Chapter II: The Coming Man Will Drink Wine (1)

Mr. Parton treats alcohol much more respectfully than he treats tobacco. Though equally hostile to it, he apparently considers it a more formidable enemy. Instead of taking for granted from the outset that which it is his business to prove, he now condescends to employ something which to the unpractised eye may look like scientific argument. He has taken pains to collect such evidence as may be made to support his view of the case. And he frequently endeavours to assume an attitude of apparent impartiality by alluding to himself as a drinker of "these seductive liquids,"--although, in point of fact, his whole essay is conceived in the narrowest spirit of radical teetotalism. As for tobacco, it does not seem to occur to him that any one can be found, so obstinate or so deluded as seriously to maintain that there is any good in it; and he therefore writes upon that subject with all the exaggeration of unterrified confidence. But in dealing with alcohol, his violence of statement is evidently due to an uneasy consciousness that there is a vast body of current opinion and of scientific doctrine which may be arrayed in the lists against him. He brushes away, with a contemptuous sneer, (p. 56) the opinions of the medical profession; but he is, nevertheless, unable wholly to ignore them. Propositions of the sort which he formerly alluded to as if no one could think of doubting them, he now thinks it necessary to state at length. The poisonous nature of tobacco could be taken for granted in a subordinate clause; but the poisonous nature of alcohol needs to be asserted in an independent sentence. "Pure alcohol, though a product of highly nutritive substances, is a mere poison,--an absolute poison,--the mortal foe of life in every one of its forms, animal and vegetable." (p. 64.)

This is the way in which the advocates of total abstinence like to begin. A good round assertion about "poison" is calculated to demoralize the inexperienced reader, and to scare him into half giving up the case at once. But it is not all barking dogs that bite. Morphia is a deadly poison; but opium, which contains it, is not "the mortal foe of life in all its forms,"--it is sometimes the only thing which will keep soul and body together.[1] Theine is no doubt a deadly poison, but we manage to drink it with tolerable safety in our tea and coffee. Lactucin is probably a poison, yet people may eat a lettuce-salad and live. Chlorine is eminently a poison, yet we are all the time taking it into our systems, combined with sodium, in the shape of table-salt. Therefore over the verbal question whether a teaspoonful of pure alcohol is a poison, we do not care to wrangle. People do not drink pure alcohol, as a general thing. And as for the beverages into the composition of which alcohol enters, the reader will have no difficulty in understanding that they are poisons in just the same sense in which common salt and oxygen are poisons; _i.e._, if you take enough of them, they will kill you. This point was sufficiently cleared up in our first chapter.

[1] Opium, as used in moderation by Orientals, has not been
proved to exercise any deleterious effects. Very likely it
is a healthful stimulant; but it does not appear to agree
with the constitutions of the Western races. See
Pharmaceutical Journal, vol. xi. p. 364. Probably tea,
tobacco and alcohol are the only stimulants adapted alike to
all races, and to nearly all kinds of people.

Mr. Parton's hostility to this "mortal foe of life in all its forms" has taken shape in six definite propositions. Concerning alcoholic liquor of any kind and in any quantity, he asserts, and attempts to prove, that it does not nourish, that it does not aid digestion, that it does not warm, that it does not strengthen, that it undergoes no chemical change in the system, and that it always injuriously affects the brain. Beginning with the last of these propositions, let us first see what Mr. Parton has to say for it.

"If I, at this ten A.M., full of interest in this subject, and eager to get my view of it upon paper, were to drink a glass of the best port, Madeira, or sherry, or even a glass of lager-bier, I should lose the power to continue in three minutes; or, if I persisted in going on, I should be pretty sure to utter paradox and spurts of extravagance, which would not bear the cold review of to-morrow morning. Any one can try this experiment. Take two glasses of wine, and then immediately apply yourself to the hardest task your mind ever has to perform, and you will find you cannot do it. Let any student, just before he sits down to his mathematics, drink a pint of the purest beer, and he will be painfully conscious of loss of power." Did it ever dimly occur to Mr. Parton that all men may not be constructed on exactly the same plan with himself?

We wonder how many drops of "seductive fluid," unwisely taken at the wrong time of day, are to be held responsible for the following "spurt" of extravagance: "The time, I hope, is at hand, when an audience in a theatre, who catch a manager cheating them out of their fair allowance of fresh air, will not sit and gasp, and inhale destruction till eleven P.M., and then rush wildly to the street for relief. They will stop the play; they will tear up the benches, if necessary; they will throw things on the stage; they will knock a hole in the wall; they will _have_ the means of breathing, or perish in the struggle." Is this the way in which "well-groomed" people are expected to behave? Fancy an audience following this precious bit of advice. When Mlle. Janauschek, for instance, is finishing the third act of "Medea" or the second act of "Deborah," amid the tragic solemnity of the scene, fancy the audience, because of bad air in the theatre, getting up and flinging their canes and opera-glasses on the stage, in the heroic struggle for oxygen or death! Fancy four or five hundred grown-up, educated people behaving in this way! If these are to be the manners of the Coming Man, we trust it will be long before he comes.

