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ties prevents digestion wholly. Drs. Todd and Bowman say that the use of alcoholic stimulants retards digestion by coagulating the pepsin, which is the most important ingredient of the gastric juice, and were it not that wine, spirits, etc., are rapidly absorbed, their introduction in any quantity would be a complete bar to the digestion of food, as the pepsin would be precipitated from the solution as quickly as it is formed." Dr. Dundas Thompson says: "This is a remarkable fact, that when alcohol is added to the digestive fluid it produces a white precipitate, so that the fluid is no longer capable of digesting animal or vegetable food." Dr. Monroe proved this by a series of experiments recorded in "Physiological Action of Alcohol," London, 1865. He showed clearly that alcoholics destroy the solvent power of the gastric juice and prevent digestion, and that even pale ale, with 5 or 6 per cent. of alcohol, does not aid digestion. If it destroys the gastric juice which dissolves the food, how can it help digestion? Going over the whole subject, citing and reviewing numerous authorities, Dr. Hargreaves concludes it to be "very evident that alcoholic beverages do not and cannot aid digestion, but retard and prevent the solution of alimentary substances."

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Liebig himself says that "wine is superfluous to man. It is constantly followed by an expenditure of power." Drs. Virchow and Boecker agree that "alcohol poisons the blood, arrests development and hastens the decay of the red corpuscles," and decreases vitality. Prof. Schultz, Dr. Beale, Dr. Williams, Dr. Parkes, all great men, say the same. Dr. Benj. Brodie says: "Stimulants do not create nerve power, they merely enable you to use up, as it were what is left." Lallemand and Perrin say alcohol lessens muscular force.

But such citations from the most eminent men in the profession can be made without limit, and I close the chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

ALCOHOL THE CAUSE OF DISEASE.

Alcohol the Cause of Disease-Alcohol Attacks the Integrity of the Body through the Blood - Dr. Dickinson's Account of the Disease it Fosters-The Ally of Cholera-Recollections of the Cholera Epidemic in New York, 1832-Dr. Beaumont's Experiments-Striking Illustration of the Effects of Drink-The Drunkard's Stomach, Reproduced in Colors The Curse of Intemperance transmitted to Posterity-Startling Facts from Experience-The History of Four Generations of a Family of Drunkards-The Causes of Insanity-Intemperance Leading them All.

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LCOHOL attacks the blood and consequently the integrity of every tissue and living atom of the body. It follows that its use must produce disease of every organ and part of the frame. In a work like this it is impossible and unnecessary to attempt the enumeration of the infinite variety of diseases of which alcohol is the cause, and much already appears in citations from eminent authorities. But I will insert the following from a paper read by Dr. W. Dickinson before the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, October 22, 1872, the subject being "The Morbid Effects of Alcohol:"

Alcohol causes fatty infiltration and fibroid encroachment; it engenders tubercles; encourages suppuration and retards healing; it produces untimely atheroma, invites hemorrhage and anticipates The most constant fatty changes, replacement by oil of the material of epithelial cells and muscular fibers, though probably nearly universal, is most noticeable in the liver, the heart and the kidneys. The fibroid increase occurs about vascular channels and superficial investments of the viscera, where it causes atrophy, cirrhosis and granulation. Of this change the liver has the largest share; the lungs are often similarly but less simply affected, the change being variously complicated with, or simulative of tubercle; the kidneys suffer in a more remote degree.

Alcohol also causes vascular deteriorations, which are akin both to the fatty and the fibroid. Besides tangible atheroma, there are minute changes in the arterial walls, which of themselves induce

cardiac hypertrophy and cerebral hemorrhage. Drink causes tuberculosis, which is evident not only in the lungs, but in every amenable organ. Drink promotes the suppurative at the expense of the adhesive process, as seen in the results of pneumonia, of serious inflammations and of accidental injuries. Descending from general conditions to the individual organs, the effect of alcohol upon the nervous system must be looked upon as special and taken by itself. Apart from the changes which, like delirium tremens, are more evident during life than after death, the brain pays a large reckoning in the shape of inflammation, atrophy and hemorrhage. With regard to the other organs, they are damaged by alcohol, much as they stand in its line of absorption.

Next to the stomach, the liver suffers, by way of cirrhosis and fatty impregnation. Next the stress falls upon the lungs, taking every shape of phthisis. A large share in the pathology of intemperance is also taken by the arterial system, as seen in its results: atheroma, cardiac hypertrophy and hemorrhage. Lastly the kidneys, more remotely exposed, have small participation in the common damage of alcoholism. They undergo congestive enlargement, fatty and fibroid change, but they do not suffer commensurately with the blood-vessels, or as frequently as the other viscera.

Nor does there appear to be power in alcohol to prevent disease in any known case. It has been said that it would prevent cholera, but Dr. Jameson says in his treatise on that dread disease: "His great love is for drunkards and the high fed." In fact alcohol predisposes the system to the disease. Prof. Mackintosh says that five sixths of all who have fallen by cholera in England were persons of intemperate and dissolute habits.

