The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1890-05-16
Effects

Effects of Alcohol
1t is one of the most distinctive effects of
alcohol that when the taste for it has once
been acquired it makes for itself a special
constitution which may most faithfully be
designated the alcoholic constitution. When
this constitution has once been formed it
renders everything else subordinate to it.
self, according 10 the degree of alcoholic
influence that has been established. Thus
the person really temperate in the use of
! alcohol holds by his temperate habit. as
firmly as he who has established in him.
These effects are purely physical, and they
can be induced in animals inferior to man,
by training, just as easily as in man him.
self. They are dependent OIL the affinity
which alcohol has for the matter of the
brain and The other nervous c~entres; in
which centres it forms a habit for itself,
from which it can only be removed by
~long-continued total abstinence.
Many persons go on for years under the
| simple action of the moderate effect of al
cohol; they are never affected beyond the
first stage of its action, and always assume
that they feel the benefit of it. Others
who have got so far are tempted to go a
| little further under some excitement, re-
creation, work, worry, or one of the many
incentives for stimulation, and so work
| themselves into the habit of the second
stage, which is less easy to restrain than
the first. Others slip habituslly into the
habit of the third degree, become regularly
Incorporate, and so fixed in intemperance
that they are all but irreclaimable. From
this last group spring those lowest in the
series of the habitual alcoholics, who suf-
fer from general paralysis. and who fifty
and literally represent the individual in
the fourth degre of acute alcoholic intox-
i%cation, dead to the world under the ex-
treme p%aralyzing influence of the spirit
they have imbibcd.
These four classes of mankind form the
four great populations of constitutionally
alcoholized humanity that exists ont of the
bonds and bounds of childhood. 1t is for.
tthptt via 80 Z nv hiot tiA vi tiiAss
life have been so far exempted from the
alcoholic spell, for by this circumstance a
full sixth of the term of each life is largely
saved from the injury and danger of alco-
hol. Yet even this more fortunate section
is not altogether free; for, unhappily. an
agent which, like alcohol, is capable of in
hicting so marked an impression on the
nervous centres is also capable of INJECTING
impressions which pass from parent to off,
spring and which implant, by inheritance,
the constitutional habit. The Inheritance
of disease thus acquired from alcohol is
not so strong as that of some otherd diseased
conditions from other causes, and it is not,
according to my observation, transmitted
further than the third generation; but it
must be admitted as a factor tending to
the production of alcoholic degeneraey and
to the increase of the great populations
sharing in one or other of the constitutional
stages of alcoholic existence, and in the
induced series of alterations from the
natural standard of health, which furnish
the large class of affections, bodily and
mental, now designated as the alcoholic
diseases of mankind.
INJURIES, PHYSICAL. AND MENTAL.
1t will be clear to every reasoning and
unprejudiced mind that a chemical sub
stance, which possesses the power of pro-
ducing in The living so many varied and i'm.
portant changes as those which alcohOl pro-
duces, cannot fail to induce in the organs
of the body physical notifications which
are either good or bad. That alcohol is
incapable of imparting any good is now
pretty generally acknowledged. Its ele-
mentary construction precludes the posi-
bility of considering it as 4 substance, or
food, which can build up or sustain any
vital structure or organ, such as muscle or
brain; and when it is freed from saccliarine
70 DDS there is no evidence whatever for
assigning to it the doubtful virtue of CIV
ing fat to tile body. In small quantities
it quickens, in large quantities it deadens
nervous action. This is its summum 6onum,
and it's ummum malum. The good is in
finitesimal-the evil infinite. The pbysi-
| cal injuries from alcohol are incomparably
large because of their extent. They grad
uate from the simple exaltation of action,
peculiar TO the excitement of The first de-
gree Of its action, to the complete paralysis
pertaining to the last degree. Wherever
organic matter of the body is embodied in
membrane, there will alcohol penetrate,
and then will functional disturbances, fol-
lowed by organic degeneration, be set up.
We know now of a definite and connected
family of alcoholic degcnerative diseases.
We are acquainted with alcoholic phtAisis,
or the consumption of drunkards; with
hepatic cirrA osis, or induration of the
drunkard's liver; with the dropsy, arising
from the hepaIic cirrhosis; with alcoholic
dyspepsia; with alcoholic epilepsy; with
alcoholic hypertrophy, or enlargement of
the heart; with alcoholic asthenia, or fee
bleness 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
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