
systems which are free from its inherited structural effects, the
craving is never awakened. This point is so interesting and important
as to call for some further elucidation.
Frequent intoxication with alcohol, opium, coca, or haschisch, brings
about a structural degeneration of the nerve-material; the
consequences of which are to be seen in delirium, softening of the
brain, and other forms of general paralysis. "By degrees the nervous
centres, especially those on which the particular narcotic used has
the most powerful influence, become degraded in structure." A
permanent pathological state is thus induced, in which the production
of a given narcotic effect is not so easy as in the healthy organism.
"A certain quantity of nervous tissue has in fact ceased to fill the
rôle of nervous tissue, and there is less of impressible matter
upon which the narcotic may operate, and hence it is that the
confirmed drunkard, opium-eater, or coquero, requires more and
more of his accustomed narcotic to produce the intoxication which he
delights in. It is necessary now to saturate his blood to a high
degree with the poison, and thus to insure an extensive contact of it
with the nervous matter, if he is to enjoy once more the transition
from the realities of life to the dreamland, or the pleasant vacuity
of mind, which this or the other form of narcotism has hitherto
afforded him."[8] It is easy to see how this structural degeneration
may be produced. It takes a certain time for the nervous system to
recover from the effects of each separate narcotic dose; and if a
fresh dose is taken before recovery is completed, it is obvious that
the diseased condition will by and by be rendered permanent. The
entire process of nutrition will adapt itself gradually to this new
state of things; and no efficiency of repair will afterward make the
nervous system what it was before. It is in this way that the narcotic
craving for continually increased doses is originated and kept alive.
In the case of the milder narcotics—tea, coffee and tobacco—this
craving, though the symptom of a depraved state of the organism, does
not directly demoralize the character. But the moral injury wrought by
alcohol, opium and haschisch is known to every one, and the effects of
coca-drunkenness are said to be no less frightful. This is because the
milder narcotics affect chiefly the medulla, the spinal cord and the
sympathetic, while the fiercer ones chiefly affect the cerebrum.
Tobacco may paralyze the brain sufficiently to cause nocturnal
wakefulness; but it cannot impair one's self-control or one's sense of
responsibility. It never transforms a man into a selfish brute, who
will beat his wife, neglect his business, and allow his children to
starve. Here then we arrive at a supremely interesting distinction.
The craving for tobacco is principally a craving of those inferior
nerve-centres which exert comparatively little direct influence upon
the mental and moral life. But the craving for alcohol is a cerebral
craving. The habitual indulgence of it involves a continual
suppression of those loftier guiding qualities which, as we have seen,
are the later effects of civilization upon the individual character;
while the attributes of savagery, the lower sensual passions—our
common inheritance from pre-social times—are allowed full play in
supplying material for the imagination and in shaping the purposes of
life. Mr. Parton's remark, therefore, which is absurd as applied to
tobacco, is a profound physiological verity as applied to the narcotic
action of alcohol,—it tends to make us think and act like barbarians,
for it allies us psychologically with barbarians.
These considerations throw some light upon the way in which chronic
narcosis, like other diseases entailing structural derangements, may
be transmitted from father to son. As a matter of observation it is
known that drunkenness may run through whole families, no less than
gout or consumption. Or, like other diseases, it may skip one or two
generations and then reappear. It is evident that the children of a
drunkard, born after the establishment of nervous degeneration
in the father's system, may inherit structural narcosis attended by a
latent craving for alcohol. Some unfortunate persons thus seem to be
born sots, as others are born lunatics or consumptives.
The hygienic rule in all cases of structural narcosis, whether
acquired or inherited, is total abstinence once and always. These
unfortunate creatures cannot be temperate, they must therefore be
abstinent. As Sainte-Beuve profoundly remarks concerning that
ferocious Duke of Burgundy for whom Fénelon wrote his "Télémaque," he
was such a wretch that they could not make a man of him, they
could only make him a saint: that is, he was got up on such
wrong principles that, whether bad or good, he must be somewhat
morally lop-sided and abnormal. Just so with those whose nervous
systems are impaired by alcohol: we cannot make them healthy men who
can take a stimulant glass and want no more,—we can only make them
teetotalers.
Those too who have not got themselves into this predicament will do
well to remember that there is extreme danger in the common practice
of drinking as much as one likes, provided one does not get drunk.
"Getting drunk" means paralysis of the cerebral hemispheres; but, as
we have seen, paralysis of the cervical sympathetic, shown in flushed
face and moist forehead, occurs some time before the more conspicuous
symptom. It is a narcotic effect, and must be always avoided, if
the narcotic craving is to be kept clear of. Therefore a man who
wishes to enjoy alcohol, and reap benefit from it, and be ready at any
time to do without it, like any other wholesome aliment, must always
keep a long way this side of intoxication. If ten glasses of sherry
will make him garrulous, he will do well never to drink more than
four.
Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be well to note
certain cases, collected by Theodore Parker, of consumptive families,
in which those members who were topers did not die of consumption. It
appeared that, in certain families whose histories he gave, nearly all
those who did not die of consumption were rum-drinkers! And from these
data Mr. Parker drew the inference that "intemperate habits (where the
man drinks a pure, though coarse and fiery liquor like New England
Rum) tend to check the consumptive tendency, though the drunkard, who
himself escapes the consequences, may transmit the fatal seed to his
children." Mr. Parton, who quotes this, thinks it poor comfort for
topers. We doubt if there is any "comfort" to be found in it. It is
contrary to all our present science to suppose that consumption can be
prevented by narcosis. The prime cause of consumption is defective
assimilation: the tissues, from lack of sufficient
nerve-stimulus, are incapable of appropriating food. How absurd,
therefore, to suppose that narcosis, which impairs the stimulating
energy of the nerves, can check an existing tendency to consumption!
What the consumptive person needs is stimulus, not paralysis. But it
is easy to believe that the same impaired nutrition of the nerves
which may in one person end in consumption, may in another person act
as a predisposing cause of narcosis. Insanity, consumption, and
drunkenness, are diseases which appear to go hand in hand. Dr.
Maudsley, in his great work on the "Pathology of Mind," gives
instructive tables which show that these three diseases may alternate
with each other in the same family for several generations,
culminating finally in epilepsy, idiocy, paralysis and impotence, when
the family becomes happily extinct. This consanguinity of diseases
appears more marked when we extend our view over a certain extensive
locality. The figures cited by Gov. Andrew appear to show that both
drunkenness and insanity are far more common in New England than in
other parts of the Union; and consumption is proverbially the New
England disease. We are inclined to suspect, therefore, that in the
families mentioned by Mr. Parker, the children inherited structurally
defective nervous systems, the consequent symptoms being in one case
pulmonary and in another case cerebral.
This, we believe, is all that we need contribute at present to the
subject of alcoholic narcosis. It will be seen that in maintaining
that the Coming Man will drink wine, we are not recommending that the
Coming Man should go to bed drunk. An argument drawn from purely
scientific data, when once thoroughly mastered, is likely to be of
more avail in checking intemperance than all the "spurts of
extravagance" which teetotalers can emit between now and doomsday. Mr.
Parton asks, Why have the teetotalers failed? They have failed because
they have exaggerated. They have failed because they have not been
content with the simple truth. They want the truth, the whole truth,
and twice as much as the truth. If they would only hoard up the
nervous energy which they expend in making a vain clamour, in order to
use it in quietly investigating the character, causes, and conditions
of alcoholic drunkenness, they might make out a statement which the
world would believe, and by and by act upon. At present the world does
not follow them, because it does not believe them. When the zealous
aquarian anathematizes a rum-shop, we sympathize with him; but when he
rolls up his eyes in holy horror at a glass of lager-bier, we laugh at
him. When he says that a quart of raw gin taken at a couple of gulps
will kill a man stone-dead, we cheerfully acquiesce. But when he says
that the gill of sherry taken at dinner will impair our digestion,
render us susceptible to cold, steal away some of our vigour, and
muddle our head so that we cannot write an article in the evening,—we
can but good-naturedly smile, and try another gill to-morrow.
The stimulant effects of alcohol upon the nervous system are very
similar to those of tobacco. Like tobacco, alcohol stimulates the
alimentary secretions, slightly quickens and strengthens the pulse,
diminishes weariness, cures sleeplessness, puts an end to trembling,
calms nervous excitement, retards waste, and facilitates repair. By
its antiparalytic action, it checks epilepsy, quiets delirium, and
alleviates spasms and clonic convulsions; and in typhoid fever, where
excessive waste of the nervous system is supposed to be one of the
chief sources of danger, it is used, as we shall presently see, with
most signal success. It thus appears, like tobacco, to be in general
an economizer of vital energy and an aid to effective nutrition. It
also directly assists digestion; but as Mr. Parton thinks it does not
do this, we will first quote his opinion, and then see how much it is
worth.
"Several experiments have been made with a view to ascertain whether
mixing alcohol with the gastric juice increases or lessens its power
to decompose food, and the results of all of them point to the
conclusion that the alcohol retards the process of decomposition. A
little alcohol retards it a little, and much alcohol retards it much.
It has been proved by repeated experiment that any portion of
alcohol, however small, diminishes the power of the gastric juice to
decompose. The digestive fluid has been mixed with wine, beer, whisky,
brandy, and alcohol diluted with water, and kept at the temperature of
the living body, and the motions of the body imitated during the
experiment; but, in every instance, the pure gastric juice was found
to be the true and sole digester, and the alcohol a retarder of
digestion. This fact, however, required little proof. We are all
familiar with alcohol as a preserver, and scarcely need to be
reminded that, if alcohol assists digestion at all, it cannot be by
assisting decomposition." (p. 64.)