Such is one of the "spurts of extravagance" which Mr. Parton apparently thinks _will_ "bear the cold review of to-morrow morning." Having survived this, we may philosophically resign ourselves to the infliction of another, more nearly akin to our subject. "How we all wondered that England should _think_ so erroneously, and adhere to its errors so obstinately, during our late war! Mr. Gladstone has in part explained the mystery. The adults of England, he said, in his famous wine-speech, drink, on an average, three hundred quarts of beer each per annum!" Another choice bit of radical philosophy: if your neighbour happens not to agree with your most cherished opinions, he must be idiotic, immoral, or _drugged_! The English failed to sympathize with us, because they are such beer-drinkers! What a rare faculty of disentangling causal relations! We believe that the working people, who drink the most beer, were just those who, as a class, were most ready to sympathize with us in the time of need. But Mr. Parton has "grounds" for his opinion. "It is physically impossible for a human brain, muddled every day with a quart of beer, to correctly hold correct opinions, or appropriate pure knowledge." "The receptive, the curious, the candid, the trustworthy brains,--those that do not take things for granted, and yet are ever open to conviction,--such heads are to be found on the shoulders of men who drink little or none of these seductive fluids." Mr. Parton has doubtless forgotten that the head of "the nearest approach to the complete human being that has yet appeared," the head of the "highly-groomed" Goethe--rested upon the shoulders of a man who drank his two or three bottles of wine daily.[2] But we are now rapidly getting into the æthereal region of certainties. "Taking together all that science and observation teach and indicate, we have one certainty: that, to a person in good health and of good life, alcoholic liquors are not necessary, but are always in some degree hurtful." So it is not an open question, after all! Certainty has been arrived at,--by Mr. Parton, at least. And it is so difficult to suppose that any sane mind, after due investigation, can come to a different opinion, that all persons who mean to keep on using alcohol are advised in pathetic language never to look into the facts:

"If ignorance is bliss, 't is folly to be wise."

[2] Lewes, _Life of Goethe_, vol. II. p. 267.

The candid reader must admit that Mr. Parton has not, so far, made out a very overwhelming case in support of his opinion that alcohol always injures the brain. A personal experience, a "spurt of extravagance," a "physical impossibility," and a "certainty," are, on the whole, not very rocky foundations upon which to build a scientific conclusion. But this is all Mr. Parton has to offer.

In attempting to describe the influence of alcohol upon the brain and nervous system, it will be well for us to keep steadily in mind the fundamental difference between stimulant and narcotic doses, which was described at some length in our chapter on Tobacco. It is hardly necessary to state that Mr. Parton neither recognizes, nor appears dimly to suspect, the existence of any such distinction. His is one of those minds in which there are no half-way stations. With him, to rise above zero is inevitably to fly to the boiling-water point. But without keeping in mind this all-important distinction, any inquiry into the physiological effects of alcohol must end in confusion and paradox. Remembering this, let us examine first the narcotic, and then the stimulant effects of alcohol upon the nervous system.

The narcotic effects of alcohol upon the entire human organism are so bad that even the teetotaler does not need to exaggerate them. The stomach is not only damaged, and the cerebrum ruined, but a slow molecular change takes place throughout the nervous system, which ends by destroying the power of self-control and utterly demoralizing the character. Far be it from us, therefore, to palliate the consequences which sooner or later are sure to follow the wretched habit of drinking narcotic quantities of alcohol; or to look without genuine sympathy upon the philanthropic, though usually misguided attempts which radical aquarians are continually making to diminish the evil. Their feelings are often as right as their science is wrong. But because we believe that for a book to be of any value whatever, it must be _true_, and that false science can never, in the long run, be of practical benefit, we are not therefore to be set down as lukewarm in our abhorrence of alcoholic intemperance. Those who keep their hearts in subjection to their heads are often supposed to have no hearts at all. Those who do not forthwith get angry and utter "spurts of extravagance" whenever any social evil is mentioned, are often thought to be in secret sympathy with it. But how could we, by writing reams of fervid declamation, more forcibly express our disapproval of drunkenness than by recording the cold scientific statement that the first narcotic symptom produced by alcohol is a symptom of incipient paralysis?

We allude to the flushing of the face, which is caused by paralysis of the cervical branch of the sympathetic. This symptom usually occurs some time before the conspicuous manifestation of the ordinary signs of intoxication, which result from paralysis of the cerebrum. Of these signs the most prominent is the weakening of the ordinary power of self-control. The ruling faculty of judgment is suspended, volition becomes less steady, and imagination, no longer guided by the higher faculties, runs riot in such a way as to appear to be stimulated. But it is not stimulated; it is simply let loose. There is no stimulation in drunkenness; there is only disorganization. One acquired or organic power of the mind no longer holds the others in check. Hence the uncalled-for friendliness, the fitful anger, the extravagant or misplaced generosity, the ludicrous dignity, the disgusting amorousness, or the garrulous vanity, of the drunken man. Wine is said to exhibit a man as he really is, with the conventionalities of society laid aside. This is only half true, but it suggests the true statement. Wine exhibits a man as he is when the organized effects of ancestral and contemporary civilization upon his character are temporarily obliterated. We need no better illustration of the truth that drunkenness is not stimulation but paralysis of the cerebrum, than the order in which, under the influence of alcohol, the powers of the mind become progressively suspended. As a general rule those are first suspended which are the most recent products of civilization, and which have consequently been developed by inheritance through the least number of generations. These are of course the mind's highest organic acquisitions. The sense of responsibility, for instance, is a product of a highly complicated state of civilization, and, when fully developed, is perhaps chief among the moral acquirements which distinguish the civilized man from the savage. In progressing intoxication, the feeling of responsibility is the first to be put in abeyance. A man need be but slightly tipsy in order to become quite careless as to the consequences of his actions.[3] On the other hand, those qualities of the mind are the last to be overcome, which are the earliest inheritance of savagery, and which the civilized man possesses in common with savages and beasts. Then the animal nature of the man, no longer restrained by his higher faculties, manifests itself with a violence which causes it to seem abnormally stimulated in vigour. And in the stage immediately preceding stupor, it sometimes happens that the pupils are contracted,[4] and the whites of the eyes enlarged, giving to the face a horrible brute-like expression.

