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IS AN ABSOLUTE CONDEMNATION OF

ALCOHOL JUST?*

By ALBERT BERNHEIM, A.M., M.D.

Paducah, Kentucky.

Mr. President and Gentlemen:

"And Noah began to be an husbandman and he planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine and was drunken."

The wise King Solomon speaks: "Wine is a mocker, strong wine is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise." "And there were set there six water pots of stone after the manner of the purifying Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus said unto them, 'Fill the water pots with water,' and they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, 'Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast.' The ruler of the feast tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was.

"This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested forth his glory."

I need not remind you, gentlemen, of the highest sacrament in the Christian church, of the Lord's supper, where Jesus said: "This bread is My flesh, this wine is My blood."

the alcohol, And we may take from the Bible the wine, i. e., was a beverage in those very old and ancient times, and even the man whom the Christians believe in as the Perfection on earth and in heaven, whom to emulate the Christian's first and highest duty is. I say, even Jesus did not forbid the use of wine; not only he did not forbid in his last supper, wine is one of the most sacred features, so sacred that till up to the present time the largest branch of Christianity reserves the right of wine-blood for the priest alone.

As the case with all other things, it is with alcohol. The American national flower is the "golden rod," and therefore let us stick to the golden road. "Not too much, not too little, just the golden mean." Quinine is an excellent remedy, if used rationally in the right place. Quinine may kill, and if not kill, bring about deafness and blindness, if used irrationally. Calomel is a good medicine, but I am convinced that calomel often has helped the undertaker. Morphine, who of the doctors would wish to be without; and what harm has it not done in innumerable cases? Chloroform may bring about death; who of the

*Paper Read before the Southwestern Kentucky Medical Association, at Mayfield, Ky., Oct. 25, 1898.

doctors will renounce it? And what we say of these drugs, we may be safe to say of alcohol.

If everything on earth has its special purpose, why should we deny it with the alcohol?

It may be true that many lives were brought from life to darkness, from sanity to insanity by means of alcohol. But shall for we discard now by all means a liquid that has existed thousands of years, because there is some danger therein, too? Shall we renounce railroads, steamers, electric cars and electric lights because people were killed by wreckage and electric current?

Everything has two sides, lights and shadow. If the shadow, the danger, is far larger than the light, the advantages, we may discard the thing, not else.

Let us put the advantages and disadvantages of alcohol side on side.

What is alcohol chemically?

Whenever a plant juice which contains sugar is left exposed to the air, it gradually undergoes a change as to its sweet taste. By this change the sugar usually is broken up into carbonic acid and alcohol.

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This process is what we call alcoholic fermentation. This alcoholic or vinous fermentation is brought about by vegetable ferment, contained in the ordinary yeast. They are small round cells, arranged in chains; this microscopical vegetable cell is the "saccharomyces or mycoderma cerevisiae" and others related to this.

We call the fermented juice of the grapes, wine; of the apples, cider; of the infusion of malt, beer; of the product of saccharine fermentation of the different kinds of grain, that is the distilled products, whisky; that of rice, arrack; that of sugar cane, rum; the distilled products of wine we call brandy; that of barley, rye meal, and hops and rectified from juniper berries, is Holland gin. These alcoholic liquids are of different strengths, that is, contains different proportions of alcohol, and have vari ous peculiarities by which they are distinguished by their taste.

According to the amount of alcohol which is contained in them. beer is the weakest. Beer has only from 2 to 4 per cent. of alcohol, that is, ought to have. The next are ciders, with about 5 per cent.

Then there come the various wines, from about 7 to 20 per cent. The strongest are the so-called sweet wines, like port wine, madeira and sherry.

Champagne has about 10 per cent. or so.

The next following are brandies, whiskies, rum, arrack, from 25 to 70 per cent. alcohol.

All the alcoholic liquids have besides the so-called ethy alcohol, always more or less amyl alcohol or fusel oil. It is this fusel oil that gives the starch and potato spirit the unpleasant flavor. In whisky this fusel oil is not unpleasant, and in brandy it is rather pleasant. There are many authors who refer the chief danger of alcohol to these additions of higher constituted alcohols.

Like in the case of chloroform, we might say, the purer the alcoholic liquid the less danger there is. Quite particularly French physicians make it a point to declare that people who use pure liquids could stand it for a much longer time than people who enjoy the worse liquors, particularly absinthe or wormwood.

After analogy of other drugs we need not wonder about such a state of affairs.

Gentlemen, just when I made up my mind to write this. paper I got a book, an old book, the contents of which were first published from 1857 to 1858, a book by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, physician and poet--"The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" and I could not restrain myself to take some quotations from those pages.

