ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 168 



ALCOHOL ' 1C DRINKS . Of all substances in 

 common use by mankind alcohol has proved 

 the most deceptive. Taken ordinarily to "stim- 

 ulate" and to "strengthen," its main effect is 

 always to slow and depress activity and to 

 weaken. The brief, temporary, deceptive effect 

 of small and moderate doses, with many people, 

 is to cheer and exhilarate, but this condition 

 soon gives way to more prolonged phases of 

 dullness and misery, ill temper and irritability. 



The Truth Setting Men Free. Science is 

 slowly analyzing and explaining all these con- 

 tradictory effects, and as the truth is growing 

 clearer, alcohol is being more and more ban- 

 ished from use. Its last stronghold, in medical 

 practice, is fast breaking up. Staff physicians 

 of leading hospitals are abandoning alcohol 

 entirely and are using in its stead milk and 

 other nutrients and other drugs of known 

 physiological effect. The reputable physicians 

 of cities are publicly pledging themselves not 

 to prescribe it in any form, and drug stores 

 are meeting this action of the physicians by 

 refusing to keep in stock any kind of alcohol 

 suitable to drink. The deceptive effect of al- 

 cohol has long been the basis for all liquid 

 patent medicines, but here the deception is so 

 palpable and disastrous that those who can be 

 deceived in this way must ere long die off, 

 and with them patent-medicine alcoholism 

 must disappear. 



The whole trend for the past century, from 

 the almost universal use of alcoholic beverages 

 as necessaries of life to the now common 

 view that everybody would be better off with- 

 out any of them, must be regarded as an 

 example of the truth gradually setting us free. 

 About the year 1900 the Committee of Fifty 

 enlisted the help of many of the university 

 laboratories of the world in carrying out most 

 searching investigations on every phase of the 

 alcohol problem. Before that time university 

 workers had been active, and now the Car- 

 negie Institution (which see) has projected the 

 most complete scheme for a re-investigation of 

 the whole subject that probably has ever been 

 devised for the study of a scientific problem. 

 Young people especially should know that these 

 expensive investigations are being made for 

 them, and they should take pains to keep 

 abreast of discoveries in this field. The truth 

 in such matters is very precious. Truth is 

 defined as "that which the mind is compelled 

 to approve as a basis of conduct." Or, as Sir 

 John Herschel stated it, "Truth is that which 

 has the capability of enduring the test of uni- 



ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 



experience, and of coming unchanged 

 out of every possible form of fair discussion." 



The fact that men have not yet come to a 

 universal basis for conduct may mean that we 

 have not discovered truth enough about al- 

 cohol, or that some have not taken the pains 

 to learn the truth, or that many are still en- 

 tangled in customs, habits, appetites and preju- 

 dices, and are as men convinced against their 

 wills. But science must yield all benefits of 

 doubt, and she is never lazy. She will continue 

 to gather the evidence, and we are likely to 

 see more real progress won in the reasonable 

 solution of the alcohol problem before 1930 

 than has been made in the past century. 



Some Incorrect Beliefs. University re- 

 searches in recent years have thrown a flood of 

 light upon the fundamental reasons in human 

 nature that underlie the use of alcoholic drinks. 

 They have all conspired to prove that alcohol 

 is not a "stimulant," but a sedative, a quieter 

 of overtaxed nerves, a depressant of normal 

 activity, a retarder of growth and a deadener 

 of mental and emotional processes. Hence al- 

 cohol is taken to allay pain and misery, re- 

 lieve the sense of fatigue, weakness and inef- 

 ficiency and to drown grief and sorrow. When 

 we study the problem from this point of view, 

 we begin to see what is before us. We can 

 do away with the use of alcohol when we 

 mitigate the wrongs and miseries of our social 

 order, and hardly before. No one who is ef- 

 ficient, successful and feels keenly that life is 

 worth living to the full could knowingly wish 

 to chloroform himself. Van Dyke has summed 

 up this side of the case as follows: 



Drunkenness ruins more homes and wrecks 

 more lives than war. How shall we oppose 

 it? I do not say that we shall not pass reso- 

 lutions and make laws against it. But I do 

 say that we can never really conquer the 

 evil in this way. The stronghold of intem- 

 perance lies in the vacancy and despair of 

 men's minds. The way to attack it is to make 

 the sober life beautiful and happy and full of 

 interest. Teach your boys how to work, how 

 to read, how to play, you fathers, before you 

 send them to college, if you want to guard 

 them against the temptations of strong drink 

 and the many shames and sorrows that go 

 with it. Make the life of your community 

 cheerful and pleasant and interesting, you re- 

 formers. Provide them with recreation that 

 will not harm them, if you want to take away 

 the power of the gilded saloon and the grimy 

 boozing-den. Parks and playgrounds, libraries 

 and music rooms, clean homes and cheerful 

 churches are the efficient foes of intemperance. 



It is a long step toward a solution of the 

 problem thus to gain an insight into its essential 