We would give something to know how many readers, outside of the
medical profession, may have detected at the first glance the fatal
fallacy lurking in this argument. Of its existence Mr. Parton himself
is blissfully unconscious. The experiment, no doubt, seems quite
complete and conclusive. We have the gastric juice mixed with
alcoholic liquor, we have the suitable temperature, and we have an
imitation of the motions of the stomach. What more can be desired? We
reply, the most important element in the problem is entirely
overlooked. It is the old story,—the play of Hamlet with the part of
Hamlet left out; and nothing can better illustrate the extreme danger
of reasoning confidently from what goes on outside the body to what
must go on inside the body. For in order to have made their experiment
complete, Mr. Parton's authorities should have manufactured an
entire nervous system, as well as a network of blood-vessels
through which the alcohol might impart to that nervous system its
stimulus. In short, before we can make an artificial digestive
apparatus which will work at all like the natural one, we must know
how to construct a living human body! In the case before us, the
nervous stimulus, ignored by Mr. Parton, is the most essential
factor in the whole process. There is no doubt that a given quantity
of undiluted gastric juice will usually perform the chemical process
of food-transformation more rapidly than an equal quantity of gastric
juice which is diluted.[9] But there is also no doubt that when we
take a small quantity of alcohol into the stomach, the amount of
gastric juice is instantly increased. This results from the
stimulant action of alcohol both upon the pneumogastric nerves and
upon the great splanchnic or visceral branches of the sympathetic.
Just as when tobacco is smoked, though probably to a less extent, the
gastric secretion is increased; and the motions of the stomach are
also increased. This increase in the quantity of the digestive fluid,
due to nervous stimulus, is undoubtedly more than sufficient to make
up for the alleged impairment of its quality caused by mixing it with
a foreign substance. The action of saliva and carbonate of soda supply
us with a further illustration. In artificial experiments, like those
upon which Mr. Parton relies, alkaline substances are found to retard
digestion by neutralizing a portion of the acid of the gastric juice.
Yet the alkaline saliva, swallowed with food, does not retard
digestion; and Claude Bernard has shown that carbonate of soda
actually hastens, to a notable degree, the digestive process. Why is
this? It is because these alkalies act as local stimulants upon the
lining of the stomach, and thus increase the quantity of gastric
juice. It is in this way that common salt, eaten with other food, also
facilitates digestion; although salt is a preserver, as well as
alcohol.
Here we come upon Mr. Parton's second blunder. He talks about the
"decomposition" of food, and appears to think that digestion is a kind
of putrefaction, so that alcohol, which arrests the latter,
must also arrest the former. He says: We do not need to experiment,
for we know that alcohol, which is a preserver, cannot
digest food by decomposing it. This unlucky remark illustrates the
danger of writing on a subject, the rudiments of which you have not
taken time to get acquainted with. Before attempting to lay down the
law upon an abstruse point connected with the subject of digestion,
common prudence would appear to dictate that one should first acquire
some dim notion of what digestion is. The veriest tyro in physiology
should know that the gastric juice is itself a preventer of
putrefaction. It will not only keep off organic decay, but it will
stop it after it has begun.[10] In this sense of the word, it is as
much a preserver as alcohol.
As it takes time to expose all the fallacies which Mr. Parton can
crowd into one short paragraph, we have thus far admitted that alcohol
impairs the quality of the gastric juice by diluting it: as a matter
of fact, it does not so impair it. If it is a preserver, it is
also a coagulator. It coagulates the albuminous portions of the
food, thus enabling them to be more easily acted upon by the gastric
secretion.[11] So that, on looking into the matter, we find the
stimulant dose of alcohol doing everything to quicken, and nothing
whatever to slacken, digestion. It coaxes out more digestive fluid,
and it lightens the task which that fluid has to perform.
Daily experience tells us that the glass of wine taken with our
dinner, or the thimble-full of liqueur taken after dessert,
diminishes the feeling of heaviness, and enables us sooner to go to
work. Of indigestion and its accompanying sensations, we are unable to
speak from experience; but Mr. Parton feelingly describes the effects
of alcohol as follows. "When we have taken too much shad for
breakfast, we find that a wineglass of whisky instantly mitigates the
horrors of indigestion, and enables us again to contemplate the future
without dismay." Now, if Mr. Parton's ideas on this subject were
correct, his dose of whisky ought to exasperate his torment. The fact
that it comforts him shows that it serves to quicken the too sluggish
stomach to its normal activity. It is a very good clinical experiment
indeed.
Alcohol, however, aids digestion only when taken in moderate
quantities. A narcotic dose, by paralyzing the medulla and the
sympathetic, interferes with the flow of gastric juice. Here, as in
most cases, the large quantity does just the reverse of what the small
quantity will do. The same is true of food. Digestible food, in
moderate amount, stimulates the gastric secretion; in excessive
amount, it arrests its action. "Another curious fact is, that although
the addition of organic acids increases the digestive power of this
fluid, there is a limit at which this increase ceases, and beyond it,
excess of acid suspends the whole digestive power."[12] It is
therefore a wise thing to eat heartily, but a silly thing to eat
voraciously; it is wise to eat pickles, but silly to make one's dinner
of them; it is wise to drink a glass of sherry, but silly to empty the
bottle. The happy mean is the thing to be maintained, in digestion as
in every thing else.
Mr. Parton next proceeds to deny that alcohol is a heat-producing
substance. "On the contrary," he says, "it appears in all cases to
diminish the efficiency of the heat-producing process." And he cites
the testimony of Arctic voyagers, New York car-drivers, Russian
corporals, and Rocky Mountain hunters, in support of the statement
that alcohol diminishes the power of the system to resist cold. He
thinks he could fill a whole magazine with the evidence on this point.