[3] In illustration it may be noted that as soon as a man
has just transgressed the physiological limit which divides
stimulation from narcosis, he is liable to throw overboard
all prudential considerations and drink until he is
completely drunk. This is one of the chief dangers of
convivial after-dinner drinking.

[4] For the physiology of this pupil-change, not uncommon in
various kinds of acute narcosis, see the Appendix to Anstie.

One apparent exception to this generalization needs only to be explained in order to confirm the rule. Memory, which usually figures as a high intellectual faculty, is often, even in deep drunkenness, capable of performing marvellous feats. While in college we once heard a tipsy fellow-student repeat _verbatim_ the whole of that satire of Horace which begins "Unde et quo, Catius?"--which he had read over the same day before going to recitation, but which, as we felt sure, he could never designedly have committed to memory. It appeared, however, that, in the literal though not in the idiomatic sense of the phrase, he had "committed it to memory" to some purpose, for as we, struck with amazement, took down our Horace and followed him, we found that he made not the slightest verbal error. This performance on his part was almost immediately followed by heavy comatose slumber. On afterward questioning him, it appeared that he remembered nothing either of the Satire or of his remarkable feat. Several analogous cases are cited by Dr. Anstie.[5]

[5] _Stimulants and Narcotics_, pp. 174-178.

This certainly looks like stimulation, but on comparing it with other instances of abnormal reminiscence differently caused, we shall find reason for believing that it is nothing of the kind. There is no doubt that insanity may in the most general way be described as a species of cerebral paralysis, yet in many kinds of insanity there is an abnormal quickening of memory. Likewise in idiocy, which differs from insanity as being due to arrested development rather than to degradation of the cerebrum, the same phænomenon is sometimes witnessed. We remember seeing a child who, though generally considered quite "foolish," could, as we were assured, accurately repeat large portions of each Sunday's sermon. Dr. Anstie mentions a boy, absolutely idiotic, who nevertheless "had a perfect memory for the history of all the farm animals in the neighbourhood, and could tell with unerring precision that this was So-and-so's sheep or pig among any number of other animals of the same kind." Similar phænomena have been observed in epileptic delirium, and in the delirium of fevers. Every one has heard Coleridge's story of the sick servant-girl who repeated passages from Latin, Greek and Hebrew authors which she had years before heard recited by a clergyman in whose house she worked. A gentleman in India, after a sunstroke, utterly lost his command of the Hindustani language, recovering it only during the recurrent paroxysms of epileptic delirium to which he was afterward subject. Equally interesting is the case of the Countess de Laval, who in the ravings of puerperal delirium was heard by her Breton nurse talking baby-talk to herself in the Breton language,--a language which she had known in early infancy, but had since so entirely forgotten as not to distinguish it from gibberish when spoken before her.[6] A similar exaltation of memory not unfrequently precedes the coma produced by chloroform; and it has been known to occur in cases of acute poisoning by opium and haschisch. Finally it may be observed that drowning men are said to recall, as in a panoramic vision, all the events of their lives, even the most trivial.

[6] For this and parallel cases see Hamilton, _Lectures
on Metaphysics_, Lect. XVIII.

We may conclude therefore that the extraordinary memory sometimes observed in drunken persons, however obscure the interpretation of it may at present be, is at all events a symptom, not of mental exaltation, but of mental disorganization consequent upon cerebral disease. We may search in vain among the phænomena of intoxication for any genuine evidences of that heightened mental activity which is said to be followed by a depressive recoil. There is no recoil; there is no stimulation; there is nothing but paralytic disorder from the moment that narcosis begins. From the outset the whole nervous system is lowered in tone, the even course of its nutrition disturbed, and the rhythmic discharge of its functions interfered with.

Another remarkable effect of alcoholic narcotism--the most hopelessly demoralizing of all--yet remains to be treated. We refer to the perpetual craving of the drinker for the repetition, and usually for the increase, of his dose. It is a familiar fact that the drunkard is urged to the gratification of his appetite by such an irresistible physical craving that his power of self-control becomes after a while completely destroyed. And it is often observed that those who begin drinking moderately go on, as if by a kind of fatality, drinking oftener and drinking larger quantities, until they have become confirmed inebriates. But in the current interpretation of these facts there is, as might be expected, a great deal of confusion. On the one hand, the teetotalers declare that the use of alcohol in any amount creates a physical craving and necessitates a progressive increase of the dose. On the other hand, the common sense of mankind, perceiving that nine persons out of ten are all their lives in the habit of using alcoholic drinks, while hardly one person out of ten ever becomes a drunkard,[7] declares that this physical craving is not produced save in peculiarly organized constitutions. We believe that neither of these opinions is correct. In all probability, the demand for an increased narcotic effect is due to a gradual alteration in the molecular structure of the nervous system caused by frequently repeated narcosis; and if narcosis be invariably avoided, _in systems which are free from its inherited structural effects_, the craving is never awakened. This point is so interesting and important as to call for some further elucidation.

