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Title: Tobacco and Alcohol
I. It Does Pay to Smoke. II. The Coming Man Will Drink Wine.
Author: John Fiske
Release Date: August 15, 2013 [EBook #43481]
Language: English
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TOBACCO AND ALCOHOL
_I. IT DOES PAY TO SMOKE._
_II. THE COMING MAN WILL DRINK WINE._
BY
JOHN FISKE, M.A., LL.B.
--"_Quæres a me lector amabilis quod plerique sciscitantur laudemne an
vero damnem tabaci usum? Respondeo tabacum optimum esse. Tu mi lector
tabaco utere non abutere._"--MAGNENUS Exercitationes de Tabaco,
_Ticino_, 1658.
NEW YORK:
LEYPOLDT & HOLT.
1869.
ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1868, BY
LEYPOLDT & HOLT,
IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN
DISTRICT OF NEW YORK.
Stereotyped by LITTLE, RENNIE & CO.,
430 Broome St., New York.
PREFACE.
Five weeks ago to-day the idea of writing an essay upon the
physiological effects of Tobacco and Alcohol had never occurred to us.
Nevertheless, the study of physiology and pathology--especially as
relating to the action of narcotic-stimulants upon nutrition--has for
several years afforded us, from time to time, agreeable recreation.
And being called upon, in the discharge of a regularly-recurring duty,
to review Mr. Parton's book entitled "Smoking and Drinking," it seemed
worth while, in justice to the subject, to go on writing,--until the
present volume was the result.
This essay is therefore to be regarded as a review article, rewritten
and separately published. It is nothing more, as regards either the
time and thought directly bestowed upon it, or the completeness with
which it treats the subject. Bearing this in mind, the reader will
understand the somewhat fantastic sub-titles of the book, and the
presence of a number of citations and comments which would ordinarily
be neither essential nor desirable in a serious discussion. Had we
been writing a systematic treatise, with the object of stating
exhaustively our theory of the action of Tobacco and Alcohol, we
should have found it needful to be far more abstruse and technical;
and we should certainly have had no occasion whatever to mention Mr.
Parton's name. As it is, the ideal requirements of a complete
statement have been subordinated--though by no means sacrificed--to
the obvious desideratum of making a summary at once generally
intelligible and briefly conclusive.
The materials used especially in the preparation of this volume were
the following:
Anstie: Stimulants and Narcotics. Philadelphia, 1865.
Lallemand, Duroy, et Perrin: Du Rôle de l'Alcool et des Anesthésiques.
Paris, 1860.
Baudot: De la Destruction de l'Alcool dans l'Organisme. Union
Médicale, Nov. et Déc., 1863.
Bouchardat et Sandras: De la Digestion des Boissons Alcooliques.
Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 1847, tom. XXI.
Duchek: Ueber das Verhalten des Alkohols im thierischen Organismus.
Vierteljahrschrift für die praktische Heilkunde. Prague, 1833.
Von Bibra: Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch. Nürnberg,
1855.
And the works of Taylor, Orfila, Christison, and Pereira, on Materia
Medica and Poisons; of Flint, Dalton, Dunglison, Draper, Carpenter,
Liebig, Lehmann, and Moleschott, on general Physiology; several of the
special works on Tobacco mentioned in the Appendix; and the current
medical journals.
OXFORD STREET, CAMBRIDGE, _November 23, 1868_.
TOBACCO AND ALCOHOL
I.
IT DOES PAY TO SMOKE.
Mr. James Parton having abandoned the habit of smoking, has lately
entered upon the task of persuading the rest of mankind to abandon
it also.[1] His "victory over himself"--to use the favourite
expression--would be incomplete unless followed up by a victory over
others; and he therefore desists for a season from his congenial
labours in panegyrizing Aaron Burr, B. +F. Butler, and other popular
heroes, in order that he may briefly descant upon the evil characters
of tobacco and its kindred stimulants. Some of the sophisms and
exaggerations which he has brought into play while doing so, invite
attention before we attempt what he did not attempt at all--to state
squarely and honestly the latest conclusions of science on the
subject.
[1] Smoking and Drinking. By James Parton. Boston, Ticknor &
Fields, 1868. 12mo, pp. 151.
According to Mr. Parton, tobacco is responsible for nearly all the
ills which in modern times have afflicted humanity. As will be seen,
he makes no half-way work of the matter. He must have the whole loaf,
or he will not touch a crumb. He scorns all carefully-limited,
compromising, philosophical statements of the case. Whatever the
verdict of science may turn out to be, he _knows_ that no good ever
did come, ever does come, or ever will come, from the use of tobacco.
All bad things which tobacco can do, as well as all bad things which
it cannot do--all probable, possible, improbable, impossible,
inconceivable, and nonsensical evil results--are by Mr. Parton
indiscriminately lumped together and laid at its door. It is simply a
diabolical poison which, since he has happily eschewed the use of it,
had better be at once extirpated from the face of the earth. Of all
this, Mr. Parton is so very sure that he evidently thinks any
reasoning on the subject quite superfluous and out of place.
The paucity of his arguments is, however, compensated by the multitude
and hardihood of his assertions. A sailor, he says, should not smoke;
for "why should he go round this beautiful world drugged?" Note the
_petitio principii_ in the use of the word "drugged." That the smoker
is, in the bad sense of the word, drugging himself, is the very point
to be determined; but Mr. Parton feels so sure that he substitutes
a sly question-begging participle for a conscientious course of
investigation. With nine readers out of ten this takes just as well;
and then it is so much easier and safer, you know. Neither should
soldiers smoke, for the glare of their pipes may enable some hostile
picket to take deadly aim at them. Moreover, a "forward car," in which
a crowd of smoking veterans are returning from the seat of war, is a
disgusting place. And "that two and two make four is not a truth more
unquestionably certain than that smoking does diminish a soldier's
power of endurance, and does make him more susceptible to imaginary
dangers." (p. 17.) This statement, by the way, is an excellent
specimen of Mr. Parton's favourite style of assertion. He does not
say that his private opinion on this complex question in nervous
physiology is well supported by observation, experiment and deduction.
He does not say that there is at least a preponderance of evidence in
its favour. He does not call it as probable as any opinion on such an
intricate matter can ever be. But he says "it is as unquestionably
certain as that two and two make four." Nothing less will satisfy him.
Let it no longer be said that, in the difficult science of physiology,
absolute certainty is not attainable!
Then again, the soldier should not smoke, because he ought always to
be in training; and no Harvard oarsman needs to be told "that smoking
reduces the tone of the system and diminishes all the forces of the
body--he _knows_ it." The profound physiological knowledge of the
average Harvard under-graduate it would perhaps seem ungracious to
question; but upon this point, be it said with due reverence, doctors
disagree. We have known athletes who told a different story. Waiving
argument for the present, however, we go on presenting Mr. Parton's
"certainties." One of these is that every man should be kept all his
life in what prizefighters call "condition," which term Mr. Parton
supposes to mean "the natural state of the body, uncontaminated by
poison, and unimpaired by indolence or excess." Awhile ago we had
"drugs," now we have "poison," but not a syllable of argument to show
that either term is properly applicable to tobacco. But Mr. Parton's
romantic idea of the state of the body which accompanies training is
one which is likely to amuse, if it does not edify, the physiologist.
So far from "condition" being the "natural (i.e. healthy) state of the
body," it is an extremely unnatural state. It is a condition which
generally exhausts a man by the time he is thirty-five years old,
rendering him what prizefighters call "stale." It is not "natural," or
normal, for the powers either of the muscular or of the nervous system
to be kept constantly at the maximum. What our minds and bodies need
is intermittent, rhythmical activity. "In books and work and healthful
play," not "in work and work and work alway," should our earlier and
later years be passed; and a man who is always training for a boatrace
is no more likely to hold out in the plenitude of his powers than a
man who is always studying sixteen hours a day. The only reason why
our boys at Yale and Harvard are sometimes permanently benefited by
their extravagant athleticism is that they usually leave off before it
is too late, and begin to live more normally. For the blood to be
continually determined toward the muscles, and for the stomach to be
continually digesting none but concentrated food, is a state of things
by no means favourable to a normal rate and distribution of nutritive
action; and it is upon this normal rate and distribution of nutrition
that life, health and strength depend. It is as assisting this process
that we shall presently show the temperate use of tobacco to be
beneficial. Mr. Parton's idea well illustrates the spirit of that
species of "radical" philosophy which holds its own opinions as
absolutely and universally, not as relatively and partially, true;
which, consequently, is incapable of seeing that one man's meat may be
another man's poison, and which is unable to steer safely by Scylla
without turning the helm so far as to pitch head foremost into
Charybdis. Mr. Parton sees that athletic exercise is healthful, and he
jumps at once to the conclusion that every man should always and in
all circumstances keep himself in training. Such was not the theory of
the ancient Athenians: [Greek: mêdhen agan] was their principle of
life,--the principle by virtue of which they made themselves competent
to instruct mankind.
Having thus said his say about muscular men, Mr. Parton goes on to
declare that smoking is a barbarism. "There is something in the
practice that allies a man with barbarians, and constantly tends to
make him think and talk like a barbarian." We suppose Mr. Parton must
_know_ this; for he does not attempt to prove it, unless indeed he
considers a rather stupid anecdote to be proof. He tells us how he
listened for an hour or so to half a dozen Yale students in one of the
public rooms of a New-Haven hotel, talking with a stable-keeper about
boat-racing. They swore horribly; and of course Mr. Parton believes
that if they had not been smokers they would neither have used profane
language nor have condescended to talk with stable-keepers. _Sancta
simplicitas!_
"We must admit, too, I think, that smoking dulls a man's sense of the
rights of others. Horace Greeley is accustomed to sum up his opinions
upon this branch of the subject by saying: 'When a man begins to
smoke, he immediately becomes a hog.'" Our keen enjoyment of Mr.
Greeley's lightness of touch and refined delicacy of expression should
not be allowed to blind us to the possible incompleteness of his
generalization. What! Milton a hog? Locke, Addison, Scott, Thackeray,
Robert Hall, Christopher North--hogs?
And then smoking is an expensive habit. If a man smoke ten cigars
daily, at twenty cents each, his smoking will cost him from seven to
eight hundred dollars a year. This dark view of the case needs to be
enlivened by a little contrast. "While at Cambridge the other day,
looking about among the ancient barracks in which the students live, I
had the curiosity to ask concerning the salaries of the professors in
Harvard College." Probably he inquired of a _Goody_, or of one of the
_Pocos_ who are to be found earning bread by the sweat of their brows
in the neighbourhood of these venerable shanties, for it seems they
told him that the professors were paid fifteen or eighteen hundred
dollars a year. Had he taken the trouble to step into the steward's
office, he might have learned that they are paid three thousand
dollars a year. Such is the truly artistic way in which Mr. Parton
makes contrasts--$1500 _per annum_ for a professor, $800 for cigars!
Therefore, it does not pay to smoke.
Smoking, moreover, makes men slaves. The Turks and Persians are great
smokers, and they live under a despotic form of government. Q.E.D. The
extreme liberality of Oriental institutions _before_ the introduction
of tobacco Mr. Parton probably thinks so well known as not to require
mention. But still worse, the Turks and Persians are great despisers
of women; and this is evidently because they smoke. For woman and
tobacco are natural enemies. The most perfect of men, the
"highly-groomed" Goethe--as Mr. Parton elegantly calls him--loved
women and hated tobacco. This aspect of the question is really a
serious one. Tobacco, says our reformer, is woman's rival,--and her
successful rival; therefore she hates it. For as Mr. Parton, with
profound insight into the mysteries of the feminine character, gravely
observes, "women do not disapprove their rivals; they hate them." This
"ridiculous brown leaf," then, is not only in general the cause of all
evil, but in particular it is the foe of woman. "It takes off the edge
of virility"!![2] It makes us regard woman from the Black Crook point
of view. If it had not been for tobacco, that wretched phantasmagoria
would not have had a run of a dozen nights. "Science" justifies this
conjecture, and even if it did not, Mr. Parton intimates that he
should make it. Doubtless!
