BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D.

CHAPTER II.—THE CAUSES OF INTEMPERANCE.

The undoubted antiquity of the poison vice has induced several able physiologists to assume the hygienic necessity of artificial stimulation. But the not less undoubted fact that there have been manful, industrious and intelligent nations of total abstainers would be an almost sufficient refutation of that inference, which is sometimes qualified by the assertion that the tonic value of alcoholic drinks is based upon the abnormal demands upon the vitality of races exposed to the vicissitudes of a rigorous climate and the manifold overstraining influences of an artificial civilization. For it can, besides, be proved that the alleged invigorating action of alcoholic drinks is an absolute delusion, and the pathological records of contemporary nations establish the fact that endemic increase of intemperate habits can nearly always be traced to causes that have no correlation whatever to the increased demands upon the physical or intellectual energies of the afflicted community. Potentially those energies have lamentably decreased among numerous races who once managed to combine nature-abiding habits with a plethora of vital vigor.

The physiologically unavoidable progressiveness of all stimulant habits is a further argument in favor of the theory that the poison vice has grown up from very small beginnings, and the genesis of the fatal germ has probably been supplied in the hypothesis of Fabio Colonna, an Italian naturalist of the seventeenth century. “Before people used wine,” says he, “they drank sweet must and preserved it, like oil, in jars or skins. But in a warm climate a saccharine fluid is apt to ferment, and some avaricious housekeeper may have drunk that spoiled stuff till she became fond of it and learned to prefer it to must.”

Avarice, aided perhaps by dietetic prurience, or indifference to the warnings of instinct, planted the baneful seed, and the laws of evolution did the rest.

But the tendency of those laws has often been checked, and as certainly often been accelerated, by less uncontrollable agencies.

The first venders of toxic stimulants (like our quack medicine philanthropists) had a personal interest in disseminating the poison habit. Reform attempts were met by appeals to the convivial interests of the stimulant-dupe, by the seduction of minors, by charges of asceticism; later by nostrum puffs and opium wars. More than two thousand years ago the worship of Bacchus was propagated by force of arms. The disciples of Ibn Hanbal, the Arabian Father Mathew, were stoned in the streets of Bagdad. The persecutions and repeated expulsions of the Grecian Pythagoreans had probably a good deal to do with the temperance teachings of their master. In Palestine, in India, in mediÆval Europe, nearly every apostle of Nature had to contend with a rancorous opposition, inspired by the most sordid motives of self-interest, and our own age can in that respect not boast of much improvement. In spite of our higher standard of philanthropic principles and their numerous victories in other directions, the heartless alliance of Bacchus and Mammon still stands defiant. In our own country a full hundred thousand men, not half of them entitled to plead the excuses of poverty or ignorance, unblushingly invoke the protection of the laws in behalf of an industry involving the systematic propagation of disease, misery and crime. Wherever the interests of the poison traffic are at stake the nations of Europe have not made much progress since the time when the sumptuary laws of Lorenzo de Medici were defeated by street riots and a shrieking procession of the Florentine tavern-keepers.

The efforts of such agitators are seconded by the Instinct of Imitation. “In large cities,” says Dr. Schrodt, “one may see gamins under ten years grubbing in rubbish heaps for cigar stumps; soon after leaning against a board fence, groaning and shuddering as they pay the repeated penalty of nature, yet, all the same, repeating the experiment with the resignation of a martyr. The rich, the fashionable, do it; those whom they envy smoke; smoking, they conclude, must be something enviable.”

Without any intentional arts of persuasion the Chinese business men of San Francisco have disseminated a new poison vice by smoking poppy gum in the presence of their Caucasian employes and accustoming them to associate the sight of an opium debauch with the idea of enjoyment and recreation. Would the opponents of prohibition attempt to deny that analogous influences (the custom of “treating” friends at a public bar, the spectacle of lager beer orgies in public gardens, etc.) have a great deal to do with the initiation of boy topers?

