134 



ELEMENTARY BIOLOGY 



a true understanding of the known facts. On the other hand, there 

 are large numbers of people who have seen certain evil effects of the 

 drink habits, and these are so bitter in their attacks on the use of 

 alcohol that they give the impression of being "cranks," so that many 



reasonable people 

 refuse to take 

 them seriously. 



Another diffi- 

 culty about judg- 

 ing the good or 

 harm of alcoholic 

 drinks from ordi- 

 nary observation 



FIG. 37. Alcohol and expectation of life 



At every age the abstainers (white) have the chance of longer 

 additional life than the moderate drinkers (shaded) 



15-20 years 



20-30 years 



Over 30 years 



is the fact that 

 people differ so 

 much in their 

 sensitiveness and 



in their resistance. We may see hundreds of people who have grown 

 old, with the drink habit acquired many years before. You cannot 

 show that these people have been hurt by the drink. On the other 

 hand, a young person with great promise of future achievement 

 is ruined in a short while by becoming addicted to drink. 



Is alcohol poison 

 or not ? If it is, un- 

 der what conditions 

 or in what amounts 

 is it a poison ? Is 

 it helpful to some 

 kinds of people ? 

 We cannot answer 



these questions offhand, from our ordinary every-day experience. 

 We must therefore do two things : 



1 . We must bring together the experience of thousands and 

 thousands of people ; 



2. We must make special experiments. 



The experiences of large numbers of people have been 

 made available in recent years by the study of the records of 



cm cu 



8.1:1 4.0:1 



FIG. 38. Alcohol and the chances of death 



The chances of dying at any given time are from 1.8 to 



4 times as great for drinkers (shaded) as for non-drinkers 



(white) 



