ALCOHOL AND DISEASE 287 



former live, on the average, distinctly the longer. But all inebriates 

 are not paragons of candour. None who seek to insure their lives 

 will admit that they are other than moderate. Were they so 

 honest as to admit excessive drinking they would not court 

 inevitable rejection by presenting themselves for medical examina- 

 tion. 1 There can be no doubt that many people who have insured 

 as moderate drinkers really indulge to excess. Probably most 

 medical examiners have experienced the humiliation of having 

 recommended to insurance companies individuals who declared they 

 were temperate and showed no signs that they were otherwise, but 

 who were subsequently discovered to be much the reverse. If we 

 accept the dictum that the smallest quantity of alcohol is injurious, 

 we must believe, contrary to the evidence of our senses, that whole 

 nations like the Italians suffer chronic ill-health. Some men are 

 much more resistant to alcohol, physically and mentally, than others. 

 I have known many excessive drinkers who have survived till old 

 age. Others perish early in life. Doubtless the truth is that, 

 while large quantities of alcohol are injurious to all men, they 

 are less injurious to some men than to others ; and that, while 

 small quantities, such as are drunk by Italian peasants, are in- 

 jurious to some men, they are little, if at all, injurious to most men. 



478. Probably no substance that is eaten or drunk produces 

 quite the same sensations in every one. One man prefers beef, 

 another mutton, a third pork ; one prefers apples, another oranges ; 

 one tea, another coffee ; one delights in tobacco, another derives no 

 pleasure from it. If their sensations were exactly alike, their 

 preferences would be the same. Identical quantities of alcohol 

 make some men cheerful, others maudlin, others morose, others 

 amiable, yet others pugnacious ; some are stimulated to greater 

 activity, others are lulled to sleep. However, it is evident that 

 whatever his sensations, the habitual and excessive drinker finds 

 them pleasant, or he would not, in spite of heavy penalties, seek to 

 renew them periodically. 



479. In one particular all excessive drinkers agree : they pay 

 for the pleasant sensations experienced when alcohol is circulating 

 in the blood by feelings, following its elimination from the body, 

 which are the reverse of pleasant sensations of abnormal thirst, 

 headache, nausea, nervousness, wakefulness, irritability, terror, 



1 One Canadian company which does business in this country demands from 

 its ' proposers ' a declaration of the number of times they have been drunk 

 during the past five years, and the date of the last occasion. If nothing else is 

 elicited, at least a maximum of lying is. 