Ignorance does not lead our dumb fellow-creatures to vicious habits, and prejudice is therefore, perhaps, the more correct name for the sad infatuation which tempts so many millions of our young men to defy the protests of instinct and make themselves the slaves of a life-destroying poison. Ignorance is nescience. Prejudice is mal-science, mis-creance, trust in erroneous teachings. Millions of children are brought up in the belief that health can be secured only by abnormal means. A pampered child complains of headache, want of appetite. Instead of curing the evil by the removal of the cause, in the way so plainly indicated by the monitions of instinct, the mother sends to the drug-store. The child must “take something.” Help must come through anti-natural means. A young rake, getting more fretful and dyspeptic from day to day, is advised to “try something,” an aloe pill, a bottle of medicated brandy, any quack “specific,” recommended by its bitterness or nauseousness. The protests of nature are calmly disregarded in such cases; a dose of medicine, according to the popular impression, can not be very effective unless it is very repulsive. Our children thus learn to mistrust the voice of their natural instincts. They try to rely on the aid of specious arts, instead of trusting their troubles in the hands of nature. Boys whose petty ailments have been palliated with stimulants will afterward be tempted to drown their sorrow in draughts of the same nepenthe, instead of biding their time, like Henry Thoreau, who preferred to “face any fate, rather than seek refuge in the mist of intoxication.” Before the friends of temperance can hope for a radical reform they must help to eradicate the deep-rooted delusion of the stimulant fallacy; the popular error which hopes to defy the laws of nature by the magic of intoxicating drugs and thus secure an access of happiness not attainable by normal means. Our text-books, our public schools, should teach the rising generation to realize the fact that the temporary advantage gained by such means is not only in every case out-weighed by the distress of a speedy reaction, but that the capacity for enjoyment itself is impaired by its repeated abuse, till only the most powerful stimulants can restore a share of that cheerfulness which the spontaneous action of the vital energies bestows on the children of nature.

We have seen that the milder stimulants often form the stepping-stones to a passion for stronger poisons. A penchant for any kind of tonic drugs, nicotine, narcotic infusions, hasheesh, the milder opiates, etc., may thus initiate a stimulant habit with an unlimited capacity of development, and there is no doubt that international traffic has relaxed the vigilance which helped our forefathers to guard their households against the introduction of foreign poison vices. Hence the curious fact that drunkenness is not prevalent—not in the most ignorant or despotic countries (Russia, Austria, and Turkey), nor in southern Italy and Spain, where alcoholic drinks of the most seductive kind are cheapest—but in the most commercial countries, western France, Great Britain, and North America. Hence also the fallacy of the brewer’s argument that the use of lager beer would prevent the dissemination of the opium habit. No stimulant vice has ever prevented the introduction of worse poisons. Among the indirect causes of intemperance we must therefore include our mistaken toleration of the minor stimulant habits. The poison vice has become a many-headed hydra, defying one-sided attacks, and it is no paradox to say that we could simplify our work of expurgation by making it more thorough.

Polydipsia is a derangement of the digestive organs characterized by a chronic thirst, which forces its victims to swallow enormous quantities of stimulating fluids. The biographer of Richard Porson, the great classic scholar, says that his poison thirst was “so outrageous that he can not be considered a mere willful drunkard; one must believe that he was driven into his excesses by some unknown disease of his constitution.” … “He would pour anything down his throat rather than endure the terrible torture of thirst. Ink, spirits of wine for the lamp, an embrocation, are among the horrible things he is reported to have swallowed in his extremity.” Polydipsia is not always due to the direct or indirect (hereditary) influence of the alcohol habit, and the origin of the disorder was long considered doubtful; but it has since been traced to a morbid condition of the kidneys, induced by the use of narcotic stimulants (tea, coffee, tobacco), but often also by gluttony.

Like certain poison plants, the stimulant habit flourishes best in a sickly soil. Whatever tends to undermine the stamina of the physical or moral constitution helps to prepare the way for an inroad of intemperance, by weakening the resistance of the protective instincts. Hence the notorious fact that gambling dens and houses of ill-fame are rank hot-beds of the alcohol vice.

