The Lynden tribune. [volume] (Lynden, Wash.) 1908-current, 1914-09-10
The Saloon Is Ashamed
OF Its Best Gus
toners.
THE MODERATE DRINKER.
he 10 Menace Not Only to Himself,
but to Others.
toners.
BY L. D. MASON. M. o.

BY L. D. MASON, M. D.
A prevalent and popular fallacy is
that the moderate drinker may always
remain as such, that moderate drink
Ing is always under control and the
habit can be left off at any time and
always kept within the limitations of
safety and sobriety. This false doc
other argument brought forward to
sustain the habitual and moderate use
of alcoholic beverages.
The drink habit is accretive and pro-
gressive. Tolerance is easily estab-
lished. and larger quantities are re-
luired to meet the daily growing de-
mand. 1t is exceptional for the mod
crate drinker to remain as such. AS a
rule all immoderate, habitual drunk
ards were once moderate drinkers. Ex-
ception to this does not prove the rule,
and no amount of specious sophistry
can alter the natural sequence in this
particular. The accustomed dose IN
der normal conditions will not be suf-
ficient under abnormal conditions.
uc ltI VI temperate use
Of alcoholic beverages is not definite.
There is not any established or def
nitely ascertained quantity that we
can use daily or habitually within the
bounds Of safety and exclude any
possibility of mental or moral or phys
ical degeneration. This is especially
true of the reformed man or the man
ha~ f4,v nr dicnocnS
or injuries affecting the cerebro spinal
axis-that is. the brain or spinal cord
or chronic painful conditions in which
the alcohol in some form is used for
its anaesthetic or narcotic effect.
The constant. habitual use of alco-
holic beverages even in so called mod
Grafton is more dangerous than its
occasional excessive use. Personally.
moral considerations excepted, the oc-
casional excessive drinker Is safer
physically than the everyday habitual
moderate drinker. for the latter keeps
his blood up to a certain percentage
constantly alcoholzed, while the for
mer at least during the interval be-
tween his debauches, has chance OF
recovering a normal blood current.
In the great majority of cases Of
habitual drunkards the parents or
grandparents used alcohol in modera-
ton habitually or in excess. In
study of 600 cases that came under my
supervision. in which ] made study
of the family history. none escaped the
record Of antecedent degeneracy from
various forms of narcomania. nervous
disease. consumption and other condi-
lions of alcoholic degeneration, there
being evidence enough to demonstrate
the relative sequence between drink
ing parents and drunken posterity.
| believe that the starting point OF
the alcoholic degenerate can be traced
not infrequently to the so called mod
crate habitual use of alcohol In some
form by respectable. temperate, i'm
mediate progenitOr who was never
drunk and who prided himself on his
self restraint. and yet this paragon Of
virtue and responsibility was giving
to the world through his poisoned
blood talthough moderately alcoholized,
it is true,. posterity of physical and
mental weaklings and ignorantly and
unconseiously starting race OF neu-
rotics. idiots and lunatics and beget-
ting a long line of alcoholic degener-
ates. And how many families In this
land Of ours are free from the alco-
holic faint in the direct or collateral
branches extending even to one gener-
alton back?