Nevertheless, so far as we have examined the reports of Arctic
travellers,[13] they appear by no means decisive. They do not keep in
mind the distinction between stimulation and intoxication. We do not
doubt that "men who start under the influence of liquor are the first
to succumb to the cold, and the likeliest to be frost-bitten," if the
phrase "under the influence of liquor" be understood, as it usually
is, to mean "partly drunk." On the other hand, it is a familiar fact
that a glass of whisky, taken on coming into the house after exposure
to cold, will in many cases prevent sore throat or inflammation of the
nasal passages. In our own experience, we know of no more efficient
agent for removing the effects of a chill from the system. Before this
question can be settled, however, we must ascertain whether alcohol
is, or is not, a true food. If the food-action of alcohol is, as
Liebig maintains, to be ranked with that of fat, starch and sugar, its
heat-producing power will follow as an inevitable inference. To this
point we shall presently come; and meanwhile we may content ourselves
with citing the excellent authority of Johnston in support of the
opinion that ardent spirits "directly warm the body."[14]
Mr. Parton next indicts alcohol on the ground that it is not a
strength-giver. "On this branch of the subject," he observes,
"all the testimony is against alcoholic drinks."[15] Yet in his
own statement of the case may be found contradictions enough. On the
one hand he cites Tom Sayers, Richard Cobden and Benjamin Franklin in
support of his opinion;[16] and he tells us how Horace Greeley,
teetotaler, coming home the other day, and finding terrible arrears of
work piled up before him, sat down and wrote steadily, without leaving
his room, from ten A.M. till eleven P.M.—no
very wonderful feat for a healthy man. But on the other hand, it
appears from some of his own facts that when a supreme exertion of
strength is requisite, then we must take alcohol. "During the war I
knew of a party of cavalry who, for three days and three nights, were
not out of the saddle fifteen minutes at a time. The men consumed two
quarts of whisky each, and all of them came in alive. It is a custom
in England to extract the last possible five miles from a tired horse,
when those miles must be had from him, by forcing down his most
unwilling throat a quart of beer." (p. 86.) From these unwelcome facts
Mr. Parton draws the sage inference that alcohol, like tobacco,
supports us in doing wrong! "It enables us to violate the laws of
nature without immediate suffering and speedy destruction." Now there
is one much abused faculty of mankind, which nevertheless will
sometimes refuse to be insulted,—that faculty is common sense. And in
the present case, common sense declares that when we are taxing our
strength, no matter whether "laws" are violated or not, we do not keep
ourselves up by drinking a substance which can only weaken us. It may
be unfortunate that alcohol is a strength-giver; but the fact that we
can travel farther with it than without it shows that, unfortunate or
not, the thing is so. But Mr. Parton believes that Nature is even with
us afterward. "In a few instances of intermittent disease, a small
quantity of wine may sometimes enable a patient who is at the low tide
of vitality to anticipate the turn of the tide, and borrow at four
o'clock enough of five o'clock strength to enable him to reach five
o'clock." This is sheer nonsense. There is no such thing as borrowing
at four o'clock the strength of five o'clock. The thing is a
physiological absurdity. The strength of to-morrow is non-existent
until to-morrow comes; it is not a reserved fund from which we can
borrow to-day. If Mr. Parton's notion were correct, his patient ought
to be weaker at five o'clock by just the same amount that he is
stronger at four o'clock. If the strength has been borrowed, it cannot
be used over again. You cannot eat your cake and save it. In an hour's
time, therefore, the patient should be weaker than if he had contrived
to get along without the wine. But this is not found to be the case:
he is stronger at four and he is stronger at five, he is stronger next
day, and he convalesces more rapidly than if he had not taken alcohol.
This is a clinical fact which there is no blinking.[17] It shows that
the only source from which the strength can possibly come is the
alcohol. Whether it be food or not, the action of alcohol in these
cases is precisely similar to that of food. It calms delirium and
promotes refreshing sleep, exactly like a meat broth, except that it
is often more rapidly efficient. It can produce these effects only by
acting as a genuine stimulant, by either nourishing, or facilitating
the normal nutrition of, the nervous system.[18]
When therefore Lawyer Heavy-fee and the other allegorical personages
mentioned by Mr. Parton sit up working all night, and then quiet their
nerves by a glass of wine or a cigar, they are no doubt shortening
their lives and committing "respectable suicide." But it is because
they sit up all night and waste vital force, not because they resort
to an obvious and effective means of repairing the loss. It is well to
keep early hours and avoid over-work. But on rare occasions, when the
circumstances of life absolutely require it, he who cannot sit up all
night for a week together, without inflicting permanent injury upon
himself, is rightly considered deficient in recuperative vigour. When
such occasions come, most persons instinctively seek aid from alcohol;
and it helps them because it is an imparter, or at least an
economizer, of nervous force. The fact that it is resorted to, when
supreme exertion is demanded, shows that it is recognized as a
strength-saver, if not as a strength-giver. Our inquiry into its
food-action will show that it is both the one and the other.