"A person at table asked me whether I went in for rum as a steady drink.' His manner made the question highly of fensive, but I restrained myself, and answered thus: 'Rum I take to be the name which unwashed moralists apply alike to the product distilled from molasses and the noblest juices of the vineyard.' Burgundy, in all his sunset glow,' is rum. Champagne, the foaming wine of eastern France,' is rum. Hock, which our friend the poet speaks of as:

""The Rhine's breastmilk, gushing cold and bright,
Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light.'

is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism as an insult to the first miracle wrought by the Founder of our religion. I address myself to the company: I believe in temperance, nay, almost in abstinence, as a rule for healthy people; I trust that I practice both.

"But let me tell you, there are companies of men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol that, if I thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober.

"Among the gentlemen I have known, few, if any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were ruined before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt-sometimes a misfortune-as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it-but oftenest of all a punishment."

Holmes speaks then about empty heads without ideas in wholesome variety, with brains that have neglected, or have been neglected to be taught the lessons of self-government. He continues: "I trust the tariff of heaven has an 'ad valorem' scale for them-and all of us." "But body and mind often flag-perhaps they are ill-made to begin with, underfed with bread or ideas, overworked or abused in some way. There is only one thing which can rouse the machine; not will-that cannot reach it; nothing but a ruinous agent, which hurries the wheels awhile and soon eats the heart of the mechanism."

I think you will find true, that, before any vice can fasten on a man, body, mind or moral nature must be debilitated. The mosses and fungi gather on the sickly trees, not thriving ones; and the odious parasites which fasten on the human frame choose that which is already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian-humorist, declared that he had such a healthy skin it was impossible for any impurity to stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face which was of necessity always clean. I don't know how much fancy there was in this; but there is no fancy in saying that the lassitude of tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative natures in their period of collapse, and the vacuity of minds untrained to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the germination of the seeds of intemperance.

"Whenever the wandering demon of drunkenness finds a ship adrift no steady winds in its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its course-he steps on board, takes the helm and steers straight for the maelstrom." This is what one of our colleagues, a poet, has to say.

It is a mistake to impute all the fault to the alcohol, it would rather do so to man.

To be sure, I shall not say that alcohol is an absolute necessity for the life of man, but used in the right place and used discriminately, it will not, to say the least, do any harm.

Let me tell you something about Germany, and quite particularly about German students. These are regarded as the staunchest drinkers in the old Fatherland. But I must say, we have about thirty thousand students at the different universities in Germany, and you hardly will find any one who does not

drink beer, wine or Cognac and Kirsch and other alcoholic beverages, and I must, furthermore, confess there are many who indulge sometimes a little more than necessary during the years of their university lives, but there is not one out of the thousand who becomes a drunkard. Among the Jews there is still to-day the ceremony on the eve of Passover, the ceremony you know well enough from the Lord's supper in the gospel. It is the benediction on the bread and wine. According to the ceremony it is a duty to fill four times the cup and to drink each time more than the half of it. Another ceremony is the benediction on bread and wine every Friday evening, Saturday noon and Saturday night, when the day of rest comes to an end. Every religious Jew will keep this ceremony, and I believe that you will very seldom find a Jew or even a Jewess who does not drink wine, but I am safe to say that you will not often find Jews becoming drunkards.

It is the oldest story about the forbidden fruit. "Forbid man some thing to commit or to omit, and he will do the contrary."

In

In one district of France, in Normandie and Bretagne, all people, men, women and children, drink wine, if not grape wine, at least cider, and you never will find a drunken individual. Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, the people have the strongest wine of Europe; it is seldom to meet a drunkard. If you find a drunken man, he is not a native one.

On the continent of Europe you may meet drunken men, but very seldom a drunken woman, perhaps with the exception of Russia; but you find such a woman only among the lowest classes. This is not the case in Great Britain and America; here you will not so seldom find drunken women and ladies. I remember I saw, in America once in the theater, a play-I cannot remember its title-where a woman representing a "lady" drunken, drinking, and a decanter in her hand, appears. I as sure you, it was shocking. As already said, it is the same old story of the "forbidden fruit."

If you are allowed to drink "coram publico" the majority of men will try to remain not to be overwhelmed by alcohol, and quite surely every woman will try her best not to be drunk, but if you forbid drinking "coram publico" they will not know the restraint in the sacred stillnes sof their homes. Nobody can see their doing at home, and they are drunken, "clam publico." "Your fear of God shall not be greater than your fear of men." And is he not right and correct in this? In the beginning they drink at home, as the Germans say, "dem stillen suff ergeben"-"addicted to secret

An ancient teacher says:

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