The Catholic bulletin., 1915-11-06
DOMAIN OF TEMPERANCE.
ALCOHOL AND HEALTH.

Il
pher of the late Cardinal Vaughan
tells US, the then Bishop of Stafford
(Dr. Vaughan), astonished platform
of prohibitionists, among whom was
Cardinal Manning, when he declared
that not only was he not himself a
teetotaler, but that he looked upon
alcohol, when not abused, as "a thing
which was good in itself" In other
words, he held that alcohol properly
used and applied, possessed a medi-
cinal or tonical value.
| In a Catholic Truth paper Father
Heating, S. J., one of the ablest mem
bers of that order living at the pres
ent day, gives his opinion on the sub
ject. There seems (says the Jesuit,
to be now an almost universal medi-
cal consensus that alcohol is, proper
| ly speaking, drug, not food, and
that while it is of certain value in
cases of disease, it does not build up
or restore tissue in the healthy body
In March, 1907, a great meeting of
medical men assembled in London, he
tells, at which strong condemnatory
views of the value of alcohol in health
were expressed. Then the well-knoWn
medical journal, the Lancet, published
a protest supported by sixteen we'll
known medical men of international
repute, in which it was stated that
"as an article of diet we hold that the
universal belief of civilized mankind
| that the moderate use of alcoholic
beverages is, for adults, usually bene-
ficial, is amply justified"
There followed on the part of the
| Medical Temperance Association, an
international manifesto, signed by ga
doctors, among the most eminent i'll
Europe and America, in which the fol-
lowing declaration was made:
| (a) Experiments have demonstrat-
ed that even small quantities of alco-
hol are injurious and that it is not
| food. (b) That it increases liability
to disease and shortens life. (c) That
all animal functions are best per-
formed without alcohol, any opinion
to the contrary being delusion. (d)
That alcohol Injuries the offspring and
leads to deterioration of the race,
more especially when it is taken by
mothers"
1t is safe to say, declares Father
Keating, that the prevalent medical
opinion of the day is adverse to the
idea that alcohol is of value to the
health. The Jesuit quotes the Ency-
clopedia Britannica as holding that
the desirable effects produced by al
cohol Oh the stomach are worth oh.
tanning only in cases of acute dis
eases. In chronic disease and in
health, the use of alcohol as an aid to
digestion is without the support of
clinical or laboratory experience, the
beneficial action being at least
neutralized by undesirable effects pro-
duced elsewhere.
The drug eXerts a noteworthy aC-
tion upon the body's temperature. AS
it dilates the blood vessels of the skin,
it increases the subjective sensation
of warmth. The actual consequence.
however, is that more heat than be-
\ fore is necessarily lost from the sur
face OF the body. The largest amount
of alcohol that can be burnt up with
in the healthy body in twenty-four
hours is 11a ounces, but it must be
consumed in great dilution and di-
yided into small doses and taken
every four hours.
And what says the Catholic Ency-
clopedia on the subject? In the arti-
Gle on Alcoholism, it declares:
Modern knowledge justifies the be-
lief that, in health, alcohol is never
a food in any sense, be the quantity
large or small, but always a poison,
biologically or physiologically speak
ing. In disease, it is neither a food
nor poison, but may be suitable
or helpful drug. 1t should be rightly
called what it rightly is, a drug and
not drink-a narcotic and not
tonic"
These, says the Jesuit, are cautious
and conservative utterances compared
to some statements from physicians
of great name-such as Oliver Lodge
and Osler, who both declare alcohol
to be injurious at all times and even
in the smallest doses-but the prac-
tical application of the views SO cx-
pressed is to be witnessed in hospital
practice, in which a marked and con
tinuously decreasing expenditure for
alcohol is to be noted, the view of
most hospital doctors being that it is
in the same class as drugs. The fact
becomes more patent, as the world
becomes more highly educated, that
the alcoholic subject, or alcohol-user,
is being relegated to the back-seats
in the markets of competition. Men
are beginning to realize that it is q
poison and that the whisky-drinker,
or tippler, is in the same category as
the man who forces himself to work
by dosing himself with absinthe or
cocaine.
/ Father Heating quotes some pas
sages from a historian of the 18th
century, which show to what extent
drunkenness corresponded with the
opium-den vices of China. In Lon
don, in 1740, publicans were accus-
toned to hang outside their houses a
painted board on which it was stated
that:
customers will be made drunk for
the sum of one penny and dead drunk
for the sum of twopence and straw
will be provided for nothing ON which
they may sleep it off"
The Jesuit also quotes Sydney
Smith, a Canon of st. PauIs, London,
as having declared after the passing