Dr. Ezra M. Hunt says:
"The capacity of the alcohols for impairment of functions and the
initiation and promotion of organic lesions in vital parts, is unsurpassed by
any record in the whole range of medicine.
The facts as to this are so indisputable, and so far granted by the
profession, as to be no longer debatable. Changes in stomach and liver, in
kidneys and lungs, in the blood-vessels to the minutest capillary, and the
blood to the smallest red and white blood disc disturbances of secretion,
fibroid and fatty degenerations in almost every organ, impairment of muscular
power, impressions so profound on both nervous systems as to be often toxic
these, and such as these, are the oft manifested results. And these are not
confined to those called intemperate."
Professor Youmans says:
"It is evident that, so far from being the conservator of health, alcohol
is an active and powerful cause of disease, interfering, as it does, with the
respiration, the circulation, and the nutrition now, is any other result
possible?"
Dr. F.R. Lees says:
"That alcohol should contribute to the fattening process under certain
conditions, and produce in drinkers fatty degeneration of the blood, follows,
as a matter of course, since, on the one hand, we have an agent that retains waste
matter by lowering the nutritive and excretory functions, and on the
other, a direct poisoner of the vesicles of the vital stream."
Dr. Henry Monroe says:
"There is no kind of tissue, whether healthy or morbid, that may not
undergo fatty degeneration; and there is no organic disease so troublesome to
the medical man, or so difficult of cure. If by the aid of the microscope, we
examine a very fine section of muscle taken from a person in good health, we
find the muscles firm, elastic and of a bright red color, made up of parallel
fibers, with beautiful crossings or striae but, if we similarly examine the
muscle of a man who leads an idle, sedentary life, and indulges in intoxicating
drinks, we detect, at once, a pale, flabby, inelastic, oily appearance.
Alcoholic narcotization appears to produce these peculiar conditions of the
tissues more than any other agent with which we are acquainted. 'Three-quarters of the chronic illness which
the medical man has to treat,' says Dr. Chambers, 'are occasioned by this
disease'. The eminent French analytical chemist, Lecanu, found as much as one
hundred and seventeen parts of fat in one thousand parts of a drunkard's blood,
the highest estimate of the quantity in health being eight and one-quarter
parts, while the ordinary quantity is not more than two or three parts so that
the blood of the drunkard contains forty times over the ordinary
quantity."
Dr. Hammond, who has
written, in partial defense of alcohol as containing a food power, says:
"When I say that it, of all other causes,
is most prolific in exciting
derangements of the brain, the spinal cord, and the nerves, I make a statement
which my own experience shows to be correct."
Another eminent
physician says of alcohol: "It substitutes suppuration for growth. It
helps time to produce the effects of age; and, in a word, is the genius of
degeneration."
Dr. Monroe, from whom
"Alcohol, taken in small quantities, or largely diluted, as in the form of beer, causes the stomach
gradually to lose its tone, and makes it dependent upon artificial stimulus.
Atony, or want of tone of the stomach, gradually supervenes, and incurable
disorder of health results. Should a dose of alcoholic drink be taken daily,
the heart will very often become hypertrophied, or enlarged throughout. Indeed,
it is painful to witness how many persons are laboring under disease of the
heart, owing chiefly to the use of alcoholic liquors."
Dr. T.K. Chambers,
physician to the Prince of Wales, says: "Alcohol is the most ungenerous
diet there is. It impoverishes the blood, and there is no surer road to that
degeneration of muscular fiber so much to be feared and in heart disease it is
more especially hurtful, by quickening the beat, causing capillary congestion
and irregular circulation, and thus mechanically inducing dilatation."
Sir Henry Thompson, a
distinguished surgeon, says: "Don't take your daily wine under any pretext
of its doing you good. Take it frankly as a luxury one which must be paid for,
by some persons very lightly, by some at a high price, but always to be paid for. And mostly, some
loss of health or mental power or of calmness of temper or judgment is the
price."
Dr. Charles Jewett says:
"The late Prof. Parks, of England, in his great work on Hygiene, has
effectually disposed of the notion, long and very generally entertained, that
alcohol is a valuable prophylactic were a bad climate, bad water, and other
conditions unfavorable to health, exist and an unfortunate experiment with the
article, in the Union army, on the banks of the Chickahominy, in the year 1863,
proved that, instead of guarding the human constitution against the influence
of agencies hostile to health, its use gives to them additional force. The
medical history of the British army in India teaches the same lesson."
But why present farther
testimony? Is not the evidence complete? To the man who values good health who
would not lay the foundation for disease and suffering in his later years, we
need not offer a single additional argument in favor of entire abstinence from
alcoholic drinks. He will eschew them as poisons.