226 THE POPULAR- SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In these moments alcohol cheers. It lets loose the heart from its op- 

 pression, it lets flow a brisker current of blood into the failing organs ; 

 it aids nutritive changes, and altogether is of temporary service to 

 man. So far alcohol is good, and if its use could be limited to this 

 one action, this one purpose, it would be among the most excellent 

 of the gifts of Nature to mankind. 



It is assumed by most persons that alcohol gives strength, and we 

 hear feeble persons saying daily that they are being kept up by stimu- 

 lants. This means actually that they are being kept down, but the 

 sensation they derive from the immediate action of the stimulant de- 

 ceives them and leads them to attribute lasting good to what, in the 

 large majority of cases, is persistent evil. The evidence is all-perfect 

 that alcohol gives no potential power to brain or muscle. During 

 the first stage of its action it may enable a wearied or feeble organism 

 to do brisk work for a short time ; it may make the mind briefly 

 brilliant ; it may excite muscle to quick action, but it does nothing 

 at its own cost, fills up nothing it has destroyed as it leads to destruc- 

 tion. 



On the muscular force the very slightest excess of alcoholic influ- 

 ence is injurious. I find, by measuring the power of muscle for contrac- 

 tion in the natural state and under alcohol, that, so soon as there is a 

 distinct indication of muscular disturbance, there is also indication of 

 muscular failure, and if I wished, by scientific experiment, to spoil 

 for work the most perfect specimen of a working animal, say a horse, 

 without inflicting mechanical injury, I coidd choose no better agent for 

 the purpose of the experiment than alcohol. But alas ! the readiness 

 with which strong, well-built men slip into general paralysis under the 

 continued influence of this false support, attests how unnecessary it 

 were to put a lower animal to the proof of an experiment. The ex- 

 periment is a custom, and man is the subject. 



It may be urged that men take alcohol, nevertheless, take it freely 

 and yet live ; that the adult Swede drinks his average cup of twenty- 

 five gallons of alcohol per year, and yet remains on the face of the 

 earth. I admit force even in this argument, for I know that under the 

 persistent use of alcohol there is a secondary provision for the con- 

 tinuance of life. In the confirmed alcoholic, the alcohol is in a certain 

 sense so disposed of that it fits, as it were, the body for a long season, 

 nay, becomes part of it; and yet it is silently doing its fatal work; all 

 the organs of the body are slowly being brought into a state of adap- 

 tation to receive it and to dispose of it ; but in that very preparation 

 they are themselves undergoing physical changes tending to the 

 destruction of their function and to perversion of their structure. 

 Thus, the origin of alcoholic phthisis, of cirrhosis of the liver, of de- 

 generation of the kidney, of disease of the membranes of the brain, 

 of disease of the substance of the brain and spinal cord, of degenera- 

 tion of the heart, and of all those varied modifications of organic parts 