Dr. Mussey said that if he must drink any quantity of alcohol in a specified time he should think it best to take it in distilled liquors rather than cider, wine or beer, and that on the Ohio river the increase of brandy drinking consequent upon the approach of cholera has been frightful, and the mortality on board terrible and unprecedented. One boat lost 43, another 47, and a third 59 of its passengers and crew." Dr. Adams, Professor of the Institute of Medicine in the Anderson University of Glasgow, says that of his intemperate cholera patients 91 per cent. died. "I have found the use of alcoholic drinks to be a great disposing cause of malignant cholera. . . . . . I would placard every spirit shop in town with these words: CHOLERA SOLD HERE."

DR. BEAUMONT'S OBSERVATIONS.

The authorities are legion to the same effect.

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On the other hand total abstinence prevents cholera. the statistics of the disease in 1832 in New York, out of 5,000 members of temperance societies only two died; in several of the societies none whatever. In New Orleans the proportion of deaths to population was 15 to 1,000; of those belonging to temperance organizations only 2.5 in 1,000, and the statistics are substantially the same in Scotland, England, India, and in all countries. Dr. Hargreaves, with his usual marvelous care, goes over the subject and thus gives the conclusion of the whole matter: "There is not a disease we are satisfied but what may be aggravated by alcohol, and we are equally satisfied that total abstinence from alcoholics, and temperance in all things are the only preventives of disease."

The stomach and entire digestive apparatus are specially subject to injury by use of alcohol because it acts like a poison, searing and corroding the soft vascular tissues and surfaces of which these organs are composed. Its use is a perpetual cauterization of parts which no more require such treatment than the healthy eyeball, and it does not lessen the injury that it goes on within, among the hidden processes

of life.

The recorded observations of Dr. Beaumont, made daily for years, of the interior of the stomach of Alexis St. Martin are of peculiar value, as St. Martin's case was the only like opportunity ever afforded to the human eye. St. Martin was a French Canadian soldier, who was shot in the stomach while on guard duty in the American service at Michilimackinac, in the year 1822. Dr. William Beaumont, surgeon of the post, dressed the wound, but in healing, an aperture was left through which, by pushing the parts aside, the interior and walls of the stomach and the process of digestion were visible. Dr. Beaumont seized the opportunity and immortalized both his patient and himself. St. Martin married, had a large family and lived to a good old age. Dr. Beaumont prepared him a pad or compress for the aperture in the stomach, which served him so well, that he was able not only to get on with the necessary processes of digestion, but to indulge in a tendency to convivial habits quite as frequently as was beneficial to himself. It, however, gave the vigilant doctor an opportunity

to describe the effects of alcohol upon this organ, whose function is the foundation of life, and thus to turn the excesses of his subject into authentic and indisputable sources of warning to others. Dr. Beaumont published a book in which he recorded "thousands of his experiments and observations," from which I take the following, calling attention to the fact that this was before the "temperance craze," and the work can not be impeached as that of a temperance" crank."

He says of "Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and Physiology of Digestion," referring to observations on St. Martin:

July 8th, 9 o'clock a. M. Stomach empty; not healthy; some inflammation with ulcerous patches on mucous surface. St. Martin been drinking freely for eight or ten days; complains of no pain, nor shows symptoms of any general indisposition; says he feels well, and has a good appetite. August 1st, 8 o'clock, A. M. Examined stomach before eating anything; inner membrane morbid, considerable inflammation, and some ulcerous patches on the exposed surface, secretions vitiated. Extracted about an ounce of gastric juice, not clear and pure as in health; quite viscid. August 2d, 8 o'clock, A. M. Circumstances and appearances very similar to those of yesterday morning. Extracted an ounce of gastric juice, consisting of unusual proportion of vitiated mucus, saliva, and some bile, tinged slightly with blood, appearing to exude from the surface of the inflammation, and ulcerous patches, which were more tender and irritable than usual. St. Martin complains of no pain.

August 3d, 7 o'clock, A. M. Inner membrane of stomach unusually morbid; inflammatory appearance more extensive, and (ulcerous) spots more livid; from the surface of some of which exuded small drops of grumous (or thick, clotty) blood.

The ulcerous patches larger and numerous; the mucous covering (the thin sensitive lining membrane) thicker than common; and the gastric secretion much more vitiated. The gastric fluids extracted this morning were mixed with large proportions of thick, ropy mucus, and considerable muco-purulent matter, slightly tinged with blood, and resembling the discharge from the bowels in some cases of chronic dysentery. Notwithstanding this diseased appearance of the stomach, no very essential aberration of its functions was manifested. St. Martin complains of no symptoms indicating any general derangement of the system, except an uneasy sensation and a tenderness at the pit of the stomach, and some vertigo, with dimness and yellowness of vision, on stooping and rising again; has a

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