[2] When we first read this remark, we took it for a mere
burst of impassioned rhetoric; but on second thoughts, it
appears to have a meaning. Another knight-errant in
physiology charges tobacco with producing "giddiness,
sickness, vomiting, vitiated taste of the mouth, loose
bowels, diseased liver, congestion of the brain, apoplexy,
palsy, mania, loss of memory, amaurosis, deafness,
nervousness, _emasculation_, and cowardice." Lizars, _On
Tobacco_, p. 29. A goodly array of bugbears, quite aptly
illustrating the remark of one of our medical professors,
that hygienic reformers, in the length of their lists of
imaginary diseases, are excelled only by the itinerant
charlatans who vend panaceas. There is, however, no
scientific foundation for the statement that tobacco "takes
off the edge of virility." The reader who is interested in
this question may consult Orfila, _Toxicologie_, tom. II. p.
527; _Annales d'Hygiène_, tom. XXXVIII.; and a Memoir by
Laycock in the _London Medical Gazette_, 1846, tom. III.
One bit of Mr. Parton's philosophy still calls for brief comment. He
wishes to speak of the general tendency of the poor man's pipe; and he
means to say "that it tends to make him satisfied with a lot which it
is his chief and immediate duty to alleviate,--he ought to hate and
loathe his tenement-house home." A fine specimen of the dyspeptic
philosophy of radicalism! Despise all you have got, because you cannot
have something better. We believe it is sometimes described as the
philosophy of progress. There can of course be no doubt that Mr.
Parton's hod-carrier will work all the better next day, if he only
spends the night in fretting and getting peevish over his
"tenement-house home."
Such then, in sum and substance, is our reformer's indictment against
tobacco. It lowers the tone of our systems, and it makes us contented;
it wastes money, it allies us with barbarians, and it transforms
us--_mira quadam metamorphosi_--into swine. Goethe, therefore, did not
smoke, the Coming Man will not smoke, and General Grant, with tardy
repentance, "has reduced his daily allowance of cigars." And as for
Mr. Buckle, the author of an able book which Mr. Parton rather too
enthusiastically calls "the most valuable work of this century,"--if
Mr. Buckle had but lived, he would doubtless have inserted a chapter
in his "History," in which tobacco would have been ranked with
theology, as one of the obstacles to civilization.
Throughout Mr. Parton's rhapsody, the main question, the question
chiefly interesting to every one who smokes or wishes to smoke, is
uniformly slurred over. Upon the question whether it is unhealthy to
smoke, the Encyclopædias which Mr. Parton has consulted do not appear
to have helped him to an answer. Yet this is a point which, in making
up our minds about the profitableness of smoking, must not be taken
for granted, but scientifically tested.
What, then, does physiology say about this notion--rather widespread
in countries over which Puritanism has passed--that the use of tobacco
is necessarily or usually injurious to health? Simply that it is a
popular delusion--a delusion which even a moderate acquaintance with
the first principles of modern physiology cannot fail to dissipate.
Nay, more; if our interpretation shall prove to be correct, it goes
still further. It says that smoking, so far from being detrimental to
health, is, in the great majority of cases, where excess is avoided,
beneficial to health; in short, that the careful and temperate smoker
is, other things equal, likely to be more vigorous, more cheerful, and
more capable of prolonged effort than the man who never smokes.
We do not pretend to _know_ all this, nor are we "as certain of it as
that two and two make four." Such certainty, though desirable, is not
to be had in complex physiological questions. But we set down these
propositions as being, so far as we can make out, in the present state
of science, the verdict of physiology in the matter. Future inquiry
may reverse that verdict; but as the physiologic evidence now stands,
there is a quite appreciable preponderance in favor of the practice of
smoking. Such was our own conclusion long before we had ever known, or
cared to know, the taste of a cigar or pipe; and such it remains after
eight years' experience in smoking. We shall endeavor concisely to
present the _rationale_ of the matter, dealing with some general
doctrines likely to assist us both now and later, when we come to
speak of alcohol.
We do not suppose it necessary to overhaul and quote all that the
illustrious Pereira, in his "Materia Medica,"[3] and Messrs. Johnston
and Lewes, in their deservedly popular books, have said about the
physiologic action of tobacco. Their works may easily be consulted by
any one who is interested in the subject; and their verdict is in the
main confined to the general proposition that, from the temperate use
of tobacco in smoking, no deleterious results have ever been proved to
follow. More modern and far more elaborate data for forming an opinion
are to be found in the great treatise of Dr. Anstie, on "Stimulants
and Narcotics," which we shall make the basis of the following
argument.[4]
[3] "I am not acquainted with any well-ascertained ill
effects resulting from the habitual practice of
smoking."--Pereira, _Materia Medica_, vol. ii., p. 1431.
Tobacco "is used in immense quantities over the whole world
as an article of luxury, without any bad effect having ever
been clearly traced to it."--Christison on _Poisons_, p.
730. These two short sentences, from such consummate masters
of their science as Christison and Pereira, should far more
than outweigh all the volumes of ignorant denunciation which
have been written by crammers, smatterers, and puritanical
reformers, from King James down.
[4] Only a basis, however. The argument as applied to
tobacco, though a necessary corollary from Dr. Anstie's
doctrines, is in no sense Dr. Anstie's argument. We are
ourselves solely responsible for it.
In the first place, we want some precise definition of the quite
vaguely understood word, "narcotic." What is a narcotic? _A narcotic
is any poison which, when taken in sufficient quantities into the
system, produces death by paralysis._ The tyro in physiology knows
that death must start either from the lungs, the heart, or the nervous
system. Now a narcotic is anything which, in due quantity, kills by
killing the nervous system. When death is caused by too great a
proportion of carbonic acid in the air, it begins at the lungs; but
when it is caused by a dose of prussic acid, it begins at the medulla
oblongata, the death of which causes the heart and lungs to stop
acting. Prussic acid is, therefore, a narcotic; and so are strychnine,
belladonna, aconite, nicotine, sulphuric ether, chloroform, alcohol,
opium, thorn-apple, betel, hop, lettuce, tea, coffee, coca, hemp,
chocolate, and many other substances. All these, taken in requisite
doses, will kill by paralysis; and all of them, taken in lesser but
considerable doses, will induce a state of the nerves known as
narcosis, which is nothing more nor less than incipient paralysis.
Every man who smokes tobacco, or drinks tea or coffee, until his hands
are tremulous and his stomach-nerves slightly depressed, has just
started on the road to paralysis: he may never travel farther on it,
but he has at least turned the corner. Every man who drinks ale, wine,
or spirit until his face is flushed and his forehead moist, has
slightly paralyzed himself. Alcoholic drunkenness is paralysis. The
mental and emotional excitement, falsely called exaltation, is due,
not to stimulation, but to paralysis of the cerebrum. The unsteady
gait and groping motion of the hands are due to paralysis of the
cerebellum. The feverish pulse and irregular respiration are due to
paralysis of the medulla oblongata. The flushed face and tremulous,
distressed stomach, are due to paralysis of the sympathetic ganglia.
And when a person is "dead-drunk," his inability to perform the
ordinary reflex acts of locomotion and grasping is due in part to
paralysis of the spinal centres. The coma, or so-called sleep of
drunkenness, is perfectly distinct from true reparative sleep, being
the result of serious paralysis of the cerebrum, and closely allied to
delirium.[5] Now, what we have stated in detail concerning alcohol is
also true of tobacco. A fatal dose of nicotine kills, just like
prussic acid, by paralyzing the medulla, and thus stopping the heart's
beating. The ordinary narcotic dose does not produce such notable
effects as the dose of alcohol, because it is hardly possible to take
enough of it. Excessive smoking does not make a man maudlin, but it
causes restless wakefulness, which is a symptom of cerebral paralysis,
and is liable, in rare cases, to end in coma. Its action on the
cerebellum and spinal cord cannot be readily stated; but its effect on
the medulla and sympathetic is most notable, being seen in depression
or feeble acceleration of the pulse, trembling, nausea of the stomach,
and torpidity of the liver and intestines. Nearly or quite all of
these effects producible by tobacco, are producible also, in even a
heightened degree, by narcotic doses of tea and coffee. A concentrated
dose of tea will produce a paralytic shock; and a single cup of very
strong coffee is sometimes enough to cause alarming disorder in the
heart's action. All these narcotic effects, we repeat, are instances
of paralytic depression. _In no case are they instances of stimulus
followed by reaction; but whenever a narcotic dose is taken, the
depressive paralytic action begins as soon as the dose is absorbed by
the blood-vessels_. The cheerful and maudlin drunkard is not under
the action of stimulus. His rapid, irregular, excited mental action is
no more entitled to be called "exaltation" than is the delirium of
typhoid fever. In the one case and in the other, we have not
stimulation but depression of the vitality of the cerebrum; in both
cases, the nutrition is seriously impaired; in both cases, molecular
disorganization of the nerve-material is predominant.
[5] Sleep is caused by a diminution of blood in the
cerebrum; stupor and delirium, as well as _insomnia_, or
nocturnal wakefulness, are probably caused by excess of
blood in the cerebrum. We feel sleepy after a heavy meal,
because the stomach, intestines and liver appropriate blood
which would ordinarily be sent to the brain. But after a
drunken debauch, a man sinks in stupor because the brain is
partially congested. The blood rushes to the paralyzed part,
just as it rushes to an inflamed part; and in the paralysis,
as in the inflammation, nutrition and the products of
nutrition are lowered. The habitual drunkard lowers the
quality of his nervous system, and impairs its
sensitiveness,--hence the necessity of increasing the dose.
It will be seen, therefore, that it is not the function of a
narcotic, as such, to induce sleep, though in a vast number
of cases it may induce stupor. The headache felt on awaking
from stupor, is the index of impaired nutrition, quite the
reverse of the vigor felt on arising from sleep.
So much concerning narcotics has been established, with vast and
profound learning, by Dr. Anstie. No doubt, by this time, the reader
is beginning to rub his eyes and ask, Is this the way in which you are
going to show that smoking is beneficial? You define tobacco as a
poison which causes paralysis, and then assure us that it pays to
smoke! It is true, this has at first sight a paradoxical look; but as
the reader proceeds further, he will see that we are not indulging
either in paradoxes or in sophisms. We wish him to take nothing for
granted, but merely to follow attentively our exposition of the case.
We have indeed called tobacco a poison,--and so it is, if taken in
narcotic doses. We have accused it of producing paralysis,--and so it
does, when taken in adequate narcotic doses. We would now call
attention to a property of narcotics, which is well enough known to
all physiologists, but is usually quite misapprehended or ignored by
popular writers on alcohol and tobacco.[6] We allude to the fact that
narcotics, when taken in certain small quantities, do not behave as
narcotics, but as _stimulants_; and that they will in such cases
produce the exact reverse of a narcotic effect. Instead of lowering
nutrition, they will raise it; instead of paralyzing, they will
invigorate. Taken in a stimulant dose, tobacco is not only not a
producer, it is an averter, of paralysis. It is not only not a poison,
but it is a healthful, reparatory stimulus.
