“When the blood in the veins is floating toward the right side of the heart, which communicates with the lungs, it carries with it the carbonic acid (carbon dioxide), and, as I have found by experiment, a great part of this gas is condensed in these little bodies, the corpuscles. Arrived at the lungs, the blood comes into such contact with the air we breathe, that the oxygen gas in the air is freely absorbed by the little corpuscles, while the carbonic acid is given up into the air-passages of the lungs, and is thrown off with every breath we throw out. In this process the blood changes in color. It comes into the lungs of a dark color; it goes out of them a bright red. * * * * * The parts of the blood on which alcohol acts injuriously are the corpuscles and the fibrine. The red corpuscles are most distinctly affected. They undergo a peculiar process of shrinking from extraction of water from them. They also lose some of their power to absorb oxygen from the air. In confirmed spirit-drinkers the face and hands are often seen of dark mottled color, and in very bad specimens of the kind, the face is sometimes seen to be quite dark. This is because the blood cannot take up the vital air in the natural degree. * * * * *
“If anything whatever interferes with the proper reception of oxygen by the blood, the blood is not properly oxidized, the animal warmth is not sufficiently maintained, and life is reduced in activity. If for a brief interval of time the process of breathing is stopped in a living person, we see quickly developed the signs of difficulty, and we say the person is being suffocated. We observe that the face becomes dark, the lips blue, the surface cold. Should the process of arrest or stoppage of the breathing be long continued the person will become unconscious, will stagger and fall, and should relief not be at hand, he will in a very few minutes die.
“I found by experiment that in presence of alcohol in blood the process of absorption of oxygen was directly checked, and that even so minute a quantity as one part of alcohol in five hundred of blood proved an obstacle to the perfect reception of oxygen by the blood. The corpuscles are reduced in size, when large quantities of alcohol are taken, and become irregular in shape.”
Dr. J. J. Ridge says in Addresses on the Physiological Action of Alcohol:—
“It has been found by experiment that, when alcohol is taken, less carbonic acid comes away in the breath than when it is not. This is partly because the blood-corpuscles cannot carry so much, and partly because so much is not produced, because there is less oxygen to join with the food and produce it. Just as burning paper smokes when it does not get enough oxygen, so other things are formed and get into the blood when there is not enough oxygen to make carbonic acid. These things make the blood impure, and cause extra work and trouble to get rid of them. This is why persons who drink alcohol are more liable to have gout and other diseases, than total abstainers.”
Dr. Alfred Carpenter, formerly president of the Council of the British Medical Association, says in Alcoholic Drinks:—
“A blood corpuscle cannot come into direct contact with an atom of alcohol, without the function of the former being spoiled, and not only is it spoiled, but the effete matter which it has within its capsule cannot be exchanged for the necessary oxygen. The breath of the drunken man does not give out the quantity of carbonic acid which that of the healthy man does, and the ammoniacal compounds are in a great measure absent. Some of the carbon and effete nitrogenous matter is kept back. The retention of these poisonous matters within the body is highly injurious. Let the drinker suffer from any wound or injury and this effete matter in his blood is ready at a moment’s notice to prepare and set up actions called inflammatory or erysipelatous, or some other kind; by means of which too often the drinker is hurried into eternity, although, perhaps, he may have been regarded as a perfectly sober man, and have never been drunk in his life.”
In the light of these scientific facts, what can appear more utterly foolish than the swallowing of alcoholic patent medicines which are widely advertised as “Blood Purifiers”? That they will render the blood impure is only too evident in the light of scientific truth.
Dr. Nathan S. Davis has written much in disapproval of the use of alcohol in fevers, pneumonia and diphtheria, putting stress upon the fact that these diseases, of themselves, interfere with the reception of oxygen into the blood, and hence the use of all remedies that notably diminish the internal distribution of oxygen, or impair the corpuscles of the blood, should be avoided. Not only is alcohol of such a nature, but all the coal-tar series of antipyretics also. Since the internal distribution of oxygen, and the processes of tissue change are essential to the repair of the body, and alcohol hinders the blood in the full performance of its duties in these respects, it certainly seems clear that those physicians, who are extremely cautious in the use of this drug, or who do not use it at all, are more likely to be successful in saving their patients than are those who use it freely. Death-rates, with and without alcohol, show conclusively the superiority of the latter treatment.
