The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1890-05-22

Obi then, when laboring hard for humanity
Never believe that you labor In vain;
Kindness will conquer the drunkard's insanity,
Speak to him gently and try him again.
Francis s. Smith. in N. Y. Weekly.
EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL.
Physical and Mental Injuries Produced
by the Use Of Strong Drink.
It will be clear to every reasoning
and unprejudiced mind that chemical
substance, which possesses the power Of
producing in the living so many varied
and important changes as those which
alcohol produces. can rot fail to induce
In the organs of the body physical modi-
dcations which are either good or nd.
That alcohol is incapable of imparting
any good is now pretty generally &C.
knowledged. Its elementary construc-
ton precludes the possibility of con-
sfdering it as substance of food which
tan build up or sustain any vital struct-
IRE Or organ, such as muscle or brain;
md when it is freed from saccharine
foods there is no evidence whatever for
assigning to it the doubtful virtue of
giving fat to the body. In small guam
titles it quickens, in large quantities it
leadens nervous action. This is its
'unsneuna bonuma, and its sumnsum NAHUM.
The good is infinitesimal-the evil
infinite. The physical injuries from
alcohol are incomparably large because
f their extent. They graduate from
the simple exaltation of action, pecu-
liar to the excitement of the first degree
OF its action, to the complete paralysis
pertaining to the lastdegree. Wherever
organic matter of the body is en-
folded in membrane. there will alco-
hol penetrate, and then will func-
tional disturbances, followed by organic
degeneration, be set up We know now
OF a definite and connected family of
alcoholic degenerative diseases. We
are acquainted with alcoholic phthisis,
or the consumption of drunkards; with
hepatic cirrhosis, or induraticn of the
drunkard's liver; with the dropsy, aris-
ing from the hepatic cirrhosis; with al
coholic dyspepsia; with alcoholic ep-
ilepsy; with alcoholic hypertrophy, or
enlargement of the heart; with alco-
holic asthenia, or feebleness of the
heart; with degeneration of the kidney,
and the accompanying train of kidney
diseases, classed vaguely under the
term Bright's disease. But the most
widespread devastations from alcohol
are those seated in the nervous system
and displayed in mental alteration.
The commoner known of these are the
acute affections, delirium tremens,
mania from drink, inebriety, or repeat
ed intoxication; to which must be added
the less understood yet serious condi-
tions, alcoholic epilepsy and alcoholic
paralysis. This last-named disease,
only recently clearly defined, is one of
the most widespread of the chronic dis
eases resulting from alcohol, one of the
most obscure and one of the most fatal.
An agent like alcohol, extensively
and recklessly used by mankind in all
parts of the world and capableof Undue
ing so many and serious diseases, must,
OF necessity, be the cause of tremen-
dous mortality, with the usual prece-
dence of many days of utter disable
ment and disease. The fact is SO. 1t
is difficult to calculate the precise NOR
tality from alcohol, because we have
never yet fully diagnosed all the evils
leading to disease and death which
spring from it. For example, up to this
time we have not added the mortality
due to alcoholic paralysis in the large
computations from which our results
have been drawn. Some years ago,
from the best data could obtain.
I estimated that in England and Wales
the annual mortality from alcohol was
fifty thousand per annum, an estimate
fairly confirmed by other observers, of
an important and independent charac-
ter: Admitting its correctness, this esti-
mate makes the mortality from alcohol
to be about one-tenth of the whole mo~-
,tality-a view which had been previous
~ expressed by the late Dr. Edwin
Lancaster, the coroner for Central Mid
dlesex-and which places alcohol, as
one OF the causes of mortality. at the
head of those causes. This estimate,
however, must have been under the
mark, since it excluded al o3ether that
fatality which we now know to arise from
alcoholic paralysis, and excluded, also,
too rigidlv, instances of direct poison
ing from alcohol and all accidents of a
fatal kind indirectly due to alcohol /
would not. however, run any risk Of be-
ing charged with over-statement, and
would be content still to place the NOR
tality from alcohol at tenth of the
whole mortality, in places where the
article is consumed in the same proper
ton as it is in England and Wales at
the present time; proportion fairly
representative of alcoholic populations
generally. =.
Connected with the two subjects of
the diseases from alcohol and the NOR
:tality from It, the question has often
been discussed as to the relative
amount of sickness presented by alb
staining as compared with non a bstain-
ing communities and as to the relative
value of life in the two communities.
1t has been difficult to get at precise
conclusions on these subjects from the
two circumstances, that in making COM
PARSONS the social relationships of the
different classes are largely different,
and the returns from the registers of
death from alcohol have been hitherto
imperfect in themselves and imperfect
in the interpretations that have been
put upon them. But, judging from the
reports of those life assurance comma
MES in which there are two classes OF
insured-one an abstaining. the other
Notwithstanding class-and, iudrinp
likewise from the returns of sickness
and mortality of two clubs, one alb
staining, the other Notwithstanding, ex-
listing in the same locality, holding the
same social status and made up of the
same numbers, it is absolute certain that
the rate of mortality and the number of
days OF sickness present data largely in
favor of abstaining communities.
In summary, as to the effects of alcohol
on the health and life of the human
species. on which fortunately those ef-
fects have alone been tried on a large
scale, it must be stated on physical
grounds, apart altogether from moral