[6] Mr. Lizars (On _Tobacco_, p. 54) has the impudence to
cite Pereira (vol. ii. p. 1426) as an opponent of smoking,
because he calls nicotine a deadly poison! And on p. 58 he
similarly misrepresents Johnston. This is the way in which
popular writers contrive to marshal an array of scientific
authorities on their side. In the case of tobacco, however,
it is difficult to find physiologists who will justify the
popular clamour. They have a way of taking the opposite
view; and when Mr. Lizars cannot get rid of them in any
other way, he insinuates that all writings in favour of
tobacco "have been _got up_ from more than questionable
motives." (p. 137.) This is in the richest vein of what, for
want of a better word, we have called radicalism; and may be
compared with Mr. Parton's belief that physicians recommend
alcoholic drinks because they like to fatten on human
suffering! (_Smoking and Drinking_, p. 56.)
It is desirable that this point should be thoroughly understood before
we advance a step farther. Here is the _pons asinorum_ in the study of
narcotics, but it must be crossed if we would get at the truth
concerning alcohol and tobacco. Alcohol is a poison, says the
teetotaler, who means well, but has not studied the human organism;
alcohol is a poison, and once a poison always a poison. Nothing can
seem more logical or reasonable, so long as one knows nothing about
the subject. A quart of brandy is admitted to be poison; is not,
therefore, a spoonful of brandy also poison? We reply, by no means.
Physiological questions are not to be settled by formal logic. Here
the quantity is the all-essential element to be taken into the
account. Common salt, in large doses, is a virulent poison; in lesser
doses it is a powerful emetic; in small doses it is a gentle
stimulant, and an article of food absolutely essential to the
maintenance of life. In the spirit of the teetotaler's logic, then, it
may be asked, If a pound of salt is a poison, is not a grain of salt
also a poison? We reply, call it what you please, you cannot support
life without it. So from the poisonous character of the quart of
brandy, the poisonous character of the spoonful is by no means a
legitimate inference. The evil effects of the small dose are to be
ascertained by experiment, not to be taken for granted. Logic is
useful in the hands of those who understand the subject they reason
about; but in other hands it sometimes leads to queer results. It was
logic that used up the one-hoss shay.
The general principle to guide us here is that of Claude Bernard, that
whatever substance or action, in due amount, tends to improve
nutrition, may, in excessive amount, tend to damage nutrition. In the
vast majority of cases the difference between food and poison, between
beneficent and malignant action, is only a difference of quantity.
Oxygen is the all-important stimulus, without which nutrition could
not be carried on for a moment. It constitutes about one-fifth of our
atmospheric air. Let us now step into an atmosphere of pure oxygen,
and we shall speedily rue such a radical proceeding. We shall live so
fast that waste will soon get ahead of repair, and our strength will
be utterly exhausted. The effect of sunlight on the optic nerve is to
stimulate the medulla, and increase thereby the vigor of the
circulation. But too intense a glare produces blindness and dizziness.
The carpenter's thumb, by friction against the tools he uses, becomes
over-nourished and tough; but if the friction be too continuous, there
is lowered nutrition and inflammation. Moderate exercise enlarges the
muscles; exercise carried beyond the point of fatigue wastes them. The
stale prize-fighter and the overworked farmer are, from a physical
point of view, pitiable specimens of manhood. A due amount of rich
food strengthens the system and renders it superior to disease; an
excessive amount of rich food weakens the system, and opens the door
for all manner of aches and ailments. A pinch of mustard, eaten with
meat, stimulates the lining of the stomach, and probably aids
digestion; but a mustard poultice lowers the vitality of any part to
which it is applied. Moderate emotional excitement is a healthful
stimulus, both to mind and body; but intense and prolonged excitement
is liable to produce delirium, mania, or paralysis. _Ne quid nimis_,
therefore, the maxim of the wise epicurean, is also the golden rule of
hygiene. If you would keep a sound mind in a sound body, do not rush
to extremes. Steer cautiously between Scylla and Charybdis, and do not
get wrecked upon the one or swallowed up in the other.
Few persons who have not been specially educated in science have ever
learned this great lesson of Materia Medica, "that everything depends
on the size of the dose." It is not merely that a small dose will
often produce effects differing in degree from those produced by a
large dose; nor is it merely that the small dose will often produce an
effect differing in kind from that of the large dose; but it is that
the small dose will often produce effects diametrically opposite and
antagonistic to those of the large dose. The small dose may even serve
as a partial antidote to the large dose. The adage concerning the hair
of the dog that has bitten us, embodies the empirical wisdom of our
ancestors on this subject. Especially is this true of all the
substances classed as narcotics. In doses of a certain size, they, one
and all, produce effects exactly the reverse of narcotic. If anything
is entitled to be called a deadly narcotic poison, it is strychnia,
which, by paralyzing the spinal cord, induces tetanic convulsions: yet
minute doses of strychnia have been used with signal success in the
cure of hemiplegic paralysis. In teething children, the pressure upon
the dental branches of the trigeminal nerve sometimes causes an
irritation so great as partly to paralyze the medulla, inducing clonic
convulsions, and perhaps death by interference with the heart's
action.[7] In these cases, alcohol has been frequently used with
notable efficacy, averting as it does the paralysis of the medulla.
Epileptic fits, choreic convulsions, and muscular spasms--such as
colic, and spasmodic asthma--are also often relieved by the tonic or
anti-paralytic action of alcohol. And how often has the temperate
smoker, after some occasion of distressing excitement, his limbs and
viscera trembling, his nerves "all unstrung," or incipiently
paralyzed,--how often has the temperate smoker found his whole system
soothed and quieted, and the steadiness of his nerves restored, by a
single pipe of tobacco! That this is due to its action as a
counteracter of paralysis is shown by the fact that tobacco has been
successfully used in tetanus,[8] in spasm of _rima glottidis_,[9]
in spasmodic asthma,[10] and in epilepsy.[11] For these phenomena
physiology has but one explanation. They are due to the fact that
narcotics, in small doses, either nourish, or facilitate the normal
nutrition of the nervous system. They restore its equilibrium,
enabling it, with diminished effort, to discharge its natural
functions. And anything which performs this office is, in modern
physiology, called a _stimulant_.
[7] Clendon, _On the Causes of the Evils of Infant
Dentition_.
[8] Curling, _On Tetanus_, p. 168; Earle, in _Med. Chir.
Trans._, vol. vi., p. 92; and O'Beirne, in _Dublin Hospital
Reports_, vols. i. and ii.
[9] Wood, _U.S. Dispensatory_.
[10] Sigmond, in _Lancet_, vol. ii., p. 253.
[11] Currie, _Med. Rep._, vol. i., p. 163.
Here then we have obtained an important amendment of our notion of a
narcotic. A narcotic is a substance which, taken in the requisite
dose, causes paralysis. But we have seen that by diminishing the dose
we at last reach a point where the narcotic entirely ceases to act as
a narcotic and becomes a stimulant. What then is a stimulant? There is
a prejudice afloat which interferes with the proper apprehension of
this word. People call alcohol, indiscriminately, a stimulant; and
when a man gets drunk, he is incorrectly said to be stimulating
himself; stimulants are therefore looked at askance, as things which
demoralize. The reader is already in a position to know better than
this. He sees already that it is not stimulus but narcosis which is
ruining the drunkard. Nevertheless, that he may understand thoroughly
what a stimulant is, we must give further explanation and
illustration.
Food and stimulus are the two great, equally essential factors or
co-efficients in the process of nutrition. We mean by this, that in
order to nourish your system and make good its daily waste, you need
both food and stimulus. You must have both, or you cannot support
life. Day by day, in every act of life, be it in the acts of working
and thinking which go on consciously, or be it in the acts of
digestion and respiration which go on unconsciously, in the mere
keeping ourselves alive, we are continually using up and rendering
worthless the materials of which our bodies are composed. We use up
tissue as an engine uses up fuel; and we therefore need constant
coaling. Tissue once used is no better than ashes; it must be
excreted, and food must be taken to form new tissue. Now the wonderful
process by which digested food is taken up from the blood by the
tissues--each tissue taking just what will serve it and no more,
muscle-making stuff to muscle, bone-making stuff to bone, nerve-making
stuff to nerve--is called assimilation, nutrition, or repair. It is
according as waste or repair predominates that we are feeble or
strong, useless or efficient. When repair is greatly in excess, as it
usually is in childhood and youth, we grow. When waste is greatly in
excess, we die of consumption, gangrene, or starvation. When the daily
repair slightly outweighs the daily waste, we are healthy and
vigorous. When the daily repair is not quite enough to replace the
daily waste, we are feeble, easily wearied, and liable to be assailed
by some illness.
Now, in order to carry on this great process of nutrition, we have
said that food and stimulus are equally indispensable. We must have
food or we can have nothing to assimilate; but we must also have
stimulus, or no assimilation will take place. _The unstimulated tissue
will not assimilate food._ The nutritive material rushes by it,
unsought for and unappropriated, and no repair takes place. There are
some people whom no amount of eating will build up: what they need is
not more food, but more nerve stimulus; they doubtless eat already
more than their tissues are able to assimilate. In pulmonary
consumption, the chief monster which we have to fight against is
impaired nutrition, the tubercles being only a secondary and
derivative symptom.[12] The problem before us, in dealing with
consumption, is to improve nutrition, to make the tissues assimilate
food. And to this end we prescribe, for example, whisky and milk--a
food which easily reaches the tissues, and a stimulant which urges
them to take up the food sent to them. We define, therefore, a
stimulant as _any substance which, brought to bear in proper
quantities upon the nervous system, facilitates nutrition_.
[12] Indeed, there are many fatal cases in which tubercles
never appear. See Niemeyer on _Pulmonary Phthïsis_.
At the head of all stimulants stands oxygen, concerning which, for
further illustration, we shall quote the following passage from Dr.
Anstie:
"It needs but a glance at the vital condition of different populations
in any country to arrive at a tolerably correct idea of the virtues of
oxygen as a promoter of health and a curer of disease. If we compare
the physical condition of the inhabitants of a London alley, an
agricultural village, and a breezy sea-side hamlet, we shall recognize
the truth of the description which assigns to it the same therapeutic
action as is exercised by drugs, to which the name of stimulant seems
more naturally applicable than to such a familiar agent as one which
we are constantly breathing in the common air. A child that has been
bred in a London cellar may be taken to possess a constitution which
is a type of all the evil tendencies which our stimulants are intended
to obviate.... It is highly suggestive to find that that very same
quiet and perfect action of the vital functions, without undue waste,
without pain, and without excessive material growth, is precisely what
we produce, when we produce any useful effect, by the administration
of stimulants, though, as might be expected, our artificial means are
weak and uncertain in their operation, compared with the great natural
stimulus of life."[13]
[13] _Stimulants and Narcotics_, p. 144.
Stimulus implies no undue exaltation of the activity of any part of
the organism. In complete health all parts of the body should work
together in unhindered co-operation. Any undue exaltation of a
particular function--excessive brain-action, excessive muscular-nutrition,
excessive deposit of fat--is a symptom of lowered life, in which the
co-ordinating control of the whole system over its several parts is
diminished. Stimulus, on the other hand, implies an increase of the
co-ordinating and controlling power. Dr. Anstie therefore recommends
that the word "overstimulation" be disused, as unphilosophical and
self-contradictory.
In yet one further particular, current notions need to be rectified
before we can proceed. _In no case is the action of a stimulant
followed by a depressive reaction._ This seems at first like a
paradox. Physiologists have in times past maintained the contrary; and
some have even ventured to apply to the phænomena of stimulation the
dynamic law that "action and reaction are equal and opposite." But in
physiology we shall not be helped much by the theorems of mechanics.
