Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1909-06-04
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ALCOHOL AND HUMAN SYSTEM
ing en- the Brain, Nerves, Heart,
and Other Organs of System.

ing en- the Brain, Nerves, Heart,
and Other Organs of System.
The widely varied injuries on the
human system that are inflicted on
thehuman body are shown in a series
of articles by Dr. Henry Smith Will
liams, contributed to McClure's Mag
azine. In the first, entitled Alcohol
and the Individual" DR.. Williams
shows that the tissues of the brain,
the nerves, the heart and blood-ves-
sells, the stomach and intestinal tract,
the Emphatic system, the kidneys,
and the liver, may each and all be-
come diseased by the habitual drink
ing of even small quantities of alco-
hol. He notes also that these conse-
CuenCes are not confined to the drink
er, but are passed on to his descend
ants of successive generations.
All this, DR.. Williams tells u.s. may
be compared to the eroding effect of
flowing stream, which has its great
est action on the part of its banks
that is least resistant So alcohol, cir
culating in the blood, tends to attack
whatever organ or tissue may be
weakest and most susceptible. DR..
Williams agrees with those who tend
to class alcohol as poison, and dis
cards 1.-The pernicious theory" that it
gives any persistent increase of mus
cular power He thinks that alcohol
should be classed with the more or
less dangerous stimulants and mar
cotics, such as hasheesh, tobacco, ETC.,
rather than with truly sustaining food
stuffs"
In its action on the brain, he goes
on to say, alcohol is an inhibitor and
disturber of mental activity, not a pro-
moter of it. This he regards as def
nitely proven by the experiments of
the chief German Investigators. Its
effect is cumulative, so that the drink
er of a single bottle of wine daily lis
in reality never actually sober Wine
causes a loss of at ieaSt ten per cent.
in working efficiency. It is not only
itself a poison, but aids the action of
other poisons, such as those of conta-
gion.
In his second aII,la, DR.. Smith
takes up the relations of alcohol and
the community. Alcohol, as noted
above, attacks the weakest point, the
brain-cells which are the most deli
cate and unstable Of all organic It's
sues. the brain-the organ Of mind
is the organ whose tissues are most
yu-itn1,
when the dissecting knife reveals,
post norton, a hob-nail liver or an al
coholic kidney, stomach, or heart it
will almost invariably reveal also a
shrunken and 'watery' alcoholic brain.
And in numberless cases in which all
the other organs have seemed to pre-
sent a granite-like resistance to the
poison, the brain alone gives evidence
of having yielded to the s'rain."
Alienists both here and in Europe,
he states, agree that alcohol is most
potent cause of insanity Stati~tics
show also that it is a chic cause Of
crime and of pauperism. These disas
trous effects on the community he
sums up thus:
AT least one-third of all the Tecog
nized pauperism in the mCGt highly
civilized communities of Chris erdom
results from bodily ard p'e~t7l icef-
fciency due TO alcoholic indulgence
A similar correspondence Of testimony
shows. as we have seen, that the same
cause is responsible for the mental
overthrow CT fully one fourth of all
the unfortunatcs who are sent to asy
lums for the insane; for the r. sfor-
tunes of two-ffths Of neglected or
abandoned children; and for the NOR
al delinquencies of at least half Of the
convicts in our prisons, and of not
less than four-ffths of the inmates of
our iails and warehouses. We have
previously seen how alcohol adds to
the death-roll through alliance with
all manner of physical maladies.
did space permit, it might be
shown how largely the same common
enemy is responsible for suicides and
sudden deaths by accident in many
lands. for the universal prevalence Of
venereal diseases with all that they
Indy, anu lOI d Icll pAOpOA NAO41 "
such cases of marital infelicity as find
record in the divorce courts. But
these. after all, are only minor details
within the larger scheme of human
suffering already outlined. The insane,
the criminals of various types, and
the recipients of charity make up the
great mass of abnormal members Of
the body-politic whose unf1tness re-
ceiyes official recognition. Let it be
particularly borne in mind that the
conclusions just presented as to the
casual relation of alcohol to the pro-
{ duction of each of these abnormal ele-
ments of society are as far removed
as possible from mere sentimental es-
Inmates or pessimistic guesses. They
are inductions based on careful sur
veys of evidence.
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