[7] It has been asserted by teetotalers that the mortality
from intemperance is 50,000 a year in the United States
alone!! It is to be regretted that friends of temperance are
to be found who will persist in injuring the cause by such
wanton exaggerations. In the United States, in 1860, the
whole number of deaths from all causes was a trifle less
than 374,000: the whole number of deaths from intemperance
was 931,--that is to say, less than one in 374. See the
admirable pamphlet by the late Gov. Andrew, on _The Errors
of Prohibition_, p. 112. In view of these facts, it appears
to us many leagues within the bounds of probability to say
that hardly one person in ten is a drunkard.

Frequent intoxication with alcohol, opium, coca, or haschisch, brings about a structural degeneration of the nerve-material; the consequences of which are to be seen in delirium, softening of the brain, and other forms of general paralysis. "By degrees the nervous centres, especially those on which the particular narcotic used has the most powerful influence, become degraded in structure." A permanent pathological state is thus induced, in which the production of a given narcotic effect is not so easy as in the healthy organism. "A certain quantity of nervous tissue has in fact ceased to fill the _rôle_ of nervous tissue, and there is less of impressible matter upon which the narcotic may operate, and hence it is that the confirmed drunkard, opium-eater, or _coquero_, requires more and more of his accustomed narcotic to produce the intoxication which he delights in. It is necessary now to saturate his blood to a high degree with the poison, and thus to insure an extensive contact of it with the nervous matter, if he is to enjoy once more the transition from the realities of life to the dreamland, or the pleasant vacuity of mind, which this or the other form of narcotism has hitherto afforded him."[8] It is easy to see how this structural degeneration may be produced. It takes a certain time for the nervous system to recover from the effects of each separate narcotic dose; and if a fresh dose is taken before recovery is completed, it is obvious that the diseased condition will by and by be rendered permanent. The entire process of nutrition will adapt itself gradually to this new state of things; and no efficiency of repair will afterward make the nervous system what it was before. It is in this way that the narcotic craving for continually increased doses is originated and kept alive.

[8] See Anstie, op. cit. pp. 215, 216, 218.

In the case of the milder narcotics--tea, coffee and tobacco--this craving, though the symptom of a depraved state of the organism, does not directly demoralize the character. But the moral injury wrought by alcohol, opium and haschisch is known to every one, and the effects of coca-drunkenness are said to be no less frightful. This is because the milder narcotics affect chiefly the medulla, the spinal cord and the sympathetic, while the fiercer ones chiefly affect the cerebrum. Tobacco may paralyze the brain sufficiently to cause nocturnal wakefulness; but it cannot impair one's self-control or one's sense of responsibility. It never transforms a man into a selfish brute, who will beat his wife, neglect his business, and allow his children to starve. Here then we arrive at a supremely interesting distinction. The craving for tobacco is principally a craving of those inferior nerve-centres which exert comparatively little direct influence upon the mental and moral life. But the craving for alcohol is a cerebral craving. The habitual indulgence of it involves a continual suppression of those loftier guiding qualities which, as we have seen, are the later effects of civilization upon the individual character; while the attributes of savagery, the lower sensual passions--our common inheritance from pre-social times--are allowed full play in supplying material for the imagination and in shaping the purposes of life. Mr. Parton's remark, therefore, which is absurd as applied to tobacco, is a profound physiological verity as applied to the narcotic action of alcohol,--it tends to make us think and act like barbarians, for it allies us psychologically with barbarians.

These considerations throw some light upon the way in which chronic narcosis, like other diseases entailing structural derangements, may be transmitted from father to son. As a matter of observation it is known that drunkenness may run through whole families, no less than gout or consumption. Or, like other diseases, it may skip one or two generations and then reappear. It is evident that the children of a drunkard, _born after_ the establishment of nervous degeneration in the father's system, may inherit structural narcosis attended by a latent craving for alcohol. Some unfortunate persons thus seem to be born sots, as others are born lunatics or consumptives.

The hygienic rule in all cases of structural narcosis, whether acquired or inherited, is total abstinence once and always. These unfortunate creatures cannot be temperate, they must therefore be abstinent. As Sainte-Beuve profoundly remarks concerning that ferocious Duke of Burgundy for whom Fénelon wrote his "Télémaque," he was such a wretch that they could not make a _man_ of him, they could only make him a _saint_: that is, he was got up on such wrong principles that, whether bad or good, he must be somewhat morally lop-sided and abnormal. Just so with those whose nervous systems are impaired by alcohol: we cannot make them healthy men who can take a stimulant glass and want no more,--we can only make them teetotalers.

Those too who have not got themselves into this predicament will do well to remember that there is extreme danger in the common practice of drinking as much as one likes, provided one does not get drunk. "Getting drunk" means paralysis of the cerebral hemispheres; but, as we have seen, paralysis of the cervical sympathetic, shown in flushed face and moist forehead, occurs some time before the more conspicuous symptom. _It is a narcotic effect, and must be always avoided, if the narcotic craving is to be kept clear of._ Therefore a man who wishes to enjoy alcohol, and reap benefit from it, and be ready at any time to do without it, like any other wholesome aliment, must always keep a long way this side of intoxication. If ten glasses of sherry will make him garrulous, he will do well never to drink more than four.

Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be well to note certain cases, collected by Theodore Parker, of consumptive families, in which those members who were topers did not die of consumption. It appeared that, in certain families whose histories he gave, nearly all those who did not die of consumption were rum-drinkers! And from these data Mr. Parker drew the inference that "intemperate habits (where the man drinks a pure, though coarse and fiery liquor like New England Rum) tend to check the consumptive tendency, though the drunkard, who himself escapes the consequences, may transmit the fatal seed to his children." Mr. Parton, who quotes this, thinks it poor comfort for topers. We doubt if there is any "comfort" to be found in it. It is contrary to all our present science to suppose that consumption can be prevented by narcosis. The prime cause of consumption is defective assimilation: the tissues, _from lack of sufficient nerve-stimulus_, are incapable of appropriating food. How absurd, therefore, to suppose that narcosis, which impairs the stimulating energy of the nerves, can check an existing tendency to consumption! What the consumptive person needs is stimulus, not paralysis. But it is easy to believe that the same impaired nutrition of the nerves which may in one person end in consumption, may in another person act as a predisposing cause of narcosis. Insanity, consumption, and drunkenness, are diseases which appear to go hand in hand. Dr. Maudsley, in his great work on the "Pathology of Mind," gives instructive tables which show that these three diseases may alternate with each other in the same family for several generations, culminating finally in epilepsy, idiocy, paralysis and impotence, when the family becomes happily extinct. This consanguinity of diseases appears more marked when we extend our view over a certain extensive locality. The figures cited by Gov. Andrew appear to show that both drunkenness and insanity are far more common in New England than in other parts of the Union; and consumption is proverbially the New England disease. We are inclined to suspect, therefore, that in the families mentioned by Mr. Parker, the children inherited structurally defective nervous systems, the consequent symptoms being in one case pulmonary and in another case cerebral.

This, we believe, is all that we need contribute at present to the subject of alcoholic narcosis. It will be seen that in maintaining that the Coming Man will drink wine, we are not recommending that the Coming Man should go to bed drunk. An argument drawn from purely scientific data, when once thoroughly mastered, is likely to be of more avail in checking intemperance than all the "spurts of extravagance" which teetotalers can emit between now and doomsday. Mr. Parton asks, Why have the teetotalers failed? They have failed because they have exaggerated. They have failed because they have not been content with the simple truth. They want the truth, the whole truth, and twice as much as the truth. If they would only hoard up the nervous energy which they expend in making a vain clamour, in order to use it in quietly investigating the character, causes, and conditions of alcoholic drunkenness, they might make out a statement which the world would believe, and by and by act upon. At present the world does not follow them, because it does not believe them. When the zealous aquarian anathematizes a rum-shop, we sympathize with him; but when he rolls up his eyes in holy horror at a glass of lager-bier, we laugh at him. When he says that a quart of raw gin taken at a couple of gulps will kill a man stone-dead, we cheerfully acquiesce. But when he says that the gill of sherry taken at dinner will impair our digestion, render us susceptible to cold, steal away some of our vigour, and muddle our head so that we cannot write an article in the evening,--we can but good-naturedly smile, and try another gill to-morrow.

The stimulant effects of alcohol upon the nervous system are very similar to those of tobacco. Like tobacco, alcohol stimulates the alimentary secretions, slightly quickens and strengthens the pulse, diminishes weariness, cures sleeplessness, puts an end to trembling, calms nervous excitement, retards waste, and facilitates repair. By its antiparalytic action, it checks epilepsy, quiets delirium, and alleviates spasms and clonic convulsions; and in typhoid fever, where excessive waste of the nervous system is supposed to be one of the chief sources of danger, it is used, as we shall presently see, with most signal success. It thus appears, like tobacco, to be in general an economizer of vital energy and an aid to effective nutrition. It also directly assists digestion; but as Mr. Parton thinks it does not do this, we will first quote his opinion, and then see how much it is worth.

"Several experiments have been made with a view to ascertain whether mixing alcohol with the gastric juice increases or lessens its power to decompose food, and the results of all of them point to the conclusion that the alcohol retards the process of decomposition. A little alcohol retards it a little, and much alcohol retards it much. It has been proved by repeated experiment that _any_ portion of alcohol, however small, diminishes the power of the gastric juice to decompose. The digestive fluid has been mixed with wine, beer, whisky, brandy, and alcohol diluted with water, and kept at the temperature of the living body, and the motions of the body imitated during the experiment; but, in every instance, the pure gastric juice was found to be the true and sole digester, and the alcohol a retarder of digestion. This fact, however, required little proof. We are all familiar with alcohol as a _preserver_, and scarcely need to be reminded that, if alcohol assists digestion at all, it cannot be by assisting decomposition." (p. 64.)

