27 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Air 

 Alcohol 



the motives which are actually present to 

 his consciousness. He says, to himself and 

 to others, " I could not help yielding " ; and 

 automatism sanctions the plea. Society 

 may be justified in imposing on him either 

 restraint or punishment, alike for its own 

 security and for his welfare; but no con- 

 sistent automatist can regard him as an ob- 

 ject of the moral reprobation which we in- 

 stinctively feel for the self-degraded sot; 

 and experience shows that the system of 

 external repression almost invariably loses 

 its potency as a deterrent as soon as the 

 restraining influence is withdrawn. 



Xow, although I hold it beyond question 

 that a state may be induced by habitual 

 alcoholic indulgence in which the unhappy 

 subject of it loses all power of resistance, 

 I affirm it to be " the normal experience of 

 healthy men " that the ordinary toper has 

 such a power in the earlier stages of his 

 decadence, and that he is justly held cul- 

 pable for not exerting it. CARPENTER 

 Mental Physiology, pref., p. xxxix. (A., 

 1900.) 



133. ALCOHOL, EFFECT OF Cumu- 

 lative How Small Doses of Poison Operate. 

 Small quantities of poisonous substances, 

 such as alcohol, for instance, may be in- 

 dulged in for years without apparent 

 injury. But finally the total effect of all 

 these small quantities of poison will sud- 

 denly appear, not, perhaps, because of any 

 accumulation of those small doses of the 

 poison in the system, but because of an ac- 

 cumulation of their effects. STRUMPELL in 

 an address before the Naturforscher 

 Versammlung, Nuremberg, 1893. (Trans- 

 lated for Scientific Side-Lights.) 



134. 



Intoxication Allied 



to Mania Results May Be Mental Derange- 

 ment. Alcohol yields us, in its direct ef- 

 fects, the abstract and brief chronicle of the 

 course of mania. At first there is an agree- 

 able excitement, a lively flow of ideas, a re- 

 vival of old ideas and feelings which seemed 

 to have passed from the mind, a general in- 

 crease of mental activity a condition very 

 like that which often precedes an attack 

 of acute mania, when the patient is witty, 

 lively, satirical, makes jokes or rimes, and 

 certainly exhibits a brilliancy of fancy 

 which he is capable of at no other time. 

 Then there follows, in the next stage of its 

 increasing action, as there does in mania, 

 the automatic excitation of ideas which 

 start up and follow one another without 

 order, so that thought and speech are more 

 or less incoherent, while passion is easily 

 excited. After this stage has lasted for a 

 time, in some longer, in others shorter, it 

 passes into one of depression and maudlin 

 melancholy, just as mania sometimes passes 

 into melancholia, or convulsion into paraly- 

 sis. And the last stage of all is one of 

 stupor and dementia. If the abuse of alco- 

 hol be continued for years, it may cause 

 different forms of mental derangement, in 



each of w r hich the muscular are curiously 

 like the mental symptoms: delirium tre- 

 mens in one, an acute noisy and destructive 

 mania in another, chronic alcoholism in a 

 third, and a condition of mental weakness 

 with loss of memory and loss of energy in 

 a fourth. MAUDSLEY Body and Mind, lect. 

 3, p. 91. (A., 1898.) 



135. ALCOHOL, EFFECT OF Upon 

 Children Alcoholic Imbecility. But the 

 greatest ravage is wrought upoji the nervous 

 system of the child by means of alcohol. We 

 now are aware that there is no more certain 

 method of breeding idiots than by the con- 

 tinuous administering of alcohol. Thou- 

 sands of mothers are systematically poi- 

 soning their darlings by means of a sub- 

 stance which renders them stupid, languid, 

 and without energy; and, according to cir- 

 cumstances, makes of them physical and 

 mental cripples. Therefore away with this 

 pernicious faith in the " strengthening " 

 effect of alcohol, away with the " strength- 

 ening " wines for chronic conditions of 

 weakness, anemia, and chlorosis; above all 

 let us do away with alcoholic poisons in the 

 nursery, that we may not lead the genera- 

 tion that is now growing up into sickness 

 and degeneration with our own hands. 

 KRAPELIN A Lecture. (Translated for 

 Scientific Side-Lights.) 



136. ALCOHOL IN BREAD INCONSID- 

 ERABLEA Disastrous Experiment. Not 

 many years ago 20,000 was lost in the 

 prosecution of a scheme for collecting the 

 alcohol that distils from bread in baking, 

 all which would have been saved to the sub- 

 scribers had they known that less than a 

 hundredth part by weight of the flour is 

 changed in fermentation. HERBERT SPEN- 

 CER Education, chap. 1, p. 38. (A., 1900.) 



137. ALCOHOL, IS IT A FOOD OR A 

 POISON? We are thus freed from the 

 dilemma in which we were placed by ad- 

 mitting on the one hand that alcohol has no 

 albumen-saving properties, as has been 

 proven by many experiments, and by claim- 

 ing for it on the other hand the power to 

 save fat. vFor the two facts from which 

 these contradictory assumptions have been 

 deduced, namely, the absence of a diminu- 

 tion in the breaking up of albumen and the 

 actually noted diminution in the breaking 

 up of fat, far from being contradictory, are 

 simply the necessary result of the toxic and 

 deleterious action which alcohol exerts upon 

 the protoplasm. 



In this statement our final sentence 

 against alcohol is pronounced. For the 

 animal and human organism alcohol is not 

 both a food and a poison, but only a poison, 

 which, like all other poisons, is excitant 

 when taken in small doses, while in larger 

 ones it produces paralysis and death. KAS- 

 SOWITZ Alkohol nahrend oder toxischf A 

 Lecture: WerJce, p. 16. (Translated for 

 Scientific Side-Light s.) 



