540 SCIENCE OF HOME AND COMMUNITY 



ties of the body. Many people have the notion that alcohol 

 acts as a stimulant, and they think that if they have a very 

 difficult piece of work to do they will be helped by taking a 

 glass of liquor. This is a mistake, because experiments have 

 shown that the use of alcohol decreases a person's capacity 

 to do either muscular or mental work. Of the many experts 

 who have made a study of this question the great majority 

 agree that alcohol is a narcotic. When a person drinks a 

 glass of beer thinking it will stimulate him to do better work, 

 he is deceiving himself. His own feelings in the matter 

 are not trustworthy. 



Effect of alcohol on mental activities. Frequently one 

 hears a person say that he has used alcohol in moderation 

 for many years and that it has never harmed him. He may 

 think that he has not been harmed, but harm may have been 

 done although he does not know it. Just as a person may 

 have the incipient stages of tuberculosis and not know it, 

 so an habitual user of alcohol may undermine his health 

 and resistance so that although he may be unconscious of 

 any weakness, an attack of pneumonia or other illness will 

 find him an easy victim. While some of the ill effects due to 

 alcohol are of such a character that they are easily seen, 

 many others are of such a kind that it requires special 

 experiments to detect them. But they may nevertheless 

 be of a serious character, so that when a person says that 

 alcohol has not harmed him, it proves nothing. 



In one experiment it was found that a single dose of alcohol 

 ] produced a lessening of mental activities and that this effect 

 lasted more than two days. When alcohol was taken for 

 twelve successive days, tests showed that the working 

 capacity of the individual's mind was lessened by from 25 to 

 40 per cent. In another experiment after alcohol had been 

 taken for twelve days, it was found that the power to add 

 was reduced 40 per cent and the power to memorize was 

 reduced 70 per cent. Still other experiments show that even 



