Its Effect upon the Brain—How It Predisposes a Person to Tuberculosis—Experience Bears Out the Statements of the Ancient Book Concerning It
By T. J. EVANS, M. D.
Medical Superintendent, Loma Linda Sanitarium, Loma Linda, California
In discussing the uses and evil effects of alcohol, it might be well to state some of its effects upon the mind. I will quote to some extent from C. B. Burr, M. D., on alcoholic intoxication, which is classed as one form of insanity, and the erraticism incident to the use of alcohol:
Actions of an Alcoholic Brain
“Varying with the natural disposition, there may be intoxication, exaltation, or depression of emotional tone, belligerency, jealousy, periods of frenzy, stupor, depending upon the amount of intoxicants taken into the system.
“Acute alcoholic delirium, or delirium tremens, is of sudden onset, though there is frequently a precedent period of gastric derangement, with reduction in emotional tone, and impaired nutrition, due to the toxic effects of alcohol.
“Following the period of insomnia, the derangement of the stomach and alimentary canal, loss of appetite, and restlessness, a condition of mental excitement appears; there are increased sensitiveness and irritability, fretfulness, and impatience. Rapidly a condition of confusion exists, and this goes on to delirium, depending upon the amount of intoxicant consumed, and the susceptibility of the patient to its influence. Hallucinations of sight and hearing take place. Patients hear threatening noises, and misconstrue ordinary conversation and current sounds. They are suspicious. They see rats, vermin, and creeping, crawling things, dogs, cats, horses, and things going round and round. They distort figures in the carpet and wall paper, pick at the bedding, and are by turns incoherent, dazed, frenzied, and completely disoriented. They are apt to exhaust their strength to the border of collapse by struggling with those about them.
“The patient may have pallor of the surface of the body, cold sweat, and indications of collapse; loss of appetite, refusing to take food, and delusions of poison; loss of sleep. In a very aggravated state, the patient may even simulate paranoia. They imagine themselves great poets, artists, musicians, authors, and possessed with great wealth. Misconception of the motives of individuals.
“One patient who murdered his wife by striking her in the head with an ax, committed the act because he read in lettuce, radishes, and onions served at one time on the table, ‘Let us re-dis-union.’”
Stamped Upon His Own Mother
The mind is so distorted that acts of violence may be committed at any time. I was called to see a patient who was reported to have been injured. On entering the house, I found the woman in a small upper room, which was poorly furnished with the bare necessities of life. She was quite elderly; and a young man about twenty-two years of age was standing in the room, with his foot on the stove, leaning his head on his hand, and seemed to be in deep meditation.
I asked the woman what the difficulty was, and she stated that her son had been threatening to kill her if she did not sell the furniture in the house so he could use the money to buy drink. These threats had become more violent each day, until finally, two nights before this time, he had come in at two o’clock, and finding his mother sleeping, jumped on the bed, and began to stamp her with heavy hobnailed shoes. In the process of stamping, he had fractured the ulna of the right arm, and the radius of the left, inflicted a severe wound back of the right ear, and skinned the forehead. She was bruised all over her body.
No help was near, and the next morning she was left without any care, and it was nearly noon before she was able to call anyone’s attention to her needs. This she did by working her way to the window and bumping her head against the window-pane as a child was passing. This is only one instance of many that might be cited that are very similar.
With such instances constantly before us, how can we any longer sanction the presence of the saloon among us? It is demoralizing to the nation, to society, and to the home, and to the individual physically, mentally, and morally.
Alcohol, and Its Relation to Legal Medicine
“M. Keschner discusses the relations of alcohol to legal medicine, and gives some statistics of its effect in favoring or producing disease. In Bellevue, for instance, in 1907, out of a total number of 33,224 patients, 6,376 were admitted for alcoholism. In 1904 the total number of patients was 29,741, alcoholic 8,941. Among the alcoholics in these figures, the patients admitted for ailments due to alcohol secondarily, such as chronic Bright’s disease and cirrhosis of the liver, are not included. In the workhouse on Blackwell’s Island, out of 17,471 prisoners committed in 1907, 4,728 were committed for being alcoholic. The average mortality is about ten to every ten thousand. This varies in different countries and climates.”
Here, then, we have a product, the abuse of which causes a higher morbidity and mortality than any other known or unknown cause. In committing this ravage, alcohol has all the pathogenic bacilli and cocci individually and collectively bowing to it and pronouncing it supreme in destructive power.
Next to heredity, alcohol in forty-two per cent of the cases, according to Kraepelin, is the most prolific cause of insanity, idiocy, and epilepsy. Generally speaking, sixty per cent of all crime is the result, directly or indirectly, of alcohol or association with drinking houses. The alcoholic rounder is one of the best culture media for the tubercle bacillus. Moral depravity finds its best friend in whisky. In the law, the alcoholic is sui generis. It is necessary to establish for him rules of conduct differing from those of ordinary men. His status in the law is as unique as it is on the sidewalk.
