The slavish appetite is developed gradually in most cases, and, in strong willed people, its confirmation may be a matter of years. People take to drink on account of trouble and sorrow, and sometimes for pain and disease, some claiming that it is prophylactic against certain diseases. I had a classmate who said his father told him he might take a little whiskey whenever he felt ill, and he had not experienced a well day since. The claim is constantly made that a moderate amount of alcohol consumed daily can be reckoned as food and that it is only excess that is injurious. Some recent French authorities have set one liter of wine per day as the maximum amount a healthy man can imbibe without injury.
All excess is injurious.
That the drunkard wastes his time is no small indictment against the alcohol habit. In this country if a drinker falls ill, as a rule, he stops his allowance, and if the disease proves a chronic one, he never goes back to it. A physician can direct his patient to abstain from drink with a fair prospect of being obeyed. Persons who give way to drink, and become inebriates, are in these days regarded by some as moral imbeciles who if they did not drink would take up some other vice just as bad or perhaps worse. Banish the saloon, however, and in my opinion the majority of them would become respectable citizens.