The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-07-12
DOMAIN OF TEMPERANCE.
ALcoHoL AND LIE INDIVIDUAL


The opposition made to alcoholism,
one of the most important social dis
eases among Northern civilized ma
tions, says DR.. O'Malley, is as a rule
misdirected: it wastes labor in passing
Intellectual laws, in trying to make
man moral by civil legislation alone; it
sends the noralist to the patient at a
time when only the physician can do
any good; it aims solely at sobriety,
when it should consider the four car
dinal and inseparable virtues of which
sobriety is a minor part.
The chronic alcoholic is not neces-
sarily drunkard. Any one can be-
come a chronic alcoholic il ne takes
daily from one and half to three
and a half ounces of alcohol; that is,
about half a tumblerful of whisky or a
pint of mediumly strong wine. A pint
of claret taken regularly at dinner
will cause all the effects of chronic
alcoholism in the ordinary man. Three
drinks of whiskey a day, even at long
intervals, will in most men bring on
the main effects of chronic alcoholism.
The clandestine tippler is often more
injurious to society than the open
drunkard, because the tippler may be
man in a responsible position, which
the patent inebriate could not hold.
Not Stimulant, But a Depressant.
Alcohol is enormously called a slim
ulant: it is depressant in muscular,
mental and volitional work. Small
doses of alcohol slightly increase mus
cular energy for from twelve to forty
minutes, but this increase is invariably
followed by depression below the
normal standard. Large quantities of
alcohol depress at once The same is
true for intellectual work. A pint of
wine daily by the thirteenth day will
depress the output in intellectual work
by twenty-seven per cent. if the work
is somewhat complicated. In mechani-
cal work, like typesetting, an ounce
of alcohol daily reduces the output of
work by fourteen per cent, and the
result is cumulative. Alcohol does not
cause heat; it does not warm one on a
cold day. A hot alcoholic drink warns
by the hot water in it. Arctic eXplor-
ers never use alcohol, as it depresses
them. In medicine distilled alcoholic
liquor is used as a depressant in GER
tain stages of low fevers to lower ten
sion-it has no other therapeutic use.
Not Hereditary in the Popular Sense.
A tendency to alcoholism is not
hereditary, in the popular notion of the
term. No one must become an alco-
holic because his ancestry was alco-
holic, but persons with such antece-
dents more readily fall when exposed
to temptation than do those of sound
parentage. Dipsomania, tendency to
alcoholism which is irresistible, is a
form of insanity, and it is very rare
disease. Popular speech is likely to
call any heavy drinker dipsomaniae,
especially when an accumulation of al
cohOlic poison from continued tipping
causes an outbreak into a Spree Be-
yond the dipsomaniac every drunkard
is what he is solely because he chose
to be so. When he tells us he cannot
help his tendency he is often very near
the truth, but he is accountable for
getting himself into a condition in
which he cannot resist his appetite
Most of the immortality of drunkenness
is in this that the drunkard has DELHI
erately destroyed his free will, and he
gets entirely too much sympathy; he
is not "a fine fellow except for his
weakness" he is commonplace, de-
liberate criminal. Drunkenness is pri-
marily moral condition, and only
secondarily physical disease; there
is no heredity in morals. In averages
of fifty families there are eight times
more male than female drunkards, and
if necessary heredity governed these
cases the ratio should be equal.