Asceticism has not yet ceased to be an indirect obstacle to the success of temperance reform. The children of nature need no special holidays; to them life itself is a festival of manifold sports. Hunting, fishing, and other pursuits of primitive nations become the pastimes of later ages. For the abnormal conditions of civilized life imply the necessity of providing special means of recreation, out-door sports, competitive gymnastics, etc., in order to satisfy the craving of an importunate instinct; and too many social reformers have as yet failed to recognize the truth that the suppression of that instinct avenges itself by its perversion; by driving pleasure-seekers from the play-ground to the pot-house, as despotism has turned freemen into bandits and outlaws. “Every one who considers the world as it really exists,” says Lecky, “must have convinced himself that, in great towns, where multitudes of men of all classes and all characters are massed together, and where there are innumerable strangers, separated from all domestic ties and occupations, public amusements of an exciting order are absolutely necessary, and that to suppress them is simply to plunge an immense portion of the population into the lowest depths of vice.”

“I am a great friend to public amusements,” says Boswell’s Johnson, “for they keep people from vice.” A home missionary in the character of a promoter of harmless recreations would double the popularity of our tenets, and by vindicating our people against the charge of joy-hating bigotry deprive our opponents of their most effective weapon. The free reading-rooms and gymnasium of the New York Y. M. C. A. have done more to promote the cause of temperance than the man hunts of Sir Hudibras and all his disciples. We must change our tactics. While our anchorite allies have contrived to make virtue repulsive, our opponents have proved themselves consummate masters of the art of masking the ugliness of vice; they have strewn their path with roses and left us the thorns. Yet I hope to show that we can beat them upon their own ground, for it is not difficult to make health more attractive than disease.

But the most obstinate obstacle to a successful propagation of total abstinence principles is the drug fallacy, a delusion founded on precisely the same error which leads the dram-drinker to mistake a process of irritation for a process of invigoration. During the infancy of the healing art all medical theories were biased by the idea that sickness is an enemy whose attacks must be repulsed À main forte, by suppressing the symptoms with fire, sword and poison—not in the figurative but in the literal sense, the keystone dogma of the primitive Sangrados having been the following heroic maxim: “What drugs won’t cure must be cured with iron” (the lancet), “if that fails resort to fire.” (Quod medicamenta non curant ferrum curat, quod non curat ferram ignis curat.) But with the progress of the physiological sciences the conviction gradually gained ground that disease itself is a reconstructive process, and that the suppression of the symptoms retards the accomplishment of that reconstruction. And ever since that truth dawned upon the human mind the use of poison drugs has steadily decreased. A larger and larger number of intelligent physicians had begun to suspect that the true healing art consists in the removal of the cause, and that where diseases have been caused by unnatural habits, the reform of those habits is a better plan than the old counter-poison method; when homoeopathy proved practically (though not theoretically) that medication can be entirely dispensed with. The true effect of the more virulent drugs (opium, tartar emetic, arsenic, etc.) was then studied from a physiological stand-point, and experiments proved what the medical philosopher Asclepiades, conjectured eighteen hundred years ago, namely, that if a drugged patient recovers, the true explanation is that his constitution was strong enough to overcome both the disease and the drug. Bichat, Schrodt, Magendie, Alcott, R. T. Trall, Isaac Jennings and Dio Lewis arrived at the conclusion that every disease is a protest of Nature against some violation of her laws, and that the suppression of the symptoms means to silence that protest instead of removing its cause, so that we might as well try to extinguish a fire by silencing the fire-bells, or to cure the sleepiness of a weary child by pinching its eyelids—in short, that drastic drugs, instead of “breaking up” a disease, merely interrupt it and lessen the chance of a radical cure.

Are there reasons to suppose that alcohol or any other poison, makes an exception from that general rule? We must reject the idea in toto, and I hope to show that it is refuted:

1. By the testimony of our instincts.

2. By experience.

3. By the direct or indirect concessions of the ablest physiologists.

Our instincts protest against medication. Against ninety-nine of a hundred “remedial drugs” our sense of taste warns us as urgently as against rotten eggs, verdigris, or oil of vitriol. Shall we believe that nature repudiates the means of salvation? Or that our protective instincts forsake us in the hour of our sorest need—in the hour of our struggle with a life-endangering disease? And the same instincts that protest against other poisons warn us against all kinds of alcoholic drugs. Is it an exception to that rule that the depraved taste of a drunkard may relish a glass of medicated wine or a bottle of “Hostetter’s bitters” (rye brandy)? If it is certain beyond all limits of doubt that the health of the stoutest man is no safeguard against the bane of the wretched poison, shall we believe that he can encounter it with impunity when his vital strength is exhausted by disease?

