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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

The Effect of Alcohol on the Human System

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The Effect of Alcohol on the Human System.

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Fifty years of careful study by medical men on this subject has enabled science to speak with the voice of assurance. Some of the most common delusions are—"that alcohol is a food," that it "aids digestion," that it "makes the body strong," that it "helps to endure fatigues," that it "warms," that it "helps to stand cold and exposure." Without hesitation science turns upon these false fancies, declaring them to be the remains of a ruder age.

1. To be a Food anything consumed by us must be capable of building up the bodily tissues, but alcohol has no properties of that nature. It cannot build up muscle, bone, or nerve. " Take," says Dr Hargreaves, "a pint of ale, weighing 18 ounces, and put it into a retort, and apply to it gentle heat, when about an ounce, or less, of alcohol will be driven off, which can be preserved. By increasing the heat the remaining water, about 15 ounces, can be evaporated, leaving at the bottom of the retort about an ounce of black gummy extract of barley and hops that no one would take as food; yet this is all the nutriment contained in a pint of ale or beer."

2. It Aids Digestion.—Dr Hargreaves again says, "Alcohol in this case, as in others, will prove a deceiver and a mocker. Alcohol, instead of aiding digestion, retards and prevents it, by destroying the most important ingredient in the gastric juice—pepsin." Drs Todd and Bowman, quoted by Dr Hargreaves, say, "The use of alcoholic stimulants retards digestion by coagulating the pepsin." Dr Dundas Thomson writes, "It 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."

3. It Makes the Body Strong.—If alcohol is itself not a food, and when taken into the stomach with other foods prevents their digestion, how can it impart strength to the body ? It only seems to, as the spur seems to add strength to a horse. The body can only get strength through food. Stirring a fire makes it give out more beat at the expense of burning away more quickly. Alcohol acts on the body as the poker does on the fire.

4. It Helps to Endure Fatigue.—Power to endure fatigue means extra strength. Ask those who have had experience of endurance in cold and heat. In the Arctic expeditions those who endure most are those who drink no alcohol. In Equatorial expeditions the most successful have been conducted without alcoholic beverages. Those who have to perform the severest toil dare not partake of intoxicating liquors.

5. It Warms.—This is proved an error by every form of experiment. A glass of alcoholic liquors will lower the temperature of the body, as may be ascertained by the clinical thermometer. " But, doctor, I must have some kind of a stimulant," cried the invalid earnestly. " I am cold, and it warms me." " Precisely," came the doctor's crusty answer. " See here; this stick is cold," taking up a stick of wood from the box beside the hearth, and tossing it into the fire. " Now it is warm, but is the stick benefitted ? " The sick man watched the wood first send out little puffs of smoke and then burst into flame, and replied, "Of course not; it is burning itself." " And so are you when you warm yourself with alcohol; you are literally burning up the delicate tissues of your stomach and brain." Oh, yes, alcohol will warm you up, but who finds the fuel ? When you take food, that is fuel, and as it burns out you keep warm. But when you take alcohol to warm you, you are like a man who sets his house on fire, and warms his fingers by it as it burns.—Temperance Cause.

Issued by the Grand Lodge of New Zealand, I.O.G.T. Price—2s 6d per 1000 copies; or, including postage, 3s 6d per 1000 copies.