We would give something to know how many readers, outside of the medical profession, may have detected at the first glance the fatal fallacy lurking in this argument. Of its existence Mr. Parton himself is blissfully unconscious. The experiment, no doubt, seems quite complete and conclusive. We have the gastric juice mixed with alcoholic liquor, we have the suitable temperature, and we have an imitation of the motions of the stomach. What more can be desired? We reply, the most important element in the problem is entirely overlooked. It is the old story,--the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out; and nothing can better illustrate the extreme danger of reasoning confidently from what goes on outside the body to what must go on inside the body. For in order to have made their experiment complete, Mr. Parton's authorities _should have manufactured an entire nervous system_, as well as a network of blood-vessels through which the alcohol might impart to that nervous system its stimulus. In short, before we can make an artificial digestive apparatus which will work at all like the natural one, we must know how to construct a living human body! In the case before us, _the nervous stimulus_, ignored by Mr. Parton, is the most essential factor in the whole process. There is no doubt that a given quantity of undiluted gastric juice will usually perform the chemical process of food-transformation more rapidly than an equal quantity of gastric juice which is diluted.[9] But there is also no doubt that when we take a small quantity of alcohol into the stomach, _the amount of gastric juice is instantly increased_. This results from the stimulant action of alcohol both upon the pneumogastric nerves and upon the great splanchnic or visceral branches of the sympathetic. Just as when tobacco is smoked, though probably to a less extent, the gastric secretion is increased; and the motions of the stomach are also increased. This increase in the quantity of the digestive fluid, due to nervous stimulus, is undoubtedly more than sufficient to make up for the alleged impairment of its quality caused by mixing it with a foreign substance. The action of saliva and carbonate of soda supply us with a further illustration. In artificial experiments, like those upon which Mr. Parton relies, alkaline substances are found to retard digestion by neutralizing a portion of the acid of the gastric juice. Yet the alkaline saliva, swallowed with food, does not retard digestion; and Claude Bernard has shown that carbonate of soda actually hastens, to a notable degree, the digestive process. Why is this? It is because these alkalies act as local stimulants upon the lining of the stomach, and thus increase the quantity of gastric juice. It is in this way that common salt, eaten with other food, also facilitates digestion; although salt is a _preserver_, as well as alcohol.

[9] This is not always true, however: it is well to look sharp before making a sweeping statement. The digesting power of gastric juice is _increased_ by diluting it with a certain amount of water. See Lehmann, _Physiologische Chemie_, II. 47.

Here we come upon Mr. Parton's second blunder. He talks about the "decomposition" of food, and appears to think that digestion is a kind of _putrefaction_, so that alcohol, which arrests the latter, must also arrest the former. He says: We do not need to experiment, for we _know_ that alcohol, which is a _preserver_, cannot digest food by decomposing it. This unlucky remark illustrates the danger of writing on a subject, the rudiments of which you have not taken time to get acquainted with. Before attempting to lay down the law upon an abstruse point connected with the subject of digestion, common prudence would appear to dictate that one should first acquire some dim notion of what digestion is. The veriest tyro in physiology should know that the gastric juice is itself a preventer of putrefaction. It will not only keep off organic decay, but it will stop it after it has begun.[10] In this sense of the word, it is as much a _preserver_ as alcohol.

[10] Dunglison, _Human Physiology_, vol. I. p. 148; Lewes,
_Physiology of Common Life_, vol. I. p. 170.

As it takes time to expose all the fallacies which Mr. Parton can crowd into one short paragraph, we have thus far admitted that alcohol impairs the quality of the gastric juice by diluting it: as a matter of fact, it does not so impair it. If it is a _preserver_, it is also a _coagulator_. It coagulates the albuminous portions of the food, thus enabling them to be more easily acted upon by the gastric secretion.[11] So that, on looking into the matter, we find the stimulant dose of alcohol doing everything to quicken, and nothing whatever to slacken, digestion. It coaxes out more digestive fluid, and it lightens the task which that fluid has to perform.

[11] Dunglison, op. cit. I. 196.

Daily experience tells us that the glass of wine taken with our dinner, or the thimble-full of _liqueur_ taken after dessert, diminishes the feeling of heaviness, and enables us sooner to go to work. Of indigestion and its accompanying sensations, we are unable to speak from experience; but Mr. Parton feelingly describes the effects of alcohol as follows. "When we have taken too much shad for breakfast, we find that a wineglass of whisky instantly mitigates the horrors of indigestion, and enables us again to contemplate the future without dismay." Now, if Mr. Parton's ideas on this subject were correct, his dose of whisky ought to exasperate his torment. The fact that it comforts him shows that it serves to quicken the too sluggish stomach to its normal activity. It is a very good clinical experiment indeed.

Alcohol, however, aids digestion only when taken in moderate quantities. A narcotic dose, by paralyzing the medulla and the sympathetic, interferes with the flow of gastric juice. Here, as in most cases, the large quantity does just the reverse of what the small quantity will do. The same is true of food. Digestible food, in moderate amount, stimulates the gastric secretion; in excessive amount, it arrests its action. "Another curious fact is, that although the addition of organic acids increases the digestive power of this fluid, there is a limit at which this increase ceases, and beyond it, excess of acid suspends the whole digestive power."[12] It is therefore a wise thing to eat heartily, but a silly thing to eat voraciously; it is wise to eat pickles, but silly to make one's dinner of them; it is wise to drink a glass of sherry, but silly to empty the bottle. The happy mean is the thing to be maintained, in digestion as in every thing else.

[12] Lewes, loc. cit.