Has the stimulus of alcoholic beverages any remedial or prophylactic effect? How does alcohol counteract the contagion of climatic fevers? In precisely the same way as those fevers arrest, or rather suspend, the progress of other disorders. The vital process can not compromise with two diseases at the same time. A fit of gastric spasms interrupts a toothache. A toothache relieves a sick headache. The severest cold in the head temporarily yields to an attack of small-pox. Temporarily, I say, for the apparent relief is only a postponement of an interrupted process. During the progress of the alcohol fever (the feverish activity of the organism in its effort to rid itself of a life-endangering poison) Nature has to suspend her operations against a less dangerous foe. But each repetition of that factitious fever is followed by a reaction that suspends the prophylactic effect of the stimulus, and sooner or later the total exhaustion of the vital energies not only leaves the system at the mercy of the original foe, but far less able to resist his attacks. “There is but one appalling conclusion to be deduced from hospital records, medical statistics and the vast array of facts which bear upon the subject,” says Professor Youmans, “it is that among no class of society are the ravages of contagious diseases so wide-spread and deadly as among those who are addicted to the use of alcoholic beverages.”

Is alcohol a digestive tonic? Can we cure an indigestion by the most indigestible of all chemical product! If a starving man drops by the roadside we may get him on his legs by drenching him with a pailful of vitriol, but after rushing ahead for a few hundred steps he will drop again, more helpless than before, by just as much as the brutal stimulus has still further exhausted his little remaining strength. Thus alcohol excites, and eventually tenfold exhausts, the vigor of the digestive system. We can not bully Nature. We can not silence her protests by a fresh provocation. Fevers can be cured by refrigeration; indigestions by fasting and exercise, and at any rate the possible danger of a relapse is infinitely preferable to the sure evils of the poison drug. A few repetitions of the stimulant process may initiate the alcohol vice and sow the seeds of a life-long crop of woe and misery. A single dose of alcoholic tonics may revive the fatal passion of half-cured drunkards and forfeit their hard-earned chance of recovery. That chance, and life itself, often depend on the hope of guarding the system against a relapse of the stimulant-fever, and I would as soon snatch a plank from a drowning man as that last hope from a drunkard.

Alcohol lingers in our hospitals as slavery lingers in South America, as torture lingers in the courts of eastern Europe. Quacks prescribe it because it is the cheapest stimulant; routine doctors prescribe it because its stimulating effect is more infallible than that of other poisons; empirists prescribe it at the special request of their patients, or as a temporary prophylactic; others because they find it in the ready-made formulas of their dispensatories. There is another reason which I might forbear mentioning, but I hold that a half truth is a half untruth, and I will name that other reason. Ignorant patients demand an immediate effect. They send for a doctor, and are to pay his bill; they expect to get their money’s worth in the form of a prompt and visible result. Instead of telling the im-patient that he must commit himself into the hands of Nature, that she will cure him in her own good time, by a process of her own, and that all art can do for him is to give that process the best possible chance, and prevent a willful interruption of it—instead of saying anything of the kind, Sangrado concludes to humor the popular prejudice and to produce the desired prompt and visible effect. For that purpose alcohol is, indeed, the most reliable agent. It will spur the jaded system into a desperate effort to expel the intruder, though the strength expended in that effort should be ever so urgently needed for better purposes. The dose is administered; the patient can not doubt that a “change” of some kind or other has been effected; the habitual drunkard perhaps feels it to be a (momentary) change for the better; at all events the doctor has done something and proved that he can “control the disease.” In some exceptional cases of that sort the influence of imagination may help to cure a believing patient, or Nature may be strong enough to overcome the disease and the stimulant at one effort. And if a doctor can reconcile it with his conscience to risk such experiments how shall we prevent it? As a first step in the right direction we can refuse to swallow his prescription. Physicians have no right to experiment on the health of their patients. They have no right to expect that we shall stake our lives on the dogmas of the old stimulant theory till they have answered the objections of the Naturalistic School.

