Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1911-08-04
HOARY TYRANT KING ALCOHOL
Liquor DisIodses Mans Judgment and
Leaves Him Unreasoning and
DemoraIIzed Being.

which human frailty ever swore alle-
glance, there is none whose rulership
is so physically, morally and mentally
enslaving and menacing to manhood
and self-respect as that of the old,
hoary, tottering tyrant, King Alcohol.
While an impaired and breaking-down
body may still leave the mind in Dos
session of powers to engender human
1Nng and intellectual efforts-as wit
ness a blind John Milton and Michael
angelo, a hunchbacked Alexander
Pope, and a dyspeptic Thomas Car.
lyle-the decay of the mind wrecks
the entire man, both mind and body,
writes DR.. Axel E. Gibson in an ex-
change Alcohol by acting directly
on the mind, dislodges the individual
from his moral center of gravity, I'M.
balances his judgment and leaves him
sooner or later as an unreasoning, de-
moralized and devitalized being.
Sentiment and moral suasion are
not sufficient to stir up the unfortu-
narz victims of this vice to a full re.
anxftion Of the seriousness Of their
situation Facts must be presented
NAKED, tangible, irrefutable facts. We
must approach the enemy in his own
stronghold and assail him with his
own weapons.
We are often met by the argument
that alcohol as drink generates
warmth and strength, and above all
serves as valuable stimulant. Moth
Ing, however, is more erroneous. The
sensation of bodily heat, to which
drink OF whisky on cold day is ac-
credited to give rise, is based on the
quality found in alcohol to open a way
for the warm blood stream to the sur
face tissues Of the body. The moment
the cutaneous vessels become filled
with blood wave of warmth is felt
to pass over the body-only, however,
to disappear few moments later I'M
less a new drink is INDUCED in.
Old, wise Mother Nature, always
provisional, and far-seeing, has given
to the vital processes of the body
perfect system of economy. Under
the influence of cold the skin is made
to contract it's vessels so as to pre-
vent the normal and indispensable
heat of the body from passing out OF
the system the moment the blood
stream sweeps through the cuticle
and becomes exposed to the cold, abb
sorbent, surface tissue. The sensitive
and more highly organized interior
viscera, such as the heart, intestines,
lungs, brains, spinal cord, etc., are
thus kept warm at the expense Of the
coarser and less readily deranged
structures Of the skin. Now, in place
Of assisting nature In this ingenious
scheme which, for the prolonged
maintenance of life is absolutely nee
essary, the consumer of alcohol
thwarts her efforts and wastes his
bodily resources in unreasoning wan
tonness. He may to some extent be
compared with person who after
having heated up his apartment to
point of normal temperature, throws
his doors and windows wide open to
the whitening cold of winters blast.
Indulgence in alcohol as stimulant
against cold opens the capillaries of
the skin and sends out into mid-air
the reserve fund of warmth which is
intended to surround and protect from
cold the interior high-strung vital or
gans. Hence the sensation of inter-
nal cold which always follows as soon
as the effect of the drink Is passed
off, sensation which often leads to
cyanosis and alcoholic poisoning. 1t
is on the basis of this fact that in po-
lar expeditions all indulgence in liquor
is strictly forbidden.
Probably one reason for the PERM
cious action of alcohol is that it Is
upon the might side" of nature. Fer
mentation rudely interrupts the nor
NAL life cycle of the grain or seed
and sets up instead destructive de-
composition. This vibration intro
duced into the living organism cannot
but induce similar vibrations, there
fore It's effect is always injurious in
every respect Unprejudiced tests
have shown that those who partake of
1t are less capable of both physical en-
durance and mental exertion.
The progressive drunkard soon be-
gins to exhibit the old characteristic
marks Of fiabbiness and looseness of
excessive tissue. The cause of this
phenomenon lies in physiological
process equally simple and impress
sive. AS is well known, the blood,
among other important things, con-
tains two kinds of blood corpuscles-
the red and the white. While the func-
tons of the red are to exchange oxy-
gen derived from the lungs, for car
bon dioxide, derived from the COM
bustion going on in the bodily tissues,
the functions of the white blood cor.
puscles consist in removing and caus-
ing to be eliminated from the system
all broken-down and effete tissue Bac-
terial invasion, liberated tissue, in
fammatory elements, are all cleared
out promptly and diligently by this
vitality so important blood corpuscle.
Now If on the microscopic slide we
bring drop of alcohol in touch with
a white blood corpuscle outside the
body does it almost instantaneously
succumbs to the destructive influence
of the alcohol A numbness steals
over the blood corpuscle, which at
once ceases to exhibit its normal ac-
tivity and soon dies.
The effect which alcohol has on a
white corpuscle outside the body in
no way differs from it's effect on TIE
corpuscles inside the body.