In no case is the stimulus followed by any other "recoil" than that
which is implied in the mere gradual cessation of its action, just as
in the case of food which has been eaten, assimilated, and used up. We
quote the following from Dr. Anstie:--"We often hear the effects of
strong irritation of the skin, or the mucous surfaces, quoted as an
example of the way in which action and reaction follow each other. The
immediate effect of such treatment (it is said) is to quicken the
circulation and improve the vital condition of the part, but its
_ultimate_ result is a complete stagnation of the vital activities in
the irritated tissues. The real explanation of the matter is, however,
very different. Mild stimulation of the skin (as by friction, warm
liniments, &c.) has no tendency to produce subsequent depression; nor
has mild stimulation of the mucous membranes (as by the mustard we eat
with our roast beef). But the application of an irritant strong enough
to produce a morbid depression at all, produces it _from the first_.
Thus the cantharidine of a blister has no sooner become absorbed
through the epidermis than it _at once_ deprives a certain area of
tissue of its vitality to a considerable extent, as is explained by
the researches of Mr. Lister.... Here is no stimulation first and
depressive recoil afterward, but unmitigated depression from the
first."[14] "What has been commonly spoken of as the _recoil_ from the
stimulant action of a true narcotic is, in fact, simply the advent of
narcosis owing to a large impregnation of the blood with the agent
after the occurrence of stimulation, owing to a small one. Thus a man
drinking four ounces or six ounces of brandy gradually, has not in
reality taken a truly narcotic dose till perhaps half the evening has
worn away; previously to that he has not been 'indulging in narcotism'
at all; nor, had he stopped then, would any after depression have
followed, for he might have taken no more than two ounces of brandy,
equal perhaps to one ounce of alcohol. But he chose to swallow the
extra two ounces or four ounces, thus impregnating his blood with a
narcotic mixture capable of acting upon nervous tissue so as to render
it incapable of performing its proper functions. _The narcosis has no
relation to the stimulation but one of accidental sequence. This is
proved by the fact that in cases where a narcotic dose is absorbed
with great rapidity, no signs of preliminary stimulation occur._"[15]
[14] _Stimulants and Narcotics_, p. 148.
[15] Id. p. 224.
This disposes of the popular objection to stimulants--based upon the
long-exploded theories of vitalistic physiology[16]--that every
stimulus is followed by a reaction. It is seen that when a man feels
ill and depressed after the use of alcohol or tobacco, it is because
he has not stimulated but narcotized himself. We challenge any person,
not hopelessly dyspeptic, to produce from his own experience any
genuine instance of physical or mental depression as the result of a
half-pint of pure wine taken with his dinner,[17] or of one or two
pipes of mild tobacco smoked after it.
[16] "The origin of the belief that stimulation is
necessarily followed by a depressive recoil is obviously to
be found in the old vitalistic ideas. It is our old
acquaintance, the Archæus, whose exhaustion, after his
violent efforts in resentment of the goadings which he has
endured, is represented in modern phraseology by the term
'depressive reaction.' This idea once being firmly
established in the medical mind, the change from professed
vitalism to dynamical explanations of physiology has not
materially shaken its hold." Id. p. 146. An interesting
example of the way in which quite obsolete and forgotten
theories will continue clandestinely to influence men's
conclusions. The subject is well treated by Lemoine, _Le
Vitalisme et l'Animisme de Stahl_. Paris, 1864.
[17] "From good wine, in moderate quantities, there is no
reaction whatever."--Brinton, _Treatise on Food and
Digestion_.
Let us not, however, indulge in sweeping statements. We have expressed
ourselves with caution, but a still further limitation needs to be
made. There are a few persons who are never stimulated, but always
poisonously depressed, by certain particular narcotics. There are a
few persons--ourselves among the number--in whom a very temperate dose
of coffee will often give rise to well-defined symptoms of narcosis.
There are others in whom even the smallest quantity of alcoholic
liquor will produce giddiness and flushing of the face. And there are
still others upon whom tobacco, no matter how minute the dose, acts as
a narcotic poison. But such cases are extremely rare; and it is
needless to urge that such persons should conscientiously refrain,
once and always, from the use of the narcotic which thus injuriously
affects them. Our friendly challenge, above given, is addressed to the
vast majority of people; and thus limited, it may be allowed to stand.
We have now defined a narcotic; we have seen that narcotics, in
certain doses, will act as stimulants, and we have defined a
stimulant. Until one's ideas upon these points are rendered precise,
there is little hope of understanding the ordinary healthy action
either of tobacco or of alcohol. But the reader who has followed us
thus far will find himself sufficiently prepared for the special
inquiry into the stimulant effects of these substances. Confining
ourselves, for the present, to tobacco, we shall find that by
assisting the nutritive reparatory process, it conforms throughout to
the definition of a true stimulant.
What do we do to ourselves when we smoke a cigar or pipe? In the first
place, we stimulate, or increase the normal molecular activity of,
the sympathetic system of nerves. By so doing we slightly increase
the secretion of saliva, and of the gastric,[18] pancreatic, and
intestinal juices. We accomplish these all-important secretory actions
with a smaller discharge of nerve force: we economize nerve force in
digestion. And by this we mean to say that we perform the work of
digesting food just as well as before, and still have more of the
co-ordinating and controlling nerve-power left with which to perform
the other functions of life. Thus at the outset tobacco exhibits
itself as an _economizer of life_. Such is the inevitable inference
from its stimulant action on the sympathetic. From the distribution of
the sympathetic fibres, we deem it a fair inference that the
bile-secreting function of the liver is also facilitated; but of this
there is less direct evidence.[19] We can now understand why a pipe or
cigar dissipates the feeling of heaviness ensuing upon a dinner, or
other hearty meal; and when we recollect how instant is the relief, we
can form some notion of the amount of nerve-force which is thus
liberated from the task of digestion. We are thus also reminded of the
hygienic rule that smoking must be done after eating, and not, in
ordinary cases, upon an empty stomach. If we smoke when the stomach is
empty and quiescent, the stimulated secretion of the alimentary juices
is physiologically wasteful; and, moreover, the much more rapid
absorption of nicotine by the blood-vessels increases the liability to
narcotic effects. It is upon this very principle that the same amount
of wine may stimulate at dinner, but narcotize when taken in the
forenoon.
[18] "It is a positive fact that the gastric secretion can
at any time be produced by simply stimulating the salivary
glands with tobacco."--Lewes, _Physiology of Common Life_,
vol. i. p. 192. The gastric secretion is also stimulated by
the action of tobacco on the pneumogastric or eighth pair of
nerves.
[19] A possible means of testing this inference would be the
judicious employment of smoking as a dietetic measure in
cases of jaundice. This distressing disease occurs when the
torpid liver secretes too little bile. The biliverdine,
which would ordinarily be taken up to make bile, remains in
the blood until, seeking egress through the sweat-glands, it
colours the skin yellow. In the case of novices, however,
great care would need to be taken; as unskilful smoking is
very likely to induce narcosis.
Thus far we find tobacco to be a friend and not an enemy. Now, in the
second place, when we smoke, we stimulate the medulla oblongata, and
through this we send a wave of stimulus down the pneumogastric nerve,
and this makes the heart's action easier. One of the earliest
stimulant effects of tobacco to be noted is the slightly increased
frequency and strength of the pulse.[20] A narcotic dose produces
quite the opposite effect. It begins by greatly increasing the
frequency while diminishing the strength, so as to make a feeble,
fluttering pulse; and it ends by reducing the frequency likewise.
After some years of temperate smoking we accidentally felt, for the
first time, the narcotic effects of tobacco. Eight or nine cigars
(large twenty-cent ones, such as Mr. Parton delights in the
recollection of) smoked consecutively while taking a cold midnight
drive, were followed by unmistakable symptoms of narcosis. Along with
the muscular tremour of the stomach, much more acute than that of
ordinary nausea, it was observed that the pulse, normally strong and
regular at 80, had been reduced to 69, and was feeble and flickering.
Similar, no doubt, are the symptoms which ordinarily worry the novice,
in whom acute narcosis is liable to result from the lack of skill with
which he draws in too large a quantity of the narcotic constituents of
his cigar. The effects of tobacco, through the medulla and
pneumogastric, upon the heart, are among its most notable effects. A
dose of pure nicotine stops the heart instantly, a narcotic dose
interferes with its action, but a stimulant dose facilitates it. The
same results are attainable by means of electricity.[21] A powerful
current through the pneumogastric of a frog or rabbit will stop the
heart, a less powerful current will slacken it, a slight current will
somewhat accelerate it. Emotional effects are precisely similar.
Sudden overwhelming joy or sorrow may operate as a true narcotic,
arresting the heart's contractions, while steady diffusive pleasure
always facilitates them.
[20] See a paper by Dr. E. Smith, read before the British
Association in 1862.
[21] See an admirable paper by Lewes in the _Fortnightly
Review_, May 15th, 1865.
The stimulant action of tobacco upon the heart is precisely the same
as that of sunlight, which, by inciting the nervous expanse of the
retina, indirectly strengthens and accelerates the pulse. So far as
the circulation is concerned, there is no difference between the two.
The one stimulus may indeed be popularly called "natural," while the
other is called "artificial," but such a distinction is
physiologically meaningless. The molecular action is the same and the
consequences to the organism are the same in both cases. The heart's
normal action being facilitated, the blood is poured more vigorously
through every artery, every vein, and every network of capillaries.
Every tissue receives with greater promptness its quota of assimilable
nutriment. And, the web-like plexuses of nerve-fibres distributed
throughout the tissues being simultaneously stimulated, the work of
nutrition goes on with enhanced vigour and efficacy. Nor is it
possible for the excreting organs to escape the influence. Lungs,
skin, and kidneys must be alike incited; and the removal from the
blood of noxious disintegrated matters, the products of organic waste,
is thus hastened.
So much is to be inferred from the stimulant action of tobacco upon
the medulla. Of all this complicated benefit, the brain receives
perhaps the largest share. The brain receives one-fifth, or according
to some authorities one-third, of all the blood that is pumped from
the heart. More than any other organ it demands for its due nutrition
a prompt supply of arterial blood; and more than any other organ it
partakes of the advantages resulting from vigorous circulation.
The stimulant action of tobacco upon the spinal cord and the cerebral
hemispheres is less conspicuous. Yet even here its familiar influence
in stilling nervous tremour and allaying nocturnal wakefulness is good
testimony to its essentially beneficent character. Wakefulness and
tremour are alike symptoms of diminished vitality; and the agent which
removes them is not to be called, as Mr. Parton in his mediæval
language calls it, "hostile to the vital principle."
So much for the net results of the stimulant action of tobacco. So far
we have travelled on firm ground, and we have not found much to
countenance Mr. Parton's view of the subject. But now some curious
inquirer may ask, what _is_ this stimulant action? What is the
physiological expression for it, reduced to its lowest terms? Here we
must keep still, or else venture upon ground that is very unfamiliar
and somewhat hypothetical. There is no help for it; for we cannot yet
give the physiological expression for unstimulated nervous action,
reduced to its lowest terms. We know what kind of work nerves perform,
but how they perform it we can as yet only guess. Nor, as far as the
practical bearings of our subject are concerned, does it matter
whether this abstruse point be settled or not. Still, even upon this
dark subject recent research has thrown some gleams of light. A
nerve-centre is a place where force is liberated by the lapse of the
chemically-unstable nerve-molecules into a state of relative
stability.[22] To raise them to their previous unstable state, thereby
enabling them to fall again and liberate more force, is the function
of food. Now our own hypothesis is, that tobacco and other narcotic
stimulants enable force to be liberated by the isomeric transformation
of the highly complex nerve-molecules, which retain in the process
their state of relative instability, and are thus left competent to
send forth a second discharge of force without the aid of food.