Mr. Parton next proceeds to deny that alcohol is a heat-producing substance. "On the contrary," he says, "it appears in all cases to diminish the efficiency of the heat-producing process." And he cites the testimony of Arctic voyagers, New York car-drivers, Russian corporals, and Rocky Mountain hunters, in support of the statement that alcohol diminishes the power of the system to resist cold. He thinks he could fill a whole magazine with the evidence on this point. Nevertheless, so far as we have examined the reports of Arctic travellers,[13] they appear by no means decisive. They do not keep in mind the distinction between stimulation and intoxication. We do not doubt that "men who start under the influence of liquor are the first to succumb to the cold, and the likeliest to be frost-bitten," if the phrase "under the influence of liquor" be understood, as it usually is, to mean "partly drunk." On the other hand, it is a familiar fact that a glass of whisky, taken on coming into the house after exposure to cold, will in many cases prevent sore throat or inflammation of the nasal passages. In our own experience, we know of no more efficient agent for removing the effects of a chill from the system. Before this question can be settled, however, we must ascertain whether alcohol is, or is not, a true food. If the food-action of alcohol is, as Liebig maintains, to be ranked with that of fat, starch and sugar, its heat-producing power will follow as an inevitable inference. To this point we shall presently come; and meanwhile we may content ourselves with citing the excellent authority of Johnston in support of the opinion that ardent spirits "directly warm the body."[14]

[13] A good summary will be found in the _American Journal
of Medical Sciences_, July, 1859.

[14] _Chemistry of Common Life_, vol. I., p. 288.

Mr. Parton next indicts alcohol on the ground that it is not a strength-giver. "On this branch of the subject," he observes, "_all_ the testimony is against alcoholic drinks."[15] Yet in his own statement of the case may be found contradictions enough. On the one hand he cites Tom Sayers, Richard Cobden and Benjamin Franklin in support of his opinion;[16] and he tells us how Horace Greeley, teetotaler, coming home the other day, and finding terrible arrears of work piled up before him, sat down and wrote steadily, without leaving his room, from ten A.M. till eleven P.M.--no very wonderful feat for a healthy man. But on the other hand, it appears from some of his own facts that when a supreme exertion of strength is requisite, then we must take alcohol. "During the war I knew of a party of cavalry who, for three days and three nights, were not out of the saddle fifteen minutes at a time. The men consumed two quarts of whisky each, and all of them came in alive. It is a custom in England to extract the last possible five miles from a tired horse, when those miles _must_ be had from him, by forcing down his most unwilling throat a quart of beer." (p. 86.) From these unwelcome facts Mr. Parton draws the sage inference that alcohol, like tobacco, supports us in doing wrong! "It enables us to violate the laws of nature without immediate suffering and speedy destruction." Now there is one much abused faculty of mankind, which nevertheless will sometimes refuse to be insulted,--that faculty is common sense. And in the present case, common sense declares that when we are taxing our strength, no matter whether "laws" are violated or not, we do not keep ourselves up by drinking a substance which can only weaken us. It may be unfortunate that alcohol is a strength-giver; but the fact that we can travel farther with it than without it shows that, unfortunate or not, the thing is so. But Mr. Parton believes that Nature is even with us afterward. "In a few instances of intermittent disease, a small quantity of wine may sometimes enable a patient who is at the low tide of vitality to anticipate the turn of the tide, and borrow at four o'clock enough of five o'clock strength to enable him to reach five o'clock." This is sheer nonsense. There is no such thing as borrowing at four o'clock the strength of five o'clock. The thing is a physiological absurdity. The strength of to-morrow is non-existent until to-morrow comes; it is not a reserved fund from which we can borrow to-day. If Mr. Parton's notion were correct, his patient ought to be weaker at five o'clock by just the same amount that he is stronger at four o'clock. If the strength has been borrowed, it cannot be used over again. You cannot eat your cake and save it. In an hour's time, therefore, the patient should be weaker than if he had contrived to get along without the wine. But this is not found to be the case: he is stronger at four and he is stronger at five, he is stronger next day, and he convalesces more rapidly than if he had not taken alcohol. This is a clinical fact which there is no blinking.[17] It shows that the only source from which the strength can possibly come is the alcohol. Whether it be food or not, the action of alcohol in these cases is precisely similar to that of food. It calms delirium and promotes refreshing sleep, exactly like a meat broth, except that it is often more rapidly efficient. It can produce these effects only by acting as a genuine stimulant, by either nourishing, or facilitating the normal nutrition of, the nervous system.[18]

[15] Except that of contemporary physiologists. Among these
there are few greater names than that of Moleschott; whose
testimony to the strengthening properties of alcohol may be
found in his _Lehre der Nahrungsmitiel_, p. 162.

[16] We presume Mr. Parton thinks these three unprofessional
opinions enough to outweigh the all but unanimous testimony
of physicians to the tonic effects of beer, wine and brandy.

[17] Anstie, op. cit. pp. 381--385.

[18] In view of these and similar facts, Dr. Anstie remarks
that "the effect of nutritious food, where it can be
digested, is undistinguishable from that of alcohol upon the
abnormal conditions of the nervous system which prevail in
febrile diseases." p. 385. For the use of wine or brandy in
infantile typhoid and typhus, see Hillier on _Diseases of
Children_, a most admirable work.

When therefore Lawyer Heavy-fee and the other allegorical personages mentioned by Mr. Parton sit up working all night, and then quiet their nerves by a glass of wine or a cigar, they are no doubt shortening their lives and committing "respectable suicide." But it is because they sit up all night and waste vital force, not because they resort to an obvious and effective means of repairing the loss. It is well to keep early hours and avoid over-work. But on rare occasions, when the circumstances of life absolutely require it, he who cannot sit up all night for a week together, without inflicting permanent injury upon himself, is rightly considered deficient in recuperative vigour. When such occasions come, most persons instinctively seek aid from alcohol; and it helps them because it is an imparter, or at least an economizer, of nervous force. The fact that it is resorted to, when supreme exertion is demanded, shows that it is recognized as a strength-saver, if not as a strength-giver. Our inquiry into its food-action will show that it is both the one and the other.

