134 APPLIED PHYSIOLOGY 



receive messages of feeling are weakened. Then the 

 drunkard does not feel pain so keenly as he should. He 

 gets injured without knowing it, and may fall and freeze 

 to death without suffering. Before the days of chloroform 

 surgeons used to make their patient drunk so that he should 

 not feel the pain of the operation. 



Because alcohol partly deadens feeling, it takes away 

 the feeling of weariness, and the drunkard thinks that, 

 because he does not feel tired, the whisky has made him 

 strong. His mind is dulled ; he has not the sense to see 

 that he really has lost strength, and that his words and acts 

 are foolish. He judges by the feeling alone and keeps on 

 drinking, though each drink makes him still weaker and a 

 still greater fool. But the next day the effects of the 

 alcohol pass off and he feels a great weakness of his body 

 and brain, and needs a day or two in which to recover. 

 Yet in a little while there comes a desire to drink again. 

 So once started, the habit grows, for a person's good sense 

 is taken away, and he is too weak in mind to see the 

 results. 



260. Bad companions. Another effect upon the mind 

 of the drinker comes from his being with other men in 

 the same state as himself. Their low stories and dirty 

 language and quarrels make decent men ashamed. No 

 person can hear them without being shocked. Yet men 

 become like those with whom they live, and so drinkers 

 learn to talk and think alike. 



261. Light drinking. A weakness of mind often comes 

 on, even if a drinker never gets drunk, and it is often in a 

 dangerous form. More insanity is caused by drinking than 

 by anything else, and slow, steady drinking causes more of 

 it than getting drunk and letting drink alone between times. 

 Besides those who are made insane, many are so weakened 