[22] We fear that this explanation will be rather
unintelligible to the general reader. But it is hardly
practicable for us to insert here a disquisition on
physiological chemistry. Those who are familiar with modern
physiology will readily catch our meaning. Those who are not
may skip, if they choose, this parenthetical paragraph.
In support of this hypothesis we have the well-known fact that
tobacco, like tea, coffee, alcohol and coca, universally retards
organic waste. These substances effect this result in all the tissues,
and more especially may they be expected to accomplish it in nervous
tissue, where their action is so conspicuously manifest.
Thus is explained the familiar action of narcotic-stimulants in
relieving weariness. Weariness, in its origin, is either muscular or
nervous. It implies a diminution--owing to failing nutrition--of the
total amount of contractile or of nervous force in the organism; and
it shows that the weary person must either go to sleep or eat
something. Now every one knows how a cup of tea, a glass of wine, or a
cigar, dispels weariness. Of the three agents, tobacco is perhaps the
most efficacious, and it can produce its effect in only one
way--namely, by economizing nervous force, and arresting the
disintegration of tissue.
Thus also is explained the marvellous food-action of these substances.
Tea and coffee enable a man to live on less beefsteak. The Peruvian
mountaineer, chewing his coca-leaf, accomplishes incredibly long
tramps without stopping to eat. And every hardy soldier, in spite of
Mr. Parton, has that within him which tells him that he can better
endure severe marches and wearisome picket-service if he now and then
lights his pipe. The personal experience of any one man is, we are
aware, not always conclusive; but our own, so far as it goes, bears
out the general conclusion. It was when we were engaged in severe
daily mental labour, that we first conceived the idea of employing
tobacco as a means of husbanding our resources. Narcosis being
steadily avoided, the experiment was completely, even unexpectedly,
successful. Not only was the daily fatigue sensibly diminished, but
the recurrent periods of headache, gloom, and nervous depression were
absolutely and finally done away with. That this result was due to
improved nutrition was shown by the fact that, during the first three
months after the habit of smoking was adopted, the average weight of
the body was increased by twenty-four pounds--an increase which has
been permanent. No other dietetic or hygienic change was made at the
time, by which the direct effects of the tobacco might have been
complicated and obscured.
The statement that smoking increases the average weight of the
body[23] is not, however, universally true. We have here an excellent
illustration of the impracticability of laying down sweeping rules in
physiology. Many persons find their weight notably diminished by the
use of tobacco; and we frequently hear it said that smoking will not
do for thin people, although for those who are fleshy it may not be
injurious. In this there is a very natural but very gross confusion of
ideas, which a little reflection upon the subject will readily clear
up. It is true that moderate smoking sometimes increases and sometimes
diminishes the weight; and it is no less true that in each case the
result is the index of heightened nutrition! This seems, of course,
paradoxical. But physiology, quite as much as astronomy, is a science
which is constantly obliging us to reconsider and rectify our crude
off-hand conceptions.
[23] "Tobacco, when the food is sufficient to preserve the
weight of the body, increases that weight, and when the food
is not sufficient, and the body in consequence loses weight,
tobacco restrains that loss." Hammond, _Physiological
Effects of Alcohol and Tobacco_, Am. Journal of Medical
Sciences, tom. XXXII. N.S., p. 319.
It is by no means true that increase of the tissues in bulk and
density is always a sign of improved health. We are accustomed to
congratulate each other upon looking plump and rosy. But too much
rosiness may be a symptom of ill-health; and, similarly with
plumpness, there is a point beyond which obesity is a mere weariness
to the spirit. Nor does a person need to become as rotund as Wouter
Van Twiller in order to reach and pass this point. Many persons, who
are not actually corpulent, would lose weight if their nutrition could
be improved. And the explanation is quite simple.
Normal nutrition is not merely the repair of tissue: it is the repair
of all the tissues in the body _in due proportion_. This is a very
essential qualification. Fibrous and areolar tissue, muscle, nerve,
and fat are daily and hourly wasting in various degrees; and the
repair, whether great or small, must be nicely proportioned to the
waste in each tissue. If a pound is added to the weight of the body,
it makes all the difference in the world whether one ounce is muscle,
another ounce nerve, a third ounce fat, and so on, or whether the
whole pound is fat. When one tissue gets more than its fair share, the
chances are that all the others must go a-begging. The co-ordinating,
controlling power of the organism over its several parts is
diminished,--which is the same as saying that nutrition is impaired.
Evidence of this soon appears in the circumstance that the deposit of
adipose tissue is no longer confined to the proper places. Fat begins
to accumulate all over the body, in localities where little or no fat
is wanted, and notably about the stomach and diaphragm, causing
laborious movement of the thorax and wheezing respiration. When a man
gets into this state, it is a sign that the ratio between the waste
and the repair of his tissues has become seriously dislocated. You can
relieve him of his fat only by improving his nutrition. The German
who drinks his forty glasses of lager bier _per diem_ is said to be
bloated; and we have heard it gravely surmised that the ale, getting
into his system, swells him up--as if the human body were a sort of
bladder or balloon! The explanation is not quite so simple. But it
is easy to see how this immense quantity of liquid, continually
loading the stomach and intestines, and entailing extra labour upon
all the excreting organs, should so damage the assimilative powers
as to occasion an excessive deposit of coarse fat and of flabby,
imperfectly-elaborated connective tissue, over the entire surface of
the body. And the state of chronic, though mild, narcosis in which the
guzzler keeps himself, by still further injuring his reparative
powers, contributes to the general result.
There are consequently four ways in which tobacco may exhibit its
effects upon the nutrition of the body.
I. In stimulant doses, by improving nutrition, it may increase the
normal weight.
II. In stimulant doses, by improving nutrition, it may cause a
diminution of weight abnormally produced.
III. In narcotic doses, by impairing nutrition, it may cause
emaciation.
IV. In narcotic doses, by impairing nutrition, it may aggravate
obesity instead of relieving it.[24]
[24] In this exposition we have assumed that the tobacco is
smoked and the saliva retained. If the saliva be frequently
ejected, the case is entirely altered. Habitual spitting
incites the salivary glands to excessive secretion, thereby
weakening the system to a surprising extent, and probably
lowering nutrition. Many temperate smokers, who think
themselves hurt by tobacco, are probably hurt only because,
though in all other respects gentlemen, they will persist in
the filthy habit of spitting. There is no excuse for the
habit, for with very little practice the desire to get rid
of the saliva entirely ceases, and is never again felt.
In chewing, the saliva is so impregnated with the nicotinous
constituents of the leaf, that the choice lies far more
narrowly between spitting and narcosis. Of the two evils we
shall not venture to say which is the least. In snuffing,
too, the question is complicated by the acute local
irritation caused by the contact of the stimulant with the
nasal membranes. This, no doubt, has its medicinal virtues.
But for a healthy man it is probable that smoking is the
only rational, as it is certainly the only decent, way in
which to use tobacco.
We may see, by this example, how much room is always left for fallacy
in the empirical tracing of physiological effects to their causes. The
phænomena are so complex that induction is of but little avail, unless
supported and confirmed by deduction.[25] In the case of tobacco, our
conclusions are so confirmed. Deduction, supported by cautious
induction, shows the stimulant action of tobacco to be of permanent
benefit to the system; and hence the statements of those smokers who
believe themselves injured by the habit must be received with due
qualifications. Yielding unsuspiciously to the influence of a
prejudice which originated in an absurd puritanical notion of
"morality,"[26] many smokers are in the habit of reviling the practice
which they nevertheless will not abandon. Having once begun to smoke,
they persist in laying to the account of tobacco sundry aches and ails
which in the hurry and turmoil of modern life no one can expect wholly
to escape, and many of which are such as tobacco could not possibly
give rise to. If their teeth, for instance, begin to decay, tobacco
gets the blame, although it is notorious to dentists that tobacco
preserves the enamel of the teeth as hardly anything else will. We
have seen teeth which had been kept for months in a preparation of
nicotine and were in excellent condition. Then the headache, due
perhaps to an overdose of hot risen biscuit or viands cooked in
pork-fat, is quite likely to be laid to the charge of the general
scape-goat; although to produce a headache directly by means of
tobacco requires a powerful narcotic dose.[27] One of the chief causes
of ordinary headache is doubtless the use of the execrable anthracite
which Pennsylvania protectionists force upon us by means of their
unrighteous prohibitory tariff upon English coal.[28] We have even
heard it alleged that smoking impairs the eyesight. Students smoke
much, and are nearsighted, is the complacent argument--it being
apparently forgotten that sailors smoke much and are far-sighted, and
that in each case the result is due to the way in which the eyes are
used.
[25] Mill's _System of Logic_, 6th ed. vol. I. pp. 503-508.
[26] "The Puritans, from the earliest days of their
'plantation' among us, abhorred the fume of the pipe."
Fairholt, _Tobacco, its History, etc._, p. 111.
[27] Smoking has also been charged with acting as a
predisposing, or even as an exciting, cause of insanity,--a
notion effectually disposed of by Dr. Bucknill, in the
_Lancet_, Feb. 28th, 1857.
Before leaving this subject, it may be well to allude to Mr. Parton's
remarks (p. 35) about "pallid," "yellow," "sickly," and "cadaverous,"
tobacco-manufacturers. He evidently means to convey the impression
that workers in tobacco are more unhealthy than other workmen. Upon
this point we shall content ourselves with transcribing the following
passage from Christison, _On Poisons_, p. 731:--"Writers on the
diseases of artisans have made many vague statements on the supposed
baneful effects of the manufacture of snuff on the workmen. It is said
they are liable to bronchitis, dysentery, ophthalmia, carbuncles, and
furuncles. At a meeting of the Royal Medical Society of Paris,
however, before which a memoir to this purport was lately read, the
facts were contradicted by reference to the state of the workmen at
the Royal Snuff Manufactory of Gros-Caillou, where 1000 people are
constantly employed without detriment to their health. (_Revue
Médicale_, 1827, tom. III. p. 168.) This subject has been since
investigated with great care by Messrs. Parent-Duchatelet and D'Arcet,
who inquired minutely into the state of the workmen employed at all
the great tobacco-manufactories of France, comprising a population of
above 4000 persons; and the results at which they have arrived
are,--that the workmen very easily become habituated to the atmosphere
of the manufactory,--that they are not particularly subject either to
special diseases, or to disease generally,--and that they live on an
average quite as long as other tradesmen. These facts are derived from
very accurate statistical returns. (_Annales d'Hygiène_, 1829, tom. I.
p. 169.)" The reader may also consult an instructive notice in
Hammond's _Journal of Psychological Medicine_, Oct. 1868, vol. II. p.
828.
[28] See Dr. Derby's pamphlet on _Anthracite and Health_,
Boston, 1868; and an article by the present writer, in the
_World_, April 11th, 1868.
These examples show with what well-meaning recklessness people find
fault with anything which they are at all events bound to condemn. It
is not to be denied, however, that many persons are continually
hurting themselves by the flagrant abuse of tobacco. Many men are
doubtless in a state of chronic tobacco-narcosis; just as many men and
women keep themselves in a state of chronic narcosis from the abuse of
tea and coffee. Probably three-fourths of the ill-health which
afflicts the community is due to barbarous neglect of the plainest
principles of dietetics. When a thing tickles the palate, or refreshes
the nervous system, people do not seem to be as yet sufficiently
civilized to let it go until they have made themselves miserable with
it. Half the inhabitants of the United States, says Mr. Parton,
violate the laws of nature every time they go to the dinner-table. He
might safely have put the figure higher. Owing to the shortcomings of
our present methods of education, we rarely get taught physiology at
school or college, we never thoroughly learn the principles of
hygiene, or if we acquire some of them by hearsay, we seldom realize
them in such a way as to shape our behaviour accordingly. It is not to
be wondered at, therefore, that people eat imprudently and smoke
imprudently. They smoke just before dinner, they smoke rank,
badly-cured tobacco, they smoke much, and they smoke fast, thus
narcotizing instead of stimulating their nervous systems. A
plum-pudding is good and nourishing, but it would hardly be wise to
eat it before meat, or to eat it to the verge of nausea.
This lesson of _dosage_ is one which cannot be learned too thoroughly.
The would-be reformer says, "Touch not the unclean thing;" but the
reply is, "No hurt has ever yet come to me from smoking: I will
therefore smoke all the more, to confute these idle crotchets." This
is the very crudity of undisciplined inference. In physiology we
cannot go by the rule of three. Doctors can tell us how they prescribe
brandy for epilepsy: exulting in his signal relief, the patient
persists in taking a second dose, and--brings on another fit!
Stimulation gives way to narcosis. In delirium tremens the stimulus of
opium is often found to be of great service. But sometimes the
unscientific physician, wishing to increase the beneficial effect,
keeps on until he has administered a narcotic dose; when lo! all is
undone, the enfeebled nerves, needing nothing but stimulus, have
received the final shock, the medulla is paralyzed, and the heart
ceases to beat. Let no one imagine, then, that this distinction
between large and small quantities is trivial or wire-drawn. In
therapeutics it is often the one all-important distinction. In dealing
with narcotics, it is the root of the whole matter.
And now the question arises, what _is_ a stimulant dose? How much
tobacco can a man take daily with benefit to himself? The reply is
obvious, that no universal rule can be given. In dealing with the
science of life, to indulge in sweeping statements and glittering
generalities is the surest mark of a charlatan. Mr. Parton says, with
reference to alcohol, that he devoutly wishes the thing could be
proved to be, always, everywhere, under any circumstances, and in any
quantities, injurious, (p. 59.) If this could be proved, alcohol would
be shown to be a substance all but unique in nature. So much as this
cannot be said of arsenic, prussic acid, or strychnine. Science cannot
be made to harmonize with the exaggerations of radicalism. With regard
to tobacco, every man, moderately endowed with common sense, can soon
tell how much he ought to take. The muscular tremour of narcosis is
unmistakable, and a depressed or fluttering pulse is easily detected.
When a man has smoked until these symptoms are awakened, let him stop
short,--he has gone too far already. Let him take good care never to
repeat the dose. The true Epicurean, to whom [Greek: mêden agan] has
become second nature, who knows how to live, and who is instinctively
disgusted by vulgar excess, will not be likely to oversmoke himself
more than once. So much we say, in view of the impossibility of laying
down universal rules. But it is well for the smoker to bear in mind
that the more gradually the nicotine is absorbed into his circulating
system, the better. For this reason a pipe, with porous bowl and long
porous stem, is better than a cigar,[29] which is besides liable by
direct contact to irritate the tongue and lips. And, likewise, it is
better to smoke mild tobacco for an hour than strong tobacco for half
an hour. Probably four or five pipes daily are enough for most healthy
persons; but no such rule can be quoted as inflexible or infallible.
Some persons, as we have said, are never stimulated by tobacco, and
therefore ought never to smoke at all. Others can take relatively
large quantities with little risk of narcosis. Dr. Parr would smoke
twenty pipes in a single evening. The illustrious Hobbes sat always
wrapped in a dense cloud of smoke, while he wrote his immortal works;
yet he lived, hale and hearty, to the age of ninety-two.
[29] The cigar is, however, usually made of milder tobacco.
And an old pipe, saturated with nicotinous oil, may become
far stronger than any ordinary cigar.
We have spoken of persons who are incapable of deriving stimulus from
the use of tobacco, but are always narcotized by it. We doubt if
perfectly healthy persons are ever affected in this way. In a
considerable number of cases we have observed that this incapacity
occurs in people who are troubled with some chronic abnormal action or
inaction of the liver; but we have as yet been unable to make any
generalization which might serve to connect the two phænomena. In the
great majority of cases, however, the incapacity has been probably
induced by chronic narcosis resulting from the long-continued abuse of
tobacco. Recent researches have shown that confirmed drunkards have
after a while modified the molecular structure of their nervous
systems to such an extent that they can never for the rest of their
lives touch an alcoholic drink with safety. For such poor creatures,
teetotalism is the only hygienic rule. It is fair to suppose that
under the continuous influence of tobacco-narcosis the nervous system
becomes metamorphosed in some analogous manner, so that after a while
tobacco ceases to be of any use and becomes simply noxious. This is
likely to be the case with those who begin to chew or smoke when they
are half-grown boys, and keep on taking enormous doses of the narcotic
until they have arrived at middle age. As Mr. Parton seems to find a
difficulty in realizing that any one who smokes at all can smoke less
than from ten to twenty large cigars daily, (for he always uses these
figures when he has occasion to allude to the subject), we presume
this to be about the ration which he used to allow himself. If so, no
wonder that he found it did not pay to smoke. He probably did the
wisest thing he could do when he gave up the habit; and his mistake
has been in endeavouring to erect the limitations of his own
experience into objective laws of the universe.
To sum up the physiological argument: we have endeavoured, as
precisely as possible in the present state of knowledge, to answer the
question, Does it pay to smoke? From the outset we have found it
necessary to a clear understanding of the problem to keep steadily in
mind the generic difference between the effects of tobacco when taken
in narcotic quantities and its effects when taken in stimulant
quantities. The first class of effects we have seen to be always and
necessarily bad; though not so extremely and variously bad as hygienic
reformers appear to believe.[30] With regard to the second class of
effects, we have seen reason to believe that they are almost always
good. We have seen reason to believe that, in the first place, the
stimulant dose of tobacco retards waste; and, in the second place,
that it facilitates repair:--
I. By its action on the sympathetic ganglia, aiding digestion,--
II. By its action on the medulla oblongata, aiding the circulation,--
III. By its action on the interstitial nerve-fibres, aiding the
general assimilation of prepared material.
[30] Tobacco, as we have said, may, in an adequate dose,
produce well-developed paralysis. Whether the ordinary
excessive use of it ever does cause paralysis, is, to say
the least, extremely doubtful. Dr. D. W. Cheever says, "The
minor, rarely the graver, affections of the nervous system
do follow the use of tobacco in excess.... Numerous cases of
paralysis among tobacco-takers in France were traced to the
lead in which the preparation was enveloped." _Atlantic
Monthly_, Aug. 1860. Another instance of the great care
needful in correctly tracing the causes of any disease or
ailment. Lead-poisoning, when chronic, brings about
structural degeneration of the nerve-centres.
And lastly, we have witnessed the evidence of its effect upon the
increased nutrition of the brain and spinal cord, in its alleviation
of abnormal wakefulness and tremour. These are legitimate scientific
inferences; and if they are to be overturned, it must be by scientific
argument. They are not to be shaken by all of Mr. Parton's clamour
about the Coming Man, and people who keep themselves "well-groomed,"
and ladies who write for the press. So far as our present knowledge of
physiology goes for anything, it thus goes to exhibit tobacco, rightly
used, as the great economizer of vital force, the aider of nervous
co-ordination, and one of the ablest co-workers in normal and vigorous
nutrition. And, as we have said before, it is the difference in the
rate of nutrition which is probably the most fundamental difference
between strength and feebleness, vigour and sluggishness, health and
disease. It was because of rapid nutrition that Napoleon and Humboldt
performed their prodigious tasks, and yet needed almost incredibly
little sleep. It is the difference between fast and slow nutrition
which makes one soldier's wound heal, while another's gangrenes; which
enables one young girl to throw off a chest-cold with ease, while
another is dragged into the grave by it. Waste and repair--these are
the essential correlatives; and the agent which checks the former
while hastening the latter can hardly be other than a friend to
health, long life, and vigour.
We conclude with an inductive argument which an eminent physician has
recently in conversation urged upon our attention. Throughout the
whole world, probably nine men out of every ten use tobacco.[31]
Throughout the civilized world, women, as a general rule, abstain from
the use of tobacco. Here we have an experiment, on an immense scale,
ready-made for us. These three hundred million civilized men and women
are subjected to the same varieties of climatic, dietetic, and social
influences; their environments are the same; their inherited organic
proclivities will average about the same; but the men smoke and the
women do not. Now, if all that our hygienic reformers say about
tobacco were true, the men in civilized countries should be afflicted
with numerous constitutional diseases which do not afflict the women;
or should be more liable to the diseases common to the two sexes; or,
finally, should be shorter lived than the women. But statistics show
that men are, on the whole, just as healthy and long-lived as women.
In point of the average number of diseases[32] to which they are
subject; in point of liability to disease; and in point of longevity;
the two sexes are in all civilized countries, exactly on a par with
each other. During the two hundred years in which tobacco has been in
common use, it has made no appreciable difference in the health or
longevity of those who have used it. This is a rough experiment, in
which no account is taken of dosage, and in which the results are only
general averages. But to our mind, it is very significant. Taken
alone, it shows conclusively that since tobacco first began to be
used, its bad effects must have been at least fully balanced by its
good effects. Taken in connection with our physiological argument, it
shows quite conclusively that the current notion about the banefulness
of tobacco is, as we remarked above, simply a popular delusion.
[31] Paraguay tea is used by 10,000,000 of people; coca by
10,000,000; chicory by 40,000,000; cocoa by 50,000,000;
coffee by 100,000,000; betel by 100,000,000; haschisch by
300,000,000; opium by 400,000,000; Chinese tea by
500,000,000; tobacco by 800,000,000; the population of the
world being probably not much over one thousand million. See
Von Bibra, _Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch_,
Preface.
[32] Omitting, of course, from the comparison, the class of
diseases to which woman is peculiarly subject, as a
child-bearer.
To prove that tobacco, rightly used, is harmless, is to prove that it
does pay to smoke. Every smoker, who has not vitiated his nervous
system by raw excess, knows that there is no physical pleasure in the
long run comparable with that which is afforded by tobacco. If such
pleasure is to be obtained without detriment to the organism, who but
the grimmest ascetic can say that here is not a gain? But, if, as we
have every reason to believe, the stimulant action of tobacco upon the
human system is not only harmless but very decidedly beneficial, then
it is doubly proved that _it does pay to smoke_.
II.
THE COMING MAN WILL DRINK WINE.
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.
The researches of Bouchardat and Sandras,[23] and of Duchek,[24] have
rendered it probable that, if alcohol undergoes any digestive
transformation, it is first changed into aldehyde, from which are
successively formed acetic acid, oxalic acid and water, and carbonic
acid.[25] But this transformation, like any other digestive process,
cannot go on unless the nervous system is in good working order. Now
when a narcotic dose of alcohol is taken, the flow of gastric juice is
prevented by local paralysis of the nerve-fibres distributed to the
stomach. What then must happen? Solid food may remain undigested, in
the stomach;[26] but liquid alcohol is easily absorbable, and has two
ways of exit,--one through the portal system into the liver, the other
through the lacteals into the general circulation, by which it will be
carried chiefly to the organ which receives most blood,--namely, the
brain. _It is thus probable that no alcohol can be transformed after
narcosis begins._ But the absorbed alcohol, loading the circulation,
begins at once to be excreted. Paralysis of the renal plexus of the
sympathetic sets up a rapid diuresis, and considerable amounts of the
volatile liquid escape through the lungs and skin. In examining,
therefore, a drunken man or dog, we need not, on any theory, expect
to find the intermediate products of alcoholic transformation; we
must expect to find large quantities of undigested alcohol in the
circulation, and notably in the brain and liver; and we need not be
surprised if we detect unchanged alcohol in the excretions. _Our
experiment will not show that alcohol cannot be assimilated; it will
only show how serious is the damage inflicted by a narcotic dose, in
checking assimilation._ Now all this applies with force to the
experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy and Perrin. In their
experiments, these gentlemen always tried intoxicating doses; thus
paralyzing at the outset the whole digestive tract, _and preventing
the formation of those transformed products which they afterward
vainly tried to discover_. As so often happens in experimenting upon
the enormously complex human organism, they began by creating abnormal
conditions which rendered their conclusions inapplicable to the
healthy body.
[23] _De la Digestion des Boissons Alcooliques_, in _Annales
de Chimie et de Physique_, 1847, tom. xxi.
[24] _Ueber das Verhalten des Alkohols im thierischen
Organismus_, in _Vierteljahrsschrift für die praktische
Heilkunde_, Prague, 1833.
[25] See Moleschott, _Circulation de la Vie_, tom. ii. p. 6.
[26] So decisive is the paralyzing power of a narcotic dose
of alcohol upon the stomach in some cases, that we have
seen a drunken man vomit scarcely altered food which, it
appeared, had been eaten fourteen hours before. The sum and
substance of the above argument is that, as the narcotic
dose of alcohol prevents the digestion of other food, it
will also prevent the digestion of itself.
A further criticism by M. Baudot, supported by renewed experiments, is
still more decisive. M. Baudot justly observes that in order to
substantiate their conclusions, Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy and Perrin
should have at least been able, with their excessively delicate tests,
to discover in the excretions _a large part_ of the alcohol which had
been taken into the system. This, however, they never did. In all
cases, the amount of alcohol recovered was very small, and bore but a
trifling proportion to the amount which had been taken. According to
these physiologists, the elimination always takes place chiefly
through the kidneys. But M. Baudot, in a series of elaborate
experiments, has proved that, unless the dose has been excessive, _no
sensible amount of alcohol reappears in the kidney-excretions for more
than twenty-four hours_. The quantity is so minute that the alcoometer
is not in the least affected by it, and it requires the chromic acid
test even to reveal its presence. Similar results have been obtained
by experiments upon the breath.
Finally, the gravest doubts have been thrown upon the trustworthiness
of the chromic acid test relied on by Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy and
Perrin. It is considered possible, by good chemical authority, that
the reactions in the test-apparatus, which they attributed to the
escaping alcohol, may equally well have been caused by some of the
results of alcoholic transformation. For reasons above given, however,
it is probable that in cases of narcosis some alcohol always escapes.
When we reflect upon its absorbability and its ready solubility in
water, it seems likely beforehand that a considerable quantity must
escape. But all that these able Frenchmen can be said to have
accomplished, is the demonstration of the fact that when you take into
your system a greater quantity of alcohol than the system can manage,
a part of it is expelled in the same state in which it entered. And
this may be said of other kinds of food.
These experiments have, therefore, instead of settling the question,
left it substantially just where it was before. But we have now a more
remarkable set of facts to contemplate. In many cases of typhoid
fever, acute bronchitis, pneumonia, erysipelas, and diphtheria,
occurring in Dr. Anstie's practice, it was found that the stomach
could be made to retain nothing but wine or brandy. Upon these
alcoholic drinks, therefore, the patients were entirely sustained for
periods sometimes reaching a month in duration.[27] In nearly every
case convalescence was rapid, and the emaciation was much slighter
than usual: the quality of the flesh was also observed to be
remarkably good. Dr. Slack, of Liverpool, had two female patients who,
loathing ordinary food, maintained life and tolerable vigour for more
than three months upon alcoholic drinks alone. Mr. Nisbet reports "the
case of a child affected with marasmus, who subsisted for three months
on sweet whisky and water alone, and then recovered; and that of
another child, who lived entirely upon Scotch ale for a fortnight, and
then recovered his appetite for common things." Many similar examples
might be cited.
[27] In typhoid and typhus the "poison-line" of alcohol is
shifted, so that large quantities may be taken without risk
of narcosis. Women, in this condition, have been known to
consume 36 oz. of brandy (containing 18 oz. of alcohol)
_per diem_.
It may be said that alcohol maintained these persons by retarding the
waste of the tissues. This is no doubt an admissible supposition.
There is no doubt that alcohol, by its waste-retarding action, will
postpone for some time the day of death from starvation.[28] But to
this action there must be some limit. Though the waste is retarded, it
is not wholly stopped. Though there is relatively less waste, there is
still absolutely large waste. The mere act of keeping up respiration
necessitates a considerable destruction of tissue. Then the
temperature of the body must be kept very near 98° Fahrenheit, or life
will suddenly cease; and the maintenance of this heat involves a great
consumption of tissue. Now this waste, under the most favourable
circumstances, will soon destroy life, unless it is balanced by actual
repair. You may diminish the draught on your furnace as much as you
please,--the fire will shortly go out unless fresh coal is added. Upon
these points the data are more or less precise. The amount of waste
material daily excreted from the body, under ordinary circumstances,
is a little more than seven pounds.[29] Of this the greater part is
water, the quantity of carbon being about twelve ounces, and the
quantity of nitrogenous matter about five ounces.[30] To make up for
this waste we usually require at least two and a half pounds of solid,
and three pints of liquid, food.[31] In Dr. Hammond's experiments, the
weight-sustaining power of the alcohol taken seems to have amounted to
four or five ounces.[32] It will be seen, therefore, that in spite of
any stimulant effect of alcohol upon nutrition, unless at least ten or
twelve ounces of nitrogenous or carbonaceous matter be eaten daily,
the weight of the body must rapidly diminish.
[28] It is not certain, however, that alcoholic drinks, as
usually taken, materially retard the waste of tissue. These
drinks contain but from 2 to 50 per cent of alcohol; the
remainder being chiefly water, which is a great accelerator
of waste. The weight-sustaining power of brandy, or
especially of wine and ale, can, therefore, perhaps be
hardly accounted for without admitting a true food-action.
[29] Dalton, _Human Physiology_, p. 363.
[30] Payen, _Substances Alimentaires_, p. 482.
[31] The liquid food may be taken in the shape of free
water, or of water contained in the tissues of succulent
vegetables. See Pereira, _Treatise on Food and Diet_, p.
277.
[32] _Physiological Memoirs_, Philadelphia, 1863, p. 48.
Now the experiments of Chossat have demonstrated that no animal can
suddenly lose more than two-fifths of its normal weight without dying
of starvation. If a man, therefore, weigh 150 lbs., for him 90 lbs. is
the starvation-point; as soon as he reaches that weight he dies.
Usually, indeed, death occurs before this degree of emaciation can
have been attained,--in most cases, on the fifth or sixth day; though
there are a few authentic instances of persons who have lived for
twelve, and even sixteen, days before finally succumbing.
In view of these facts, we are willing to grant that people may in
rare cases live for three months on their own tissues, if waste be
duly retarded. We are willing to grant it, though we do not believe
it. But we are not prepared to admit that this process can go on for
six months or a year; and we believe that the cases now to be cited
can in nowise be got rid of by such an interpretation.
Mr. Nisbet mentions the case of a man who lived for seven months
entirely on spirit and water. At Wavertree, a young man afflicted with
heart-disease lived for five years principally, and for two years
solely, on brandy. His allowance was at first six ounces, afterward a
pint, _per diem_. His weight was not materially decreased, when, at
the end of the five years, he died of his disease. But the next case
is still more remarkable. Dr. Inman had a lady-patient, about
twenty-five years old, plump, active and florid, but somewhat
deficient in power of endurance. "This lady had two large and healthy
children in succession, whom she successfully nursed. On each occasion
she became much exhausted, the appetite wholly failed, and she was
compelled to live solely on bitter ale and brandy and water; on this
regimen she kept up her good looks, her activity and her nursing, and
went on this way for about twelve months; the nervous system was by
this time thoroughly exhausted, _yet there was no emaciation_, nor was
there entire prostration of muscular power."[33]
[33] Anstie, op. cit. p. 388.
For the accuracy of this statement there is to be had the testimony of
Dr. Inman, the attendant physician, as well as that "of the lady's
husband, of mutual friends occasionally residing in the house with
her, of her mother, of her sisters, and of her nurse." We have
apparently no alternative but to believe it; and if it is true, it is
certainly decisive. It is nothing less than an _experimentum crucis_.
The suggestion that this lady might have kept up her normal activity
while nursing children, for a whole year, with no aliment except her
own tissues and the water and vegetable matter contained in her ale
and brandy, is too absurd to need refutation. The thing is an utter
impossibility. Moreover, not being emaciated at the end of the year,
she had probably been consuming her own tissues but very little. Her
weight, her muscular activity, and the natural heat of her body, could
have been sustained by nothing but the alcohol; which thus appears as
a true food, at once nourishing, strength-giving, and heat-producing.
This conclusion is further re-enforced by the numerous cases on record
of persons who have lived actively for many years upon a diet of
alcoholic liquor accompanied by a quantity of solid food notoriously
inadequate to support life. The case of Cornaro is outdone by some of
those quoted by Dr. Anstie, as having occurred under his own
observation. Of twelve cases which are described in detail, the most
remarkable is that of a man aged 83, whose diet for twenty years had
consisted of one bottle of gin and one small fragment of toasted bread
daily. This old fellow, says Dr. Anstie, "would have been of little
service as a practical illustration of the bodily harm wrought by
drinking, being in truth rather an unusually active and vigorous
person for his time of life." Probably the old man was not narcotized
by his daily bottle of gin; or he would, long before the twenty years
had elapsed, have shown symptoms of nervous disease. In most of these
cases of abnormal diet, there occurs after a while a general breaking
down of the nerve-centres, shown in delirium tremens, epileptic fits,
or a sudden stroke of paralysis. They are not quoted, therefore, as
examples to be followed, but as very important items of evidence in
favour of the opinion that alcohol is food.
Taking all these considerations together, we believe it to be
tolerably well made out that alcohol, whether changed within the body
or not, is a true food, which nourishes, warms and strengthens. And
Dr. Brinton, in the following passage, declares it to be, in many
cases, a necessary food. "That teetotalism is compatible with health,
it needs no elaborate facts to establish; but if we take the customary
life of those constituting the masses of our inhabitants of towns, we
shall find reason to wait before we assume that this result will
extend to our population at large. And, in respect to experience, it
is singular how few healthy teetotalers are to be met with in our
ordinary inhabitants of cities. Glancing back over the many years
during which this question has been forced upon the author by his
professional duties, he may estimate that he has sedulously examined
not less than 50,000 to 70,000 persons, including many thousands in
perfect health. Wishing, and even expecting to find it otherwise, he
is obliged to confess that he has hitherto met with but very few
perfectly healthy middle-aged persons, successfully pursuing any
arduous metropolitan calling under teetotal habits. On the other hand,
he has known many total abstainers, whose apparently sound
constitutions have given way with unusual and frightful rapidity when
attacked by a casual sickness." "This," says an English reviewer of
the French experiments, "is quite in accordance with what I have
myself observed, and with what I can gather from other medical men;
and it speaks volumes concerning the way in which we ought to regard
alcohol. If, indeed, it be a fact that in a certain high state of
civilization men require to take alcohol every day, in some shape or
other, under penalty of breaking down prematurely in their work, it is
idle to appeal to a set of imperfect chemical or physiological
experiments, and to decide, on their evidence, that we ought to call
alcohol a medicine or a poison, but not a food. I am obliged to
declare that the chemical evidence is as yet insufficient to give any
complete explanation of its exact manner of action upon the system;
but that the practical facts are as striking as they could well be,
and that there can be no mistake about them. And I have thought it
proper that, while highly-coloured statements of the results of the
new French researches are being somewhat disingenuously placed before
the lay public, there should not be a total silence on the part of
those members of the profession who do not see themselves called upon
to yield to the mere force of agitation."[34] If this view of the
case, which so strongly recommends itself to the mind of the practical
physician, be the true one, we are forced to regard teetotalism,
considered not in its moral but in its physiological aspects, as a
dietetic heresy nearly akin to vegetarianism. Man can do without wine,
as he can do without meat; but the rational course is to adopt that
diet from which we can obtain the greatest amount of available vital
power.