Thus far we have considered alcohol only as an agent which affects the
nutrition of the nerves. Whether it be also a food or not does not
essentially alter the question of its evil or beneficent influence
upon the system. As we saw in our chapter on Tobacco, the human
organism needs, for its proper nutrition, stimulus as well as
food,—force as well as material. No conclusion in physiology is
better established than that narcotic-stimulants increase the supply
of force while they diminish the waste of material;[19] and it is by
virtue of this peculiarity that they will often sustain the organism
in the absence of food. Tobacco is not food, but if you give a
starving man a pipe to smoke it will take him much longer to die.
Opium and coca are not foods; but they will sometimes support life
when no true aliment can be procured. The action of alcohol is similar
to that of these substances, but immeasurably more effective. None of
the inferior narcotic-stimulants is at all comparable with alcohol in
the degree of its food-replacing power. We read that tobacco and coca
will enable a man to go several days without anything to eat; and we
interpret this result as due to the waste-retarding action of these
substances. But when we find that alcohol will support life for weeks
and months, we can no longer be content with such an explanation. When
we recollect that Cornaro lived healthily for fifty-eight years upon
twelve ounces of light food and fourteen ounces of wine per
diem,[20] and reflect upon the large proportion of alcoholic drink
in this diet, the suspicion is forced upon us that alcohol is not only
a true stimulant but also a true food.
Mr. Parton of course asserts that alcoholic drinks do not nourish the
body, and denies to them the title of foods. He begins by quoting
Liebig's assertion "that as much flour or meal as can lie on the point
of a table-knife is more nutritious than nine quarts of the best
Bavarian beer." Whereupon the reader, who is perhaps not familiar with
the history of physiological controversy, thinks at once that Liebig's
great authority is opposed to the opinion that alcohol is food.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps nothing in Mr.
Parton's book shows more forcibly the danger of "cramming" a subject
instead of studying it. When Liebig wrote the above sentence, he
believed that foods might be sharply divided into two classes,—those
which nourish, and those which keep up the heat of the body. He
believed that no foods except those which contain nitrogen can nourish
the tissues; and he therefore excluded not only alcohol, but fat,
starch and sugar also, from the class of nutritious substances.
But Liebig was far from believing that alcohol is not food. On the
contrary he distinctly classed it with fat, starch and sugar, as a
heat-producing food,—a fact which Mr. Parton, if he knows it,
takes good care not to quote! But this twofold classification of foods
has for several years been known to be unsound. It has been shown that
all true foods are more or less nutritious, and that all are more or
less heat-producing. Starch and sugar have maintained their places in
the class of nutritive materials from which Liebig tried to exclude
them, and we have now to see whether the same can be said of the
closely kindred substance, alcohol.
Mr. Parton thinks he has proved that alcohol cannot be food, when he
has asserted that it is not chemically transformed within the body. As
soon as it is taken, he tells us, lungs, skin and kidneys all set
busily to work to expel it, and they send it out just as it came in:
therefore it is an enemy. Now all this may be said of water.
Water is not chemically changed within the body; as soon as we drink
it, lungs, skin and kidneys begin busily to expel it; and it goes out
just as good water as it came in. Nevertheless, water is one of the
most essential elements of nutrition.
But it is by no means certain that alcohol is not transformed within
the body. It is neither certain nor probable. Mr. Parton relies upon
the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy, and Perrin, who in 1860
thought they had demonstrated that all the alcohol taken into
the system comes out again, as alcohol, through the lungs, skin
and kidneys. By applying the very delicate chromic acid test, these
gentlemen appeared to prove that appreciable quantities of alcohol
always begin to be excreted very soon after the dose has been received
by the stomach, and continue to pass off for many hours. "They failed,
after repeated attempts, to discover the intermediate compounds into
which alcohol had been represented as transforming itself before its
final change; and, on the other hand, they detected unchanged
alcohol everywhere in the body hours after it had been taken; they
found the substance in the blood, and in all the tissues, but
especially in the brain and the nervous centres generally, and in the
liver."[21] Mr. Parton has, it would appear, read their book, and he
is fully persuaded by it that "if you take into your system an ounce
of alcohol, the whole ounce leaves the system within forty-eight
hours, just as good alcohol as it went in." These experiments,
moreover, "produced the remarkable effect of causing the editor of a
leading periodical to confess to the public that he was not
infallible." The Westminster Review, it seems, in 1861,
retracted the opinions which it had expressed in 1855, "concerning the
rôle of alcohol in the animal body." The Westminster
Review has now an opportunity to retract its recantations; for
in 1863, these experiments were subjected to a searching criticism by
M. Baudot, which resulted in thoroughly invalidating the conclusions
supposed to flow from them.[22] The case is an interesting one, as
showing afresh the utter impossibility of getting at the truth
concerning alcohol, without paying attention to the difference in the
behaviour of large and small quantities.