Drastic drugs are not wholly useless. There are two or three forms of disease which have (thus far) not proved amenable to any non-medicinal cure, and can hardly be trusted to the healing power of Nature:—the lues venera, scabies and prurigo, because, as a French physiologist suggests, “the cause and the symptoms are here, for once, identical, the probable proximate cause being the agency of microscopic parasites, which oppose to the action of the vital forces a life-energy of their own.” Antidotes and certain anodynes will perhaps also hold their own till we find a way of producing their effects by mechanical means.

But with these rare exceptions it is by far the safer as well as shorter way to avoid drugs, reform our habits and not interrupt the course of nature, for, properly speaking, “disease itself is a healing process.” “It is not true,” says Dr. Jennings, “that the human system, when disturbed and deranged in its natural operations, becomes suicidal in its action …; such a view presents an anomaly in the universe of God’s physical government. It is not in accordance with the known operations and manifestations of other natural laws” (“Medical Reform,” p. 29). “The idea that the symptoms of disease must be suppressed,” says Wichat, “has led to innumerable fallacies and blunders.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush said in a public lecture: “I am here incessantly led to make an apology for the instability of the theories and practice of physic, and those physicians generally become the most eminent, who have the soonest emancipated themselves from the tyranny of the schools of physic. Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of disease and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases; we have done more, we have increased their mortality. I will not pause to beg pardon of the faculty, for acknowledging, in this public manner, the weakness of our profession. I am pursuing Truth, and am indifferent whither I am led, if she only is my leader.”

“Our system of therapeutics,” says Jules Virey, “is so shaky (vacillant) that the soundness of the basis itself must be suspected.”

“The success of the homoeopathic practice has astonished many discerning minds,” says Dr. Jennings. “It is unnecessary for my present purpose to give a particular account of the results of homoeopathy; … what I now claim with respect to it is, that a wise and beneficent Providence is using it to expose a deep delusion. In the result of homoeopathic practice, we have evidence in amount, and of a character sufficient, most incontestably to establish the fact that disease is a restorative process, a renovating operation, and that medicine has deceived us. The evidence is full and complete. It does not consist merely of a few isolated cases, whose recovery might be attributed to fortuitous circumstances, but it is a chain of testimony fortified by every possible circumstance. All kinds and grades of disease have passed under the ordeal, and all classes and characters of persons have been concerned in the experiment as patients or witnesses; … while the process of infinitesimally attenuating the drugs was carried to such a ridiculous extent that no one will, on sober reflection, attribute any portion of the cure to the medicine. I claim then, that homoeopathy may be regarded as a providential sealing of the fate of old medical views and practices” (“Medical Reform,” p. 247).

Since physiology was first studied methodically an overwhelming array of facts has, indeed, proved that the disorders of the human organism can be cured more easily without poison drugs; more easily in the very degree that would suggest the suspicion that our entire system of therapeutics is founded upon an erroneous view of disease. The homoeopathists cure their patients with milk-sugar, the exponents of the movement cure with gymnastics, the hydropathists with cold water, the disciples of Dr. Schrodt with exercise and mountain-air, the primitive Christians with prayer, Nature cures her children with rest and a partial suspension of the digestive process (the fasting cure, indicated instinctively by a loss of appetite). Let all repudiate alcohol and all can record swifter, more numerous, and more permanent cures than the disciples of the nostrum school.

Considered in connection with the foregoing remarks, these facts admit only of one conclusion, and after giving the above-mentioned exception the benefit of a (temporary) doubt, we can assert with perfect confidence that drastic drugs have no remedial value, and that every drop of alcohol administered for medicinal purposes, has increased, instead of decreasing, the weight of human misery.

There is no doubt but these views will awaken the anathemas of the poison-worshipers; but it is equally certain that before the end of this century they will become truisms. We should regard the drift of the main current rather than the incidental fluctuations of scientific theories, and all the ripple of conflicting opinions can not conceal the progress of a strong tendency toward total abstinence from all virulent drugs.