The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1874-03-12
The DeluSiOns Of Drink.

/ is not wise The deluSiOnS of drink are a:
| old rs drink itself, and are as prevalent
now as IN SOlOmon'S time. There are mel
who honestly believe that alcoholic drink
is good for them; yet there is not one o
| them who would touch it except as a pre-.
scribed medicine if it were not for its pleas
amt taste. The deluSiOn touching its
| healthfulness grows out of the desire &c
justify an appetite which may either bt
natural or acquired. If man likes whiS-
Ky or wine, he likes to think that it is
good for him, and he will take some
pains to prove that it is so, both TO HIM
self and others.
Now, alcohol is a pure stimulant. There
is not so much nutriment in it as there is
in chip. 1t never added anything TO the
permanent forces of life, and never can
add anything. Its momentary intensitica-
ton of force is a permanent abstraction OF
force from the drinkers capital stock.
All artificial excitants bring exhaustion.
The physicians know this, and the SIM
pleSt mans reason is quite capable OF
cOmprehending it. If any man suppOSes
that daily drink, even in small quantities,
is conducive to his health, he is deluded.
If he possess a sluggish temperament, he
may be able to carry his burden without
much apparent harm, but burden it is,
and burden it always will be.
After man has continued moderate
drinking long enough, then comes a
change-a demand for more drink. The
old quantity does not suffice. The powers
which have been insensibly undermined,
clamOr, under the pressure of business,
for increased stimulation. It is applied,
and the machine starts off grandly; the
man feels strong, his form grows pOrtly,
and he works under constant pressure.
Now he is in condition of great danger,
but the delusiOn is upon him that he is in
no danger at all. At last, however. drink
begins to take the place of food. His ap-
petite grows feeble and fitful. He lives on
his drink, and, of course, there is but one
end to this-viZ. death! 1t may come
suddenly, through the collapse of all his
powers, or through paralysis, or it may
come slowly through atrOphy and emacia-
ton. His friends see that he is killing
himself, but he cannot see it at all. He
walks in delusiOn from his early man
hood to his death.
A few weeks ago one of our city physi-
clans publicly read paper on the drink
ing habits of women. 1t was thoughtful
paper, based on a competent knowledge
of facts. 1t ought to have been of great
use to those women of the city who are
exposed to the dangers it portrayed, and
especially to those who have acquired the
habits it condemned. Soon afterward
there appeared in the columns of daily
paper protest from a writer who ought
to be a good deal more intelligent than he
is, against the doctors conclusions. The
health and physique of the beer-dIinking
EnglishwOman were placed over against
the health and physique of the water
drinking American women, to the disad-
vantage of the latter. The man is deluded.
1t is not a year since Sir Henry Thomp-
son. one of the most eminent medical men
in England-a man nOtOriOusly beyond
the reach of any purely Christian cOnsid-
ePations-declared against the beer-drink-
ing of England on strictly sanitary grounds.
Our litterateur declares that the English
woman can outwalk her American sister
That depends entirely upon the period OF
life when the task is undertaken. The
typical Englishwoman who has stood by
the beer diet until she is more than forty
years old, is too fat to walk anywhere cas-
ilv out of doors, or gracefully within.
During our late civil war this matter OF
drinking for health's sake was thoroughly
tried. A stock Cf experience and Observa-
ton was acquired that ought to have last
ed for a century. Again and again, thous-
ands and thousands of times, was it proved
that the man who drank nothing was the
better man. He endured more, he fought
better, he came out of the war healthier
than the man who drank. Nothing is
more easily demonstrable than that the
liquor used by the two armies, among Off
GERS and men alike, was an unmitigated
curse to them. 1t disturbed the brains
and vitiated the councils of the officers,
and debilitated and demoraliZed the men.
Yet all the time the delusiOn among Off
GERS and men was, that there were both
comfort and help in whisky.
The delusiOns of drink are numberless.
but there is one of them which stands i'll
the way of reform so decidedly that it calls
for decided treatment. We allude to the
notion that tits a nice thing to drink nice
liquors or wines at ones home, to offer
them to ones friends, and to make them
minister to good fellowship at every social
gathering, while it is very different thing
to drink bad liquor, in bad places, and in
large quantities. A man full of good wine
feels that he has a right to look with con-
tempt upon the Irishman who is full of
bad whisky. 1t is not a long time since
the election of professor in a British uni
versity was opposed solely on the ground
that he neither drank wine nor offered it
to his friends; and when, by a small ma
iOrity, his election was effected, the other
professors decided not to recognize him
socially. There are thus two men whom
these sticklers for wine despise-viZ. the
man who gets drunk on bad liquor, and
the man who drinks no liquor at all. In
deed, they regard the latter with hatred
or contempt which they do not feel for the
poor drunkard. The absolute animosity
with which many men in society regard
one who is constantly opposed to wine
drinking, could only spring from a delu-
sion i'm regard to the real nature of their
own habits. The sensitiveness of these
people on this subject, however, shows that
they suspect the delusiOn Of which they
are the victims. They claim to be on the
side of temperance. They depreciate
drunkenness, and really don't see what
is TO be done about it. They wish that
men would be more rational in their enjoy
ment of the good things of this world, etc,
ETC.; but their eyes seem blind to the fact
that they stand i'm the way of all reform.
The horrible drunkenness of the larger
cities of Great Britain, with which no hell
that America holds can compare for mo-
ment. can never be reformed until the
drinking habits of the English clergy and
the English gentry are reformed. With
eleven-twelfths of the British clergy wine
drinkers, and water-drinkers tabOOed in
society, and social drinking the fashion in
all the high life of the realm, the workman
will stand by his gin, brutality will reign
in its own chosen centers undisturbed, and
those centers will increasingly become
what, to frightful extent, they really are
fostering sores upon the body social, and
stenches in the nostrils Of the world.
The habits. neither of Great Britain nor
America. will be improved until men of in
fiuence in every walk of life are willing to
dispense with their drinking customs.
Hundreds of thousands OF English-speak-
ing men 90 to a drunkard's grave every
year. There is nothing in sanitary con-
sideratiOns as they relate to the moderate
drinker, and surely nothing in the pleas
ures of the moderate drinker, to mitigate
this curse. 1t is all delusion. The wa
ter-drinker is the healthy man, and the
happy man. Spirits, wine, beer, alcoholic
beverages of all sorts are burden and a
bane, and there is no place where good
man can stand unshadowed by fatal delu-
sion. except upon the safe ground of total
abstinence. Until that ground is taken,
and held, by good men everywhere, there