The researches of Bouchardat and Sandras,[23] and of Duchek,[24] have
rendered it probable that, if alcohol undergoes any digestive
transformation, it is first changed into aldehyde, from which are
successively formed acetic acid, oxalic acid and water, and carbonic
acid.[25] But this transformation, like any other digestive process,
cannot go on unless the nervous system is in good working order. Now
when a narcotic dose of alcohol is taken, the flow of gastric juice is
prevented by local paralysis of the nerve-fibres distributed to the
stomach. What then must happen? Solid food may remain undigested, in
the stomach;[26] but liquid alcohol is easily absorbable, and has two
ways of exit,—one through the portal system into the liver, the other
through the lacteals into the general circulation, by which it will be
carried chiefly to the organ which receives most blood,—namely, the
brain. It is thus probable that no alcohol can be transformed after
narcosis begins. But the absorbed alcohol, loading the
circulation, begins at once to be excreted. Paralysis of the renal
plexus of the sympathetic sets up a rapid diuresis, and considerable
amounts of the volatile liquid escape through the lungs and skin. In
examining, therefore, a drunken man or dog, we need not, on any
theory, expect to find the intermediate products of alcoholic
transformation; we must expect to find large quantities of undigested
alcohol in the circulation, and notably in the brain and liver; and we
need not be surprised if we detect unchanged alcohol in the
excretions. Our experiment will not show that alcohol cannot be
assimilated; it will only show how serious is the damage inflicted by
a narcotic dose, in checking assimilation. Now all this applies
with force to the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy and Perrin.
In their experiments, these gentlemen always tried intoxicating doses;
thus paralyzing at the outset the whole digestive tract, and
preventing the formation of those transformed products which they
afterward vainly tried to discover. As so often happens in
experimenting upon the enormously complex human organism, they began
by creating abnormal conditions which rendered their conclusions
inapplicable to the healthy body.
A further criticism by M. Baudot, supported by renewed experiments, is
still more decisive. M. Baudot justly observes that in order to
substantiate their conclusions, Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy and Perrin
should have at least been able, with their excessively delicate tests,
to discover in the excretions a large part of the alcohol which
had been taken into the system. This, however, they never did. In all
cases, the amount of alcohol recovered was very small, and bore but a
trifling proportion to the amount which had been taken. According to
these physiologists, the elimination always takes place chiefly
through the kidneys. But M. Baudot, in a series of elaborate
experiments, has proved that, unless the dose has been excessive,
no sensible amount of alcohol reappears in the kidney-excretions
for more than twenty-four hours. The quantity is so minute that
the alcoometer is not in the least affected by it, and it requires the
chromic acid test even to reveal its presence. Similar results have
been obtained by experiments upon the breath.
Finally, the gravest doubts have been thrown upon the trustworthiness
of the chromic acid test relied on by Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy and
Perrin. It is considered possible, by good chemical authority, that
the reactions in the test-apparatus, which they attributed to the
escaping alcohol, may equally well have been caused by some of the
results of alcoholic transformation. For reasons above given, however,
it is probable that in cases of narcosis some alcohol always escapes.
When we reflect upon its absorbability and its ready solubility in
water, it seems likely beforehand that a considerable quantity must
escape. But all that these able Frenchmen can be said to have
accomplished, is the demonstration of the fact that when you take into
your system a greater quantity of alcohol than the system can manage,
a part of it is expelled in the same state in which it entered. And
this may be said of other kinds of food.
These experiments have, therefore, instead of settling the question,
left it substantially just where it was before. But we have now a more
remarkable set of facts to contemplate. In many cases of typhoid
fever, acute bronchitis, pneumonia, erysipelas, and diphtheria,
occurring in Dr. Anstie's practice, it was found that the stomach
could be made to retain nothing but wine or brandy. Upon these
alcoholic drinks, therefore, the patients were entirely sustained for
periods sometimes reaching a month in duration.[27] In nearly every
case convalescence was rapid, and the emaciation was much slighter
than usual: the quality of the flesh was also observed to be
remarkably good. Dr. Slack, of Liverpool, had two female patients who,
loathing ordinary food, maintained life and tolerable vigour for more
than three months upon alcoholic drinks alone. Mr. Nisbet reports "the
case of a child affected with marasmus, who subsisted for three months
on sweet whisky and water alone, and then recovered; and that of
another child, who lived entirely upon Scotch ale for a fortnight, and
then recovered his appetite for common things." Many similar examples
might be cited.
It may be said that alcohol maintained these persons by retarding the
waste of the tissues. This is no doubt an admissible supposition.
There is no doubt that alcohol, by its waste-retarding action, will
postpone for some time the day of death from starvation.[28] But to
this action there must be some limit. Though the waste is retarded, it
is not wholly stopped. Though there is relatively less waste, there is
still absolutely large waste. The mere act of keeping up respiration
necessitates a considerable destruction of tissue. Then the
temperature of the body must be kept very near 98° Fahrenheit, or life
will suddenly cease; and the maintenance of this heat involves a great
consumption of tissue. Now this waste, under the most favourable
circumstances, will soon destroy life, unless it is balanced by actual
repair. You may diminish the draught on your furnace as much as you
please,—the fire will shortly go out unless fresh coal is added. Upon
these points the data are more or less precise. The amount of waste
material daily excreted from the body, under ordinary circumstances,
is a little more than seven pounds.[29] Of this the greater part is
water, the quantity of carbon being about twelve ounces, and the
quantity of nitrogenous matter about five ounces.[30] To make up for
this waste we usually require at least two and a half pounds of solid,
and three pints of liquid, food.[31] In Dr. Hammond's experiments, the
weight-sustaining power of the alcohol taken seems to have amounted to
four or five ounces.[32] It will be seen, therefore, that in spite of
any stimulant effect of alcohol upon nutrition, unless at least ten or
twelve ounces of nitrogenous or carbonaceous matter be eaten daily,
the weight of the body must rapidly diminish.