Thus far we have considered alcohol only as an agent which affects the nutrition of the nerves. Whether it be also a food or not does not essentially alter the question of its evil or beneficent influence upon the system. As we saw in our chapter on Tobacco, the human organism needs, for its proper nutrition, stimulus as well as food,--force as well as material. No conclusion in physiology is better established than that narcotic-stimulants increase the supply of force while they diminish the waste of material;[19] and it is by virtue of this peculiarity that they will often sustain the organism in the absence of food. Tobacco is not food, but if you give a starving man a pipe to smoke it will take him much longer to die. Opium and coca are not foods; but they will sometimes support life when no true aliment can be procured. The action of alcohol is similar to that of these substances, but immeasurably more effective. None of the inferior narcotic-stimulants is at all comparable with alcohol in the degree of its food-replacing power. We read that tobacco and coca will enable a man to go several days without anything to eat; and we interpret this result as due to the waste-retarding action of these substances. But when we find that alcohol will support life for weeks and months, we can no longer be content with such an explanation. When we recollect that Cornaro lived healthily for fifty-eight years upon twelve ounces of light food and fourteen ounces of wine _per diem_,[20] and reflect upon the large proportion of alcoholic drink in this diet, the suspicion is forced upon us that alcohol is not only a true stimulant but also a true food.

[19] See Chambers, _Digestion and its Derangements_, p. 249;
and in general, Johnston, Von Bibra, and the paper of Dr.
Hammond above referred to.

[20] Carpenter, _Human Physiology_, p. 387.

Mr. Parton of course asserts that alcoholic drinks do not nourish the body, and denies to them the title of foods. He begins by quoting Liebig's assertion "that as much flour or meal as can lie on the point of a table-knife is more nutritious than nine quarts of the best Bavarian beer." Whereupon the reader, who is perhaps not familiar with the history of physiological controversy, thinks at once that Liebig's great authority is opposed to the opinion that alcohol is food. Nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps nothing in Mr. Parton's book shows more forcibly the danger of "cramming" a subject instead of studying it. When Liebig wrote the above sentence, he believed that foods might be sharply divided into two classes,--those which nourish, and those which keep up the heat of the body. He believed that no foods except those which contain nitrogen can nourish the tissues; and he therefore excluded not only alcohol, _but fat, starch and sugar also_, from the class of nutritious substances. But Liebig was far from believing that alcohol is not food. On the contrary he distinctly classed it with fat, starch and sugar, as a _heat-producing food_,--a fact which Mr. Parton, if he knows it, takes good care not to quote! But this twofold classification of foods has for several years been known to be unsound. It has been shown that all true foods are more or less nutritious, and that all are more or less heat-producing. Starch and sugar have maintained their places in the class of nutritive materials from which Liebig tried to exclude them, and we have now to see whether the same can be said of the closely kindred substance, alcohol.

Mr. Parton thinks he has proved that alcohol cannot be food, when he has asserted that it is not chemically transformed within the body. As soon as it is taken, he tells us, lungs, skin and kidneys all set busily to work to expel it, and they send it out just as it came in: _therefore_ it is an enemy. Now all this may be said of water. Water is not chemically changed within the body; as soon as we drink it, lungs, skin and kidneys begin busily to expel it; and it goes out just as good water as it came in. Nevertheless, water is one of the most essential elements of nutrition.

But it is by no means certain that alcohol is not transformed within the body. It is neither certain nor probable. Mr. Parton relies upon the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy, and Perrin, who in 1860 thought they had demonstrated that _all_ the alcohol taken into the system comes out again, _as_ alcohol, through the lungs, skin and kidneys. By applying the very delicate chromic acid test, these gentlemen appeared to prove that appreciable quantities of alcohol always begin to be excreted very soon after the dose has been received by the stomach, and continue to pass off for many hours. "They failed, after repeated attempts, to discover the intermediate compounds into which alcohol had been represented as transforming itself before its final change; and, on the other hand, they detected _unchanged_ alcohol everywhere in the body hours after it had been taken; they found the substance in the blood, and in all the tissues, but especially in the brain and the nervous centres generally, and in the liver."[21] Mr. Parton has, it would appear, read their book, and he is fully persuaded by it that "if you take into your system an ounce of alcohol, the whole ounce leaves the system within forty-eight hours, just as good alcohol as it went in." These experiments, moreover, "produced the remarkable effect of causing the editor of a leading periodical to confess to the public that he was not infallible." The _Westminster Review_, it seems, in 1861, retracted the opinions which it had expressed in 1855, "concerning the _rôle_ of alcohol in the animal body." The _Westminster Review_ has now an opportunity to retract its recantations; for in 1863, these experiments were subjected to a searching criticism by M. Baudot, which resulted in thoroughly invalidating the conclusions supposed to flow from them.[22] The case is an interesting one, as showing afresh the utter impossibility of getting at the truth concerning alcohol, without paying attention to the difference in the behaviour of large and small quantities.

[21] Anstie, op. cit., p. 359.

[22] Baudot, _De la Destruction de l'Alcool dans
l'Organisme, Union Médicale_, Nov. et Déc., 1863. See also
the elaborate criticism in Anstie, op. cit., pp. 358-370.