The organs of circulation are the heart and the blood-vessels. The blood-vessels are of three kinds, arteries, capillaries and veins. The arteries carry blood from the heart to the capillaries; the veins collect it from the capillaries and return it to the heart. There are two distinct sets of blood-vessels in the body, both connected with the heart; one set carries blood to, through and from the lungs, the other guides its flow through all the remaining organs; the former are known as the pulmonary, the latter as the systemic blood-vessels.
The smallest arteries pass into the capillaries, which have very thin walls, and form very close networks in nearly all parts of the body; their immense number compensating for their small size. It is while flowing in these delicate tubes that the blood does its nutritive work, the arteries being merely supply-tubes for the capillaries, through whose delicate walls liquid containing nourishment exudes from the blood to bathe the various tissues.
The quantity of blood in any part of the body at any given time is dependent upon certain relations which exist between the blood-vessels and the nervous system. The walls of the arteries are abundantly supplied with involuntary muscular fibres, which have the power of contraction and relaxation. This power of contraction and relaxation is controlled by certain nerves called vasomotor nerves, because they cause or control motion in the vessels to which they are attached. When arteries supplying blood to any particular part of the body contract, the supply of blood to that part will be diminished in proportion to the amount of contraction. If the nervous control be altogether withdrawn, the arterial walls will completely relax, and the amount of blood in the part affected will be increased correspondingly.
Alcohol, even in moderate doses, paralyzes the vasomotor nerves which control the minute blood-vessels, thus allowing these vessels to become dilated with the flowing blood.
“With the disturbance of power in the extreme vessels, more disturbance is set up in other organs, and the first organ that shares in it is the heart. With each beat of the heart a certain degree of resistance is offered by the vessels when their nervous supply is perfect, and the stroke of the heart is moderate in respect both to tension and to time. But when the vessels are rendered relaxed, the resistance is removed, the heart begins to run quicker like a clock from which the pendulum has been removed, and the heart-stroke is greatly increased in frequency. It is easy to account in this manner for the quickened heart and pulse which accompany the first stage of deranged action from alcohol.”—Richardson.
Dr. Parkes of England, assisted by Count Wollowicz, conducted inquiries upon the effects of alcohol upon the heart, with a young and healthy man. At first they made accurate count of the heart beats during periods when the young man drank water only; then of the beats during successive periods in which alcohol was taken in increasing quantities. Thus step by step they measured the precise action of alcohol on the heart, and thereby the precise primary influence induced by alcohol. Their results are stated by themselves as follows:—
“The average number of beats of the heart in 24 hours (as calculated from eight observations made in 14 hours), during the first, or water period, was 106,000; in the earlier alcoholic period it was 127,000, or about 21,000 more; and in the later period it was 131,000, or 25,000 more.
“The highest of the daily means of the pulse observed during the first, or water period, was 77.5; but on this day two observations are deficient. The next highest daily mean was 77 beats.
“If, instead of the mean of the eight days, or 73.57, we compare the mean of this one day; viz. 77 beats per minute, with the alcoholic days, so as to be sure not to over-estimate the action of the alcohol, we find:—
“On the 9th day, with one fluid ounce of alcohol, the heart beat 4,300 times more.
On the 10th day, with two fluid ounces, 8,172 times more.
On the 11th day, with four fluid ounces, 12,960 times more.
On the 12th day, with six fluid ounces, 20,672 times more.
On the 13th day, with eight fluid ounces, 23,904 times more.
On the 14th day, with eight fluid ounces, 25,488 times more.
But as there was ephemeral fever on the 12th day, it is right to make a deduction, and to estimate the number of beats in that day as midway between the 11th and 13th days, or 18,432. Adopting this, the mean daily excess of beats during the alcoholic days was 14,492, or an increase of rather more than 13 per cent.