Now the experiments of Chossat have demonstrated that no animal can
suddenly lose more than two-fifths of its normal weight without dying
of starvation. If a man, therefore, weigh 150 lbs., for him 90 lbs. is
the starvation-point; as soon as he reaches that weight he dies.
Usually, indeed, death occurs before this degree of emaciation can
have been attained,—in most cases, on the fifth or sixth day; though
there are a few authentic instances of persons who have lived for
twelve, and even sixteen, days before finally succumbing.
In view of these facts, we are willing to grant that people may in
rare cases live for three months on their own tissues, if waste be
duly retarded. We are willing to grant it, though we do not believe
it. But we are not prepared to admit that this process can go on for
six months or a year; and we believe that the cases now to be cited
can in nowise be got rid of by such an interpretation.
Mr. Nisbet mentions the case of a man who lived for seven months
entirely on spirit and water. At Wavertree, a young man afflicted with
heart-disease lived for five years principally, and for two years
solely, on brandy. His allowance was at first six ounces, afterward a
pint, per diem. His weight was not materially decreased, when,
at the end of the five years, he died of his disease. But the next
case is still more remarkable. Dr. Inman had a lady-patient, about
twenty-five years old, plump, active and florid, but somewhat
deficient in power of endurance. "This lady had two large and healthy
children in succession, whom she successfully nursed. On each occasion
she became much exhausted, the appetite wholly failed, and she was
compelled to live solely on bitter ale and brandy and water; on this
regimen she kept up her good looks, her activity and her nursing, and
went on this way for about twelve months; the nervous system was by
this time thoroughly exhausted, yet there was no emaciation,
nor was there entire prostration of muscular power."[33]
For the accuracy of this statement there is to be had the testimony of
Dr. Inman, the attendant physician, as well as that "of the lady's
husband, of mutual friends occasionally residing in the house with
her, of her mother, of her sisters, and of her nurse." We have
apparently no alternative but to believe it; and if it is true, it is
certainly decisive. It is nothing less than an experimentum
crucis. The suggestion that this lady might have kept up her
normal activity while nursing children, for a whole year, with no
aliment except her own tissues and the water and vegetable matter
contained in her ale and brandy, is too absurd to need refutation. The
thing is an utter impossibility. Moreover, not being emaciated at the
end of the year, she had probably been consuming her own tissues but
very little. Her weight, her muscular activity, and the natural heat
of her body, could have been sustained by nothing but the alcohol;
which thus appears as a true food, at once nourishing,
strength-giving, and heat-producing.
This conclusion is further re-enforced by the numerous cases on record
of persons who have lived actively for many years upon a diet of
alcoholic liquor accompanied by a quantity of solid food notoriously
inadequate to support life. The case of Cornaro is outdone by some of
those quoted by Dr. Anstie, as having occurred under his own
observation. Of twelve cases which are described in detail, the most
remarkable is that of a man aged 83, whose diet for twenty years had
consisted of one bottle of gin and one small fragment of toasted bread
daily. This old fellow, says Dr. Anstie, "would have been of little
service as a practical illustration of the bodily harm wrought by
drinking, being in truth rather an unusually active and vigorous
person for his time of life." Probably the old man was not narcotized
by his daily bottle of gin; or he would, long before the twenty years
had elapsed, have shown symptoms of nervous disease. In most of these
cases of abnormal diet, there occurs after a while a general breaking
down of the nerve-centres, shown in delirium tremens, epileptic fits,
or a sudden stroke of paralysis. They are not quoted, therefore, as
examples to be followed, but as very important items of evidence in
favour of the opinion that alcohol is food.