Drunkenness itself is no excuse for crime; but insanity, which forms a valid defense in other cases, has been held as excusing a criminal although the insanity was originally produced by alcohol.
Should Receive More Scientific Attention
Keschner deplores the lack of attention to alcoholism in this country. He says of New York: “In this state both the public and authorities are woefully indifferent as to the disposition of this unfortunate class of patients. The only law there exists concerning him is to lodge him in jail. Millions are spent annually to eradicate infectious diseases; great stress is laid on the prevention and treatment of bubonic plague and pellagra; most sumptuous sanatoria are constructed to harbor persons afflicted with the ‘white plague’; yet the damage inflicted physically and economically by alcohol is far greater than that inflicted by all the infectious diseases put together.
“Jails, workhouses, and penitentiaries in this state cost millions to maintain; and these harbor criminals, sixty per cent of whom owe their origin in crime to alcohol; yet, to the shame of us physicians and citizens of the Empire State, we have no provision such as a ‘home for inebriates’ to treat scientifically and intelligently these alcoholics before they become criminals.”
Alcoholism as a Symptom
W. J. H. Sinclair states, in the Glasgow Medical Journal, that “alcoholism is a frequent cause of unfitness both directly and indirectly, but some persons attach too much importance to heredity in alcoholism. Alcoholism is not rarely a symptom of some deep-seated, serious defect. The dipsomaniac or alcoholic who is a drunkard as a result of neuropathic or psychopathic defect has probably inherited such defect, and is likely to transmit it, and his progeny is likely to manifest such inheritance by emotional, volitional, or intellectual defect or any combination of these defects. But most drunkards are drunkards not from inherited defect, but because of lack of self-discipline; and also because of the attitude of the class to which they belong towards drunkenness, and perhaps more than to any other cause, because of the habits of their social stratum. Such people do not transmit such a condition of the nervous system as produces a dipsomania, nor are their progeny likely to be mentally defective as a result of the drinking habits of their parents.”
J. Abadie and H. Grenier de Cardenal draw the following conclusions from an investigation of the social relations of tuberculosis and alcoholism at Bordeaux:
“In more than half the pleuro-pulmonary tuberculosis patients examined, the prolonged use of alcoholic drinks was found as an element of their social or pathologic past.15
“In all cases without exception the alcoholic habits preceded the tuberculosis.
“Men were attacked by tuberculosis more frequently than women, because, among other reasons, perhaps less important, they contract the habit of drinking more readily.
“Tuberculosis in adult age or at the commencement of old age is frequently the result of intoxication, sometimes indeed of slight extent, but prolonged.
“The adolescent or the young man who becomes intemperate may become rapidly tuberculous. The adult who takes to drink resists tuberculosis for a longer time.
“The resistance of the alcoholic to tuberculosis appears to be inversely proportional to the amount of alcoholic liquors consumed.
“The alcoholic who has an alcoholic or tuberculous heredity exhibits less resistance to tuberculosis than alcoholics without hereditary taint.”
“Children of tuberculous parents seem predisposed to the use of alcohol in their youth. Likewise the children of alcoholics seem predisposed to contract tuberculosis in their youth.”
“Alcoholic habits in the husband predispose to the tuberculosis of the wife, either because the husband becomes tuberculous and himself a focus of contagion, or because the vice of the husband causes the worry, overexertion, and privations of the wife, and thus secondarily determines her tuberculosis. These conclusions are true for the conditions and surroundings of the patients investigated, but should be confirmed by other investigations before being generally accepted.”
Experience Shows the Book to Be Right
The investigations of scientific men are in harmony with the statements of the Bible. It declares that “wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” Deception is couched in every bit of intoxicant that is taken into the system; for it is a substance that gives a sense of energy and strength without the real endurance.
The instruction given to the mother of John the Baptist is also in harmony with this, for he was to give one of the most important messages that was ever to be proclaimed to the human race: “He shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost.”
Fresh grape juice is refreshing and wholesome; but when fermentation is allowed to take place, and alcohol has been formed in the wine, then it is unfit for the system, because it becomes a poison. The effect of this poison is well known to medical men.
The evil effects of this drug can be found in the insane asylum, in the prison, and on the streets during the dark hours of the night. So all sane arguments would bear a direct testimony against the use of alcoholic preparations in any form whatsoever.
It is an established fact that alcohol can be eliminated from commerce, from the factory, from the laboratory, and from the practice of medicine, without any serious inconvenience to any, but a great blessing to thousands of homes whose inmates have suffered privation, abuse, and indigence from the vileness of drunkards who have sunk to the lowest level under the influence of the greatest curse in the land.
DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME IT HAS A CASH VALUE
PRECIOUS hours are frittered away on trivialities by many. God has made us stewards of our time as well as our means, and He will hold us accountable for our use of both.
Why not resolve to make spare time count in the year to come? Do good; its influence may be seen throughout eternity.
A SUGGESTION: Plan your home affairs so you can devote part or all of your time to selling the Signs of the Times Magazine.
Scores of others are earning their living in this way.
The work is clean, interesting, healthful, and quite remunerative.
Thinking people wish to know the very things the Signs of the Times Magazine tells about—the meaning of present world conditions.
10 cents a copy is the selling price. You pay 5 cents a copy for 5 to 40 copies, or 4 cents a copy for 50 or more; and on subscriptions taken at $1.00, the yearly rate, you retain 40 cents commission.
Sample copies will be sent free if you merely state your desire to consider the matter further.
Orders should be sent through our depository in your state. Send direct to us for sample copies.
Signs of the Times Magazine
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA
The Best Route to and from California
Two Great 1915 Expositions
At San Francisco
February 20 to December 4, 1915
At San Diego
January 1 to December 31, 1915
There will be no postponement for any reason
INQUIRE OF ANY AGENT, OR
MR. C. S. FEE
Passenger Trade Manager
Flood Building
San Francisco, California
SOUTHERN PACIFIC
Our Depositories
By Editor
Alabama Tract Society, 316 Lyric Bldg., Birmingham, Ala.
Alberta Tract Society, Drawer U, Lacombe, Alberta, Canada.
Arizona Tract Society, 417 West Fifth St., Los Angeles, Cal.
Arkansas Tract Society, 37 E. South St., Fayetteville, Ark.
British Columbia Tract Society, 1708 Maple St., Vancouver, B. C., Canada.
California Bible House, 537 Twenty-fifth St., Oakland, Cal.
California-Nevada Missionary Society, 341 E. Lodi Ave., Lodi, Cal.
California Tract Society, Southern, 417 W. Fifth St., Los Angeles, Cal.
Canadian Publishing Association (Eastern Canada), Box 308, Oshawa, Ont., Canada.
Central California Bible House, Box 1304, Fresno, Cal.
Upper Columbia Tract Society, College Place, Wash.
Utah Tract and Bible Society, 776 E. Sixth So., Salt Lake City, Utah.
Vermont (See Northern New England).
Virginia Tract Society, 2705 W. Main St., Richmond, Va.
Washington Missionary Society, Western, Box Q, Auburn, Wash.
West Virginia Tract Society, 124 Marion St., Fairmont, W. Va.
Wisconsin Tract Society, Box 57, Grand Rapids, Wis.
Wyoming Tract Society, Crawford, Neb.
Above is a list of our authorized agencies and depositories, and we invite you to communicate with them if you wish to secure any books or periodicals advertised in this journal.
FOR SALE AT A BARGAIN
Modern house, five rooms, two screened porches, attic, basement, bath, and pantry. Electric lights throughout. Located within three blocks of Pacific Press, S. D. A. church, and ten grade church school. Corner lot, 100 x 150 feet, cement walks, forty assorted fruit and ornamental trees. Small barn with drive in rear of lot. Reason for selling, owner going to Japan to assist in publishing work. For photographs and further information, write to C. C. Hall, Mountain View, California, care of Pacific Press Publishing Association.
PURE VEGETABLE COOKING OIL
We will ship from St. Louis or Holly, our pure, sweet, sanitary Crystal White Cooking Oil, as follows: one 5-gallon can, $3.60; two cans, $7.10. Barrel prices on application. Adelphian Mercantile Co., Holly, Michigan.
Our Great Christian Nations
THE world has taught itself to believe that the great aggressive and progressive part of it is made up of strong Christian nations. We may all affirm the truth that Christianity has had a strong molding influence upon the leading nations of the day; but the wars, the strifes, and the iniquities in general, that are in progress, ought to disabuse the mind of the candid individual in regard to there being any Christian nations in fact.
We have millions of people, in all these leading nations, who make a profession of Christianity; but very few of them comparatively know, from a practical experience, what Christianity really is. For a nation to adhere to some particular form of religion is one thing, and for the individuals composing that nation to be true Christians is quite a different thing. For instance, the “Christian nations” that are now in war in Europe would not be engaged in this barbarous strife if they had heeded the words of Christ, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Neither would they be fighting if they had obeyed His instruction, “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” The very fact that these nations are engaged in the most barbarous war the world has ever seen, ought to convince any one that, regardless of their professions, they are not Christian nations.
There are many Christians in those countries, and Christianity has exerted its mighty influence there; but it has not converted any one of these nations as a whole.