The first day of alcohol gave an excess of 4 per cent., and the last of 23 per cent.; and the mean of these two gives almost the same percentage of excess as the mean of the six days.
Admitting that each beat of the heart was as strong during the alcoholic period as in the water period (and it was really more powerful), the heart on the last two days of alcohol was doing one-fifth more work.
“Adopting the lowest estimate which has been given of the daily work of the heart; viz. as equal to 12.2 tons lifted one foot, the heart during the alcoholic period, did daily work excess equal to lifting 15.8 tons one foot, and in the last two days did extra work to the amount of 24 tons lifted as far.
“The period of rest for the heart was shortened, though, perhaps, not to such an extent as would be inferred from the number of beats, for each contraction was sooner over. The heart, on the fifth and sixth days after alcohol was left off, and, apparently at the time when the last traces of alcohol were eliminated, showed in the sphygmographic tracing signs of unusual feebleness; and, perhaps, in consequence of this, when the brandy quickened the heart again, the tracings showed a more rapid contraction of the ventricles, but less power than in the alcoholic period. The brandy acted, in fact, on a heart whose nutrition had not been perfectly restored.”
Richardson quotes these experiments of Parkes and Wollowicz as if he agrees with them that increased heart-beat must of necessity mean increased work done by the heart. Dr. Nathan S. Davis, Dr. Newell Martin, Dr. A. B. Palmer, and some other investigators, show conclusively that mere increased frequency of beat above the natural standard is no evidence of increased force or efficiency in the circulation.
“The more frequent beats under the influence of alcohol constitute no exception to the general rule, for while the heart beats more frequently, its influence on the vasomotor nerves causes dilatation of the peripheral and systemic blood-vessels, as proved by the pulse-line written by the sphygmograph, which more than counterbalances the supposed increased action of the heart. The truth is, that under the influence of alcohol in the blood the systolic action of the heart loses in sustained force in direct proportion to its increase in frequency, until, by simply increasing the proportion of alcohol, the heart stops in diastole, as perfectly paralyzed as are the coats of the smaller vessels throughout the system. This was clearly demonstrated by the experiments of Professor Martin of Johns Hopkins University, to determine the effects of different proportions of alcohol on the action of the heart of the dog; and those of Drs. Sidney Ringer and H. Sainsbury, to determine the relative strength of different alcohols as indicated by their influence on the heart of the frog. Professor Martin states that blood containing ¼ per cent. by volume of absolute alcohol, almost invariably diminishes, within a minute, the work done by the heart.”
(This estimate would equal in an adult man an amount equal to the absolute alcohol in two or three ounces of whisky or brandy.)
“These investigations of Professor Martin, being directly corroborated by those of Drs. Ringer and Sainsbury, complete the series of demonstrations needed to show the actual effects of alcohol on the cardiac, as well as on the vasomotor, and also on the direct contractability of the muscular structure, when supplied with blood containing all gradations in the relative proportion of alcohol, leaving no longer any basis for the idea, popular both in and out of the profession, that alcohol in any of its forms is capable of increasing, even temporarily the force or efficiency of the heart’s action.”—Dr. N. S. Davis in Influence of Alcohol On the Human System.
The following letter will be of great interest to all students of the physiological effects of alcohol:—
“Chicago, Ill., March 3, 1899.
“To Mrs. Martha M. Allen,
“Syracuse, N. Y.,
“Madam: Your letter asking my attention to the apparent contradiction of authorities concerning the work done by the heart when influenced by alcohol was received yesterday.
“The explanation is not difficult. It depends entirely on the different views of what constitutes the work of the heart.
“One class of investigators, led by the original and valuable experiments of Parkes and Wollowicz base their estimate of the heart’s work entirely on the number of times it contracts or beats per minute. Thus Dr. Parkes, finding that moderate doses of alcohol increased the number of contractions of the heart from three to six beats per minute more than natural, readily estimated the number of additional contractions that would occur in twenty-four hours, and thereby demonstrated a large amount of increased work done by the heart under the influence of alcohol. All writers who speak of ‘stimulating’