Taking all these considerations together, we believe it to be
tolerably well made out that alcohol, whether changed within the body
or not, is a true food, which nourishes, warms and strengthens. And
Dr. Brinton, in the following passage, declares it to be, in many
cases, a necessary food. "That teetotalism is compatible with health,
it needs no elaborate facts to establish; but if we take the customary
life of those constituting the masses of our inhabitants of towns, we
shall find reason to wait before we assume that this result will
extend to our population at large. And, in respect to experience, it
is singular how few healthy teetotalers are to be met with in our
ordinary inhabitants of cities. Glancing back over the many years
during which this question has been forced upon the author by his
professional duties, he may estimate that he has sedulously examined
not less than 50,000 to 70,000 persons, including many thousands in
perfect health. Wishing, and even expecting to find it otherwise, he
is obliged to confess that he has hitherto met with but very few
perfectly healthy middle-aged persons, successfully pursuing any
arduous metropolitan calling under teetotal habits. On the other hand,
he has known many total abstainers, whose apparently sound
constitutions have given way with unusual and frightful rapidity when
attacked by a casual sickness." "This," says an English reviewer of
the French experiments, "is quite in accordance with what I have
myself observed, and with what I can gather from other medical men;
and it speaks volumes concerning the way in which we ought to regard
alcohol. If, indeed, it be a fact that in a certain high state of
civilization men require to take alcohol every day, in some shape or
other, under penalty of breaking down prematurely in their work, it is
idle to appeal to a set of imperfect chemical or physiological
experiments, and to decide, on their evidence, that we ought to call
alcohol a medicine or a poison, but not a food. I am obliged to
declare that the chemical evidence is as yet insufficient to give any
complete explanation of its exact manner of action upon the system;
but that the practical facts are as striking as they could well be,
and that there can be no mistake about them. And I have thought it
proper that, while highly-coloured statements of the results of the
new French researches are being somewhat disingenuously placed before
the lay public, there should not be a total silence on the part of
those members of the profession who do not see themselves called upon
to yield to the mere force of agitation."[34] If this view of the
case, which so strongly recommends itself to the mind of the practical
physician, be the true one, we are forced to regard teetotalism,
considered not in its moral but in its physiological aspects, as a
dietetic heresy nearly akin to vegetarianism. Man can do without wine,
as he can do without meat; but the rational course is to adopt that
diet from which we can obtain the greatest amount of available vital
power.
But even if we were to give up the doctrine that alcohol is a true
food, the great indisputed and indisputable fact of its stimulant
value would still remain. Tobacco neither nourishes the body nor warms
it; yet it enables us to earn our daily bread with less fatigue, and
to support the incessant trials of life with a more even spirit. The
value of alcohol as a stimulant is inferior only to that of tobacco;
or perhaps, for general purposes, it is quite unsurpassed. It
compensates for the occasionally inevitable incapacity of ordinary
food to maintain due nutrition; and in this way enables us to work
longer, and with a lighter heart, and with less fear of ultimate
depression. It bridges over the pitfalls which the complicated
exigencies of modern life are constantly digging for us. Warm-hearted
but weak-headed radicalism may imagine a utopian state of things in
which money will grow on bushes and every one mind the moral law, and
digestion be always easy, and vexation infrequent, and "artificial"
stimulus unnecessary; but this is not the state of things amid which
we live. A modern man cannot, if he does his duty, secure to himself
the enjoyment of such a state. There are times when he must sacrifice
a little of his own round perfection, if it be only to lend a helping
hand to his neighbour. A kind of valetudinarian philosophy is now
afloat, which says, Look out, above all things, for your own physical
welfare. This philosophy contains a truth, but as usually manifested
it is nothing but the result of a morbid self-consciousness. Duty
sometimes requires that we should cease coddling ourselves, and go to
work, unless we would see some cause suffer which interests other men,
living and to come, besides ourselves. We must sometimes run to put
the fire out, even if we do thereby lose our dinner, and interfere
with the stomach's requirements. It is useless, then, to talk about
agents which "support us in doing wrong," when, from the very
constitution of the world and of society, we can no more go exactly
"right" than we can draw a line which shall be mathematically
straight. It is useless to speculate about an ideal society in which
men can dispense with the agents which economize their nervous
strength, when we find as a historical fact that no nation has ever
existed which has been able to dispense with those agents. As long as
there are inequalities in the daily ratio of waste and repair to be
rectified, so long we shall get along better with wine than without
it. For this, looked at from the widest possible point of view, is the
legitimate function of alcohol,—to diminish the necessary friction
of living.
This too is the view of Liebig: "As a restorative, a means of
refreshment when the powers of life are exhausted, of giving animation
and energy where man has to struggle with days of sorrow, as a means
of correction and compensation where misproportion occurs in
nutrition, wine is surpassed by no product of nature or of art…. In
no part of Germany do the apothecaries' establishments bring so low a
price as in the rich cities on the Rhine; for there wine is the
universal medicine of the healthy as well as the sick. It is
considered as milk for the aged."[35]
This is also the view of Dr. Anstie. Comparing the action of alcohol
upon the organism with that of chloroform and sulphuric ether, he
observes: "It seems as if the former were intended to be the medicine
of those ailments which are engendered of the necessary
everyday evils of civilized life, and has therefore been made
attractive to the senses, and easily retained in the tissues, and in
various ways approving itself to our judgment as a food; while
the others, which are more rarely needed for their stimulant
properties, and are chiefly valuable for their beneficent temporary
poisonous action, by the help of which painful operations are
sustained with impunity, are in great measure deprived of these
attractions, and of their facilities for entering and remaining in the
system."[36] Apart from its implied teleology, this passage contains
the gist of the whole matter.
As for the Coming Man, whom Mr. Parton appears to regard as a sort of
pugilist or Olympic athlete, we suppose he will undoubtedly have to
exercise his brain sometimes, he will have to study, think and plan,
he will have responsibilities to shoulder, his digestion will not
always be preserved at its maximum of efficiency, his powers of
endurance will sometimes be tried to the utmost. The period in the
future when "we shall have changed all this" is altogether too remote
to affect our present conclusion; which is that the Coming Man, so
long as he is a member of a complex, civilized society, will continue
to use, with profit as well as pleasure, the two universal stimulants,
Alcohol and Tobacco.
