Wyandot County Republican. [volume] (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1869-1903, 1872-05-02
Miscellany.
!, A CHAPTER ON ALCOHOL.

TIOu pdupllCt recently issued, en-
titled " impeachment and Conviction OF
King Alcohol under the New Temperance
Law OF Illinois," by G. Fl. Fowler, d D.,
we make the following extracts:
PURE ALCOHOL.
by the general term ''Alcoho, we
mean Co include the entire family of spir.
ituous liquors-everyth from beer to
brandy, that can induce intoxication,
Woods United States Dispensatory says:
Alcohol is the Intoxicating ingredient
in all spirituous liquors, including every
liquid that has undergone fermentation
ANY sweet fluid, that, mixed with yeast
or leaven works or sours while kept cool,
under 20 2 of heat, ferments and turns to
spirituous liquor; if above 75o and un-
der 80 . to vinegar. Alcohol exists no
where IN nature till it is produced by the
fermentation of some sweet substance. 1t
Is not the exclusive product of the orchard
or vineyard; but is producible from every
thing that contains the substance ef sugar.
Potatoes, grain, any thing that contains
sugar may be efermented-may be manu-
factured into Alcohol" All thought of
remedy, then, must reach deeper than our
orchards and vineyards.
Alcohol, then, is produced by fermenta-
tlon,zs. e., by rotting the grains. 1t is
the product of death-nothing more or
less. Living nature does not contain it.
Dissolving, decaying nature produces it.
Every time you drink any spirituous
liquor you drink the extract of decaying
vegetables. 1t differs from carrion only in
the. absence of the odor. Add nitrogen
to your fermenting mass, and you have
all the horrible presence of carrion.
Baron Won Liebig, one of the ablest
chemists the world ever produced, says:
" Fermentation is nothing else but the
putrefaction of substance containing
no nitrogen There is no dispute on
this point. | urge it that you may under
stand what you are drinking when you
drink. even the purest spirits. You would
be angered at your landlady if she should
place before you putrid meat, or rancid
butter, or decaying potatoes. But why :?
You. might as nationally eat decaying food
as drink decaying fluids.
Another fact, in perfect keeping with
the nature of this death principle, is, that
alcohol Is not food. 1t supplies no nour-
ishment 1t goes into the system com
pound too stout and too malignant to be
dissolved. Arrived at the stomach it
sends forth its fiery threats, crisping and
soaring that sensitive organ. Then it
rides, like Jehu, along the highways of
nature. Its fiery chariot wheels burn
deep ruts In their passage. 1t is foe
feared and combatted by every organ of
life. No sooner is It's presence announced
than all the forces of life and health rally
and swarm about the intruder till they
have expelled it from the system-not
mastering it and appropriating it, but
casting it out through the pores of the
skin, through the lungs and breath, out
of every nearest door-way-any way to
get it out. Then there is relapse in ex-
haustion. The blood has not been nour-
ished but adulterated. The organs and
tissues have not been built up, but worn
out and broken down. The heat of the
body has not been sustained or increased,
but wasted and cooled. No fuel has been
added4to the fire. The nerves have been
scorched by the passage over them of the
the furnace Of the body. s'Alcohol burns
the nerves, but casts water upon the vital
fire"
More than all this, no power for work
has been generated. but the power of the
system has been exhausted in expelling a
mortal enemy. Take the form in which
liquor is most nutricious, in which it is
mixed with most nourishing substances
Bavarian beer. Prof Liebig-than whom
there can be no better authority-who
was no foe to beer, says: eve can prove
with mathematical certainty that as much
flour or meal as can lie on the point of a
table-knive is more nutricious than nine
quarts of the best Bavarian beer-that a
man who is able. to consume daily that
amount ct beer, obtains from it, in a
whole year, in the most favorable case,
exactly the amount of nutritive constitu-
ents which are contained in five-Dound
loaf of bread or in three pounds of flesh y
That is. you must drink twenty three large
barrels of the best beer to get as much food
as is in three-pound steak, or four bar
rels a day to secure the average amount
of daily neurishment. These are the
facts that compel the most leared of the
medical profession, and the most accurate
and able chemists to affirm that Alcohol
is not and cannot be food.
Some men will say, Suppose it does
not furnish actual food, it assists diges-
ton" Sosyou Think but you mistake
Your food, to be digested, must be picked
to pieces-the elements separated; but
Alcohol prevents this very process. 1t
arrests decomp osition. Go into any Mu-
scum and you will find the snakes, toads,
and everything else which they wish to
experiments have been made by mixing
the gastric juice-which does the work OF
digestion-with different kinds of liquors,
and it is found that digestion is retarded
just in proportion to the amount of AL
cohol present. A miner in England ate
a. hearty dinner and made himself drunk.
After twenty-four hours he was accident
ally killed. Dissection discovered the
fact that digestion had not commenced
Experiments on dogs have shown the
same results.
DR.. Figg, of Scotland, had two dogs
the same size. He gave to each of them.
at the same time, four ounces of cold
roast mutton. Then to one he gave one
and half ounces of spirits. Three
hours after, he killed both dogs, and in
the stomach of the one to which he gave
the spirits he found the meat preserved
while in the other the meat was gone
Mark it's effects. 1t burns the nerves
imf1ames the blood vessels, scorehes anC
blackens the stomach, congests the brain
fills the whole body with ulcers and putri
flying sores, benumbs the senses, deadenl
the hearing, lights it's beacon fire on the
end of the nose like watch-tower ovel
breakers, bloats the cheeks, stiffens the
joints, and hangs the whole body with
signs OF ruin. Look upon that pOol
creature staggering, ragged, bloated, blear
eyed, his face contorted, his mouth fab
by, open, driveling, his cheeks blistered
andsswollen! Do you call him man
Nature disowns him. She hangs his body
all over with the evidences of his debauch
cry. She covers him with the labels anG
advertisement sof sin. She cries through hi
every pore and every ulcer, '"This is no
my work. This is what alcohol can do
So much for the nature of this grea
assassin. Yet his friends make show O.
pretexts to excuse his existence, and max,
afooting in the Enlightened Judgment fo
the qualification of the deadly appetite.
One pretext is, that 1t gioes great strenot
and. .ertzatrance for the time So does in
sanity. But are you ready to paw tn
COST Your hilarity may come up tn
hour you are over your cups, but deiee
ton, moroseness, sadness, gloom, head
ache, stretchiness, pulling hair, durango
stomach, come with the morning If yo
would endure you must come to the tris