When Christ was here in person, nineteen hundred years ago, the Jewish nation claimed the distinction of being the true church of the living God. It was the “Christian nation” of that time; and yet that great “Christian nation,” with all its splendid history, and with all its memories of prophets and priests who had been devoted to the service of God, and who had given us the Scriptures of the Old Testament, nevertheless crucified the Lord Jesus Christ.
The popular clamors of professors of religion in that time were, “Away with Him! Crucify Him!” The great majority of the people in that “Christian nation” were deceived. They made an awful mistake. Looking back through the light of history, we can see and sense the delusion that misguided them. But why can we not see that the pretended and boasted Christianity of this time, in so far as our “Christian nations” are concerned, is just as much of a sham as that which appeared in the time of Christ’s first advent! We may consistently ask the question, Is not Satan preparing, through the pretensions and the formalities of so-called Christian nations, to have the world suffering under a gigantic delusion, in order that they may not see the clear prophecies that point to the second coming of Christ as an event for the immediate future? Indeed, was not the apostle Paul inspired to tell us that the last days would be made perilous because men would have the “form of godliness” but would deny its power? 2 Tim. 3:5.
We should heed these warnings that are in the Word, and not allow our eyes to be blinded to real truth by popular sentiment and popular teaching.
Not Lamented nor Buried
THE twenty-fifth chapter of the prophecy of Jeremiah, while it may refer, in an incidental way, to some of the struggles of ancient Israel, yet was written for our admonition and instruction who are living in this time; for we read, in the New Testament, that “all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” 1 Cor. 10:11.
Hence all these Old Testament scriptures and prophecies were written “for our admonition,” and we should study them. Read the words of the prophet: “A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth; for the Lord hath a controversy with the nations, He will plead with all flesh; He will give them that are wicked to the sword, saith the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth. And the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground.”
Resources of money and property destroyed in war can be replaced, but these resources in men, when lost, are gone forever.
Boston Photo News Co.
FRENCH TROOPS BEING MARCHED TO THE FRONT
There are in this scripture some things that could not have applied in any previous age. In the days of ancient Israel, the world had not all been discovered, nor was it all populated; but this text calls for a time when the slain of the Lord will be from one end of the earth to the other, and it speaks of a time when “evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth.” This great whirlwind, as the text indicates, is the storm of war that will break out. This chapter of Jeremiah is telling about war, and the evils that will arise among the nations as a result of it. And in that day, the text says, the slain shall be from one end of the earth to the other. “They shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried.”
The final climax of the scripture can not be reached until the wicked are destroyed at the second coming of Christ. But by observing what is now occurring, we can see some forecasts of the destruction that will be wrought through the terrible wars that are predicted for these closing days of time. In the war now raging in Europe, so many are killed and wounded that the hospital corps can not possibly take care of the wounded on the field of action. One of the latest despatches tells of a section of the river Yser, along which one of the most sanguinary battles has been fought, becoming so choked with dead bodies of men and horses, trees, and sunken barges, as to form a bridge, across which an entire brigade crossed. Think of the idea of using the corpses of men and horses as a bridge. It shows the mighty slaughter. Other despatches tell of large numbers of soldiers who were slightly wounded, but could not secure help, and had to remain on the battle-field till they died from sheer exposure.
God is not the author of this war, nor of any of this suffering; but the wickedness and the grasping selfishness and greed of men in these times are driving them into it, and these gruesome and sickeningly cruel results follow. God’s word has said these things were coming; but men have turned away from that Word, and to their own theories, and so do not receive the warning. The individual who is following the Word, knows perfectly well the meaning of this war, and what will be the outcome of it. This earth is in its death throes. The supreme climax will soon be reached; and if we will but study our Bibles, we may know it without any peradventure.
“None of the Wicked Shall Understand”
THE city of Chicago has been promising some very excellent reforms to come as the result of recent investigations of its vice conditions. The district attorney found paid detectives of the city, as well as police officials, in league with the confidence men, robbers, gamblers, etc.; but now we are informed that the investigations and work have been suddenly halted because of the prominent men who are involved in one way and another in the iniquities of this underworld. Every little while, Chicago, as well as all the rest of our large cities, has a big crusade against criminals and the devotees of vice. We are loudly assured that great reforms will result, and that conditions will be much better. But if things were growing so much better, why would these continual investigations and nauseating exposures have to be made?
God has assured us in His word that at the time of the end “the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand.” Dan. 12:10. If we will take the pains to study the conditions in the world to-day, and compare them with the prophetic utterances, we need make no mistake in regard to the place we occupy in this earth’s career of sin. We are very near its close. The forces of cruelty, of barbarism, and of wickedness have become so strongly entrenched that there is just one power that can cope with them, and that is the infinite power that will be displayed by Christ in the near-by day of His coming. We should be ready for that great day.