[34] Brinton, _Treatise on Food and Digestion_; and _Letters
on Chemistry_, Sept. 1862; cited in the pamphlet of Gov.
Andrew, above-mentioned.
But even if we were to give up the doctrine that alcohol is a true
food, the great indisputed and indisputable fact of its stimulant
value would still remain. Tobacco neither nourishes the body nor warms
it; yet it enables us to earn our daily bread with less fatigue, and
to support the incessant trials of life with a more even spirit. The
value of alcohol as a stimulant is inferior only to that of tobacco;
or perhaps, for general purposes, it is quite unsurpassed. It
compensates for the occasionally inevitable incapacity of ordinary
food to maintain due nutrition; and in this way enables us to work
longer, and with a lighter heart, and with less fear of ultimate
depression. It bridges over the pitfalls which the complicated
exigencies of modern life are constantly digging for us. Warm-hearted
but weak-headed radicalism may imagine a utopian state of things in
which money will grow on bushes and every one mind the moral law, and
digestion be always easy, and vexation infrequent, and "artificial"
stimulus unnecessary; but this is not the state of things amid which
we live. A modern man cannot, if he does his duty, secure to himself
the enjoyment of such a state. There are times when he must sacrifice
a little of his own round perfection, if it be only to lend a helping
hand to his neighbour. A kind of valetudinarian philosophy is now
afloat, which says, Look out, above all things, for your own physical
welfare. This philosophy contains a truth, but as usually manifested
it is nothing but the result of a morbid self-consciousness. Duty
sometimes requires that we should cease coddling ourselves, and go to
work, unless we would see some cause suffer which interests other men,
living and to come, besides ourselves. We must sometimes run to put
the fire out, even if we do thereby lose our dinner, and interfere
with the stomach's requirements. It is useless, then, to talk about
agents which "support us in doing wrong," when, from the very
constitution of the world and of society, we can no more go exactly
"right" than we can draw a line which shall be mathematically
straight. It is useless to speculate about an ideal society in which
men can dispense with the agents which economize their nervous
strength, when we find as a historical fact that no nation has ever
existed which has been able to dispense with those agents. As long as
there are inequalities in the daily ratio of waste and repair to be
rectified, so long we shall get along better with wine than without
it. For this, looked at from the widest possible point of view, is the
legitimate function of alcohol,--_to diminish the necessary friction
of living_.
This too is the view of Liebig: "As a restorative, a means of
refreshment when the powers of life are exhausted, of giving animation
and energy where man has to struggle with days of sorrow, as a means
of correction and compensation where misproportion occurs in
nutrition, wine is surpassed by no product of nature or of art.... In
no part of Germany do the apothecaries' establishments bring so low a
price as in the rich cities on the Rhine; for there wine is the
universal medicine of the healthy as well as the sick. It is
considered as milk for the aged."[35]
[35] Liebig, _Letters on Chemistry_, p. 454.
This is also the view of Dr. Anstie. Comparing the action of alcohol
upon the organism with that of chloroform and sulphuric ether, he
observes: "It seems as if the former were intended to be the medicine
of those ailments which are engendered of the _necessary_ everyday
evils of civilized life, and has therefore been made attractive to the
senses, and easily retained in the tissues, and in various ways
approving itself to our judgment as _a food_; while the others, which
are more rarely needed for their stimulant properties, and are chiefly
valuable for their beneficent temporary poisonous action, by the help
of which painful operations are sustained with impunity, are in great
measure deprived of these attractions, and of their facilities for
entering and remaining in the system."[36] Apart from its implied
teleology, this passage contains the gist of the whole matter.
[36] Anstie, op. cit. p. 401.
As for the Coming Man, whom Mr. Parton appears to regard as a sort of
pugilist or Olympic athlete, we suppose he will undoubtedly have to
exercise his brain sometimes, he will have to study, think and plan,
he will have responsibilities to shoulder, his digestion will not
always be preserved at its maximum of efficiency, his powers of
endurance will sometimes be tried to the utmost. The period in the
future when "we shall have changed all this" is altogether too remote
to affect our present conclusion; which is that the Coming Man, so
long as he is a member of a complex, civilized society, will continue
to use, with profit as well as pleasure, the two universal stimulants,
Alcohol and Tobacco.
APPENDIX.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TOBACCO.
For the benefit of those readers who may feel interested in this
subject, the following list is added, of the principal works which
have been written on the effects of tobacco. The older ones have, of
course, little scientific value, yet they are often interesting and
suggestive. They usually made the best use of the science of their
time, which is more than can be said of some of the later treatises.
Baumann: Dissertatio de Tabaci virtutibus. Basil, 1579.
Everart: De herba Panacea. Antwerp, 1583.
Ziegler: Taback von dem gar heilsamen Wundkraute Nicotiana. Zurich,
1616.
Marradon: Dialogo del uso del Tabaco. Seville, 1618.
De Castro: Historia de las virtudes y propriedades de Tabacco.
Cordova, 1620.
Thorius: Hymnus Tabaci. Leyden, 1622.
Neander: Tabacologia. Leyden, 1622.
Scriverius: Saturnalia, seu de usu et abusu Tabaci. Haarlem, 1628.
Braun: Quæstio medica de fumo Tabaci. Marburg, 1628.
Aguilar: Contra il mal uso del Tabaco. Cordova, 1633.
Frankenius: Dissertatio de virtutibus Nicotianæ. Upsal, 1633.
Ostendorf: Traité de l'usage et de l'abus du Tabac. Paris, 1636.
Venner: Via recta ad vitam longam. London, 1637. (See p. 363, for an
entertaining discourse on Tobacco.)
Ferrant: Traité du Tabac en sternutatoire. Bourges, 1645.
Cuffari: I biasimi del Tabacco. Palermo, 1645.
Vitaliani: De abusu Tabaci. Rome, 1650.
Tapp: Oratio de Tabaco. Helmstadt, 1653.
Balde: Satyra contra abusum Tabaci. Munich, 1657.
Magnenus: Exercitationes XIV. de Tabaco. Ticino, 1658.
Rumsey: Organum Salutis. London, 1659.
Paulli: Commentarius de abusu Tabaci Americanorum veteri. Argentorat.
1665.
Baillard: Discours du Tabac. Paris, 1668.
De Prade: Histoire du Tabac. Paris, 1677.
Van Bontekoe: Korte verhandeling van t' menschenleven gezondheit,
ziekte en dood, etc. s' Gravenhagen, 1684.
Worp Beintema: Tabacologia, ofle korte verhandelinge over de Toback.
s' Gravenhagen, 1690.
Fagon: Dissertatio an ex Tabaci usu frequenti vita brevior. Paris,
1699.
Brunet: Le bon usage du Tabac en poudre. Paris, 1700.
Della Fabra: Dissertatio de animi affectibus, etc. Ferrara, 1702.
Manara: De moderando Tabaci usu in Europæis. Madrid, 1702.
Nicolicchia: Uso ed abuso del Tabacco. Palermo, 1710.
Keyl: Dissertatio num Nicotianæ herbæ usu levis notæ maculam
contrahat. Leipsic, 1715.
Cohausen: Pica nasi, seu de Tabaci sternutatorii abusu et noxa.
Amsterdam, 1716.
Meier: Tabacomania. Nordhaus, 1720.
----: A Dissertation on the Use and Abuse of Tobacco in Relation to
Smoaking, Chewing, and taking of Snuff. London, 1720.
Plaz: De Tabaco sternutatorio. Leipsic, 1727.
Stahl: Dissertatio de Tabaci effectibus salutaribus et nocivis.
Erfurt, 1732.
Maloet: Dissertatio an a Tabaco, naribus assumpto, peculiaris quædam
cephalalgiæ species, aliique effectus. Paris, 1733.
Alberti: De Tabaci fumum sugente theologo. Halle, 1743.
Garbenfeld: Dissertatio de Tabaci usu et abusu. Argent. 1744.
Beck: De suctione fumi Tabaci. Altdorf, 1745.
Büchner: De genuinis viribus Tabaci. Halle, 1746.
Herment: Dissertatio an post cibum fumus Tabaci, etc. Paris, 1749.
De la Sone: Dissertatio an Tabacum homini sit lentum venenum. Paris,
1751.
Ferrein: Dissertatio an ex Tabaci usu frequenti vitæ summa brevior.
Paris, 1753.
Petitmaitre: De usu et abusu Nicotianæ. Basil, 1756.
Triller: Disputatio de Tabaci ptarmici abusu, affectus ventriculi
causa. Wittenberg, 1761.
Cuntira: De viribus medicis Nicotianæ ejusque usu et abusu. Vienna,
1777.
Hamilton: De Nicotianæ viribus in Medicina et de ejus malis effectibus
in usu communi et domestico. Edinburgh, 1779.
Clarke: A dissertation on the Use and Abuse of Tobacco. London, 1797.
Szerlecki: Monographie über den Tabak. Stuttgart, 1840.
Stahmann: Cigarre, Pfeife, und Dose. Quedlinburg, 1852.
Baldwin: Evils of Tobacco. New York, 1854.
Trall: Tobacco, its History, etc. New York, 1854.
----: Discours contre l'usage du Tabac. Nantes, 1854.
----: Discours en faveur du Tabac. Nantes, 1854.
Tiedemann: Geschichte des Tabaks. Frankfort, 1854.
Vlaanderen: Over den Tabak, bijzonder over zijne on bewerktuigde
bestanddeelen. Utrecht, 1854.
Felip: El Tabaco. Madrid, 1854.
Hortmann: Der Tabaksbau. Emmerich, 1855.
Von Bibra: Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch. Nürnberg,
1855.
Tognola: Riflessioni intorno all' uso igenico del Tabacco. Padua,
1855.
----: A Commentary on the Influence which the Use of Tobacco exerts on
the Human Constitution. Sydney, 1856.
Jarnatowsky: De Nicotiana ejusque abusu. Berlin, 1856.
Asencio: Reflexiones sobre la renta del Tabaco. Madrid, 1856.
Hammond: The Physiological Action of Alcohol and Tobacco upon the
Human Organism. American Journal of Medical Sciences. October, 1856.
Budgett: The Tobacco Question, Morally, Socially, and Physically.
London, 1857.
Cavendish: A few Words in Defence of Tobacco. London, 1857.
Jeumont: Du Tabac, de son Usage, de ses Effets, etc. Paris, 1857.
Lizars: On the Use and Abuse of Tobacco. London, 1857.
Steinmetz: Tobacco. London, 1857.
Alexandre: Contre l'abus du Tabac. Amiens, 1857.
Fermond: Monographie du Tabac. Paris, 1857.
Koller: Der Tabac. Augsburg, 1858.
Prescott: Tobacco and its Adulterations. London, 1858.
Schmid: Der Tabak als wichtige Culturpflanze. Weimar, 1858.
Demoor: Du Tabac. Brussels, 1858.
Mourgues: Traité de la Culture du Tabac. Paris, 1859.
Morand: Essai sur l'Hygiène du Tabac. Epinal, 1859.
Fairholt: Tobacco, its History and Associations. London, 1859.
Cheever: On Tobacco. Atlantic Monthly, August, 1860.
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