Mouood Mouood English Edition
The report under review is explicit that “”wayward girls are brought to their ruin almost exclusively through alcoholic drinks. Does the tired working girl seek recreation in the dance sooner or later she must yield to the temptation to drink, and then – her future is settled for all time. Does the girl beset with poverty seek the easiest way? She goes to the nearest saloon, where she is met with smiles and flattery and put to work to add to the bar’s receipts.”
The Chicago Commission found in numerous instances that the saloons were situated in close proximity to schools. They were daily filled with innocent children. In one saloon the investigator found eighteen prostitutes drinking at one time. Five of these women invited the visitor to participate in immoral deeds.”
The Royal Commission of England appointed to study the relation of alcohol to the prevalence of sex immorality has some very pertinent and outstanding facts to disclose. Among them:
(i) Alcoholic liquor, by weakening self control, is the most important factor in aggravating Social vice conditions; that the drinker is peculiarly liable to yield to the temptations which other-wise might be resisted. One physician reports that out of thousands of cases, he had found 80 per cent had been under the influence of liquor when they acquired their diseases through sexual licence.
(ii) Alcohol makes the treatment of such patients very much difficult.
(iii) Alcohol complicates the picture of the diseases that are acquired through sex immorality. Alcohol and Medical Research. There was a time when the Western Medical opinion favoured the use of alcohol in certain diseases.
It was considered stimulant and was supposed to possess some food value, close investigations have, however, conclusively proved that alcohol is a depressant and not a stimulant at all. Its apparent stimulating effect is due to its paralysing properties on the nerve centres.
When alcohol is taken into the stomach, that organ with its inherent revulsion for the various products at, once expels it into the blood stream; which carries it into the brain centres and stupefies them. Now, it is these brain centres that control the movements of the muscles.
With stupefaction overtaking the controlling mechanisms, the muscles activity is released of all restraint and goes wild, giving an impression of heightened power. The process may be compared to the disabling of the governor of a steam engine, which then conveys the impression of an accelerated speed. As a matter of fact, neither the narcotized human organism nor the control-free steam engine can have acquired any increase in working capacity, which can come only by the supply of suitable fuel material. Alcohol does not add any power to the organism “it only smashes the governor”, as is aptly expressed by a research scholar of the U.S.A.
As for its food value, the late Sir Spencer Wells M.D., F.R.C.S., endorsed the current findings of medical research on the point in the following words: “It is only lately that we have begun to regard alcohol in its true light as a drug and not as a food.”
To this Dr Harvey H. Wiley adds, “It is without question a substance which does not nourish the body building tissue or repair waste. Dr W.A. Evans, medical editor of the Chicago Tribune and former health officer of Chicago, says, “No health authority anywhere advocates the use of alcohol as a medicine, food or beverage. Every drink is a mixed drink. There are no other kinds, When a man takes a drink, however simple it may be, he mixes in some degeneration of his nerve cells, some chance of delirium tremens and a few other ingredients. Let him understand, that he also pours into the glass about one finger of wet brain.”
The new York City Board of Health in a pamphlet warned the people against the evils of drink thus: Alcohol is a depressant and not a stimulant, it drugs the brain and stops the capacity of the nervous system to obey the will.
Don’t muddle your brain by drinking bear, John Stuart Mill put it very tersely when he said, “Who would not be a human dissatisfied, rather than a pig satisfied? Think before you drink for after a bear or highball you cannot think so well.”
The great German philosopher Goethe repeatedly asserted that so-called stimulation by liquor could produce only a forced, inferior creation of ideas. Happiness and contentment are said to spring from the benumbing influence of alcohol upon the higher brain functions. Such happiness is false, such contentment bought at the expense of individual mental liberty.
The Chicago Board of Health in a bulletin thus condemns the evil: The fellow with alcohol in his system is not a good witness as to its effects on himself, for his mind as well as his body is bribed by the drug, and is as full of prejudice as his breath is full of fumes. In another bulletin the following warning is given to the drunkard: The heavy drinker who contracts pneumonia should not lose an hour in settling his affairs, as he will, in all probability be unconscious with delirium within twenty-four to forty-eight hours from the time his disease is first diagnosed.
Dr. Robert A. bare, professor of therapeutics of the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, in his classic “Practical Therapeutics” has laid down the following verdict of medical scholarship: “Alcohol never acts as a stimulant to the brain, the spinal cord or the nerves. The depression of the inhibitory nervous apparatus. The activity is, therefore, that caused by lack of control and is not a real increase of energy. The effect of moderate doses differs from the effect of large ones in degree and not in kind.
Alcohol is a Poison
Alcohol is a poison and its evils effects are so great that every courageous man should help to eliminate them.
One is baffled, in the face of complete unanimity among all sections of the human Society about the evils which alcohol gives birth to as to how this so called rational being both as an individual and in social groups submits himself to be swayed into self-destruction by this poison. No sane thinking mind can be found to say a friendly word in favour of alcoholic liquors.
Below are given the opinions of some of the most eminent medical authorities of the west in regard to the characteristic damage that humanity is exposed to by this inveterate enemy of all good senses. The testimony of such famous doctors should convince even the incurable drunkard to pause in his head-long pursuit of self-immolation on the altar of Bacchus.
Drunkenness and its consequent degeneracy, explain 35 per cent of epilepsy – Dr. Mathew Woods.
Twenty-eight percent of the men admitted to this hospital during the past year were alcoholised. This does not include alcohol-caused insanity – Dr. H. C. Eyman, of the Massilon, Ohio, Asylum.
A son-stroke, is often nothing more nor less than a bear-stroke – Dr. W. A. Evans, Medical Editor, Chicago Tribune.
I am not aware of any medical connection in which alcohol is necessary, nor of any in which it could not, with advantage, be replaced by some less dangerous drug – Sir Arthur Chance M. D.
Twenty five of the 100 deaths which occur every day in Chicago are caused directly or indirectly by alcohol – John D. Robinson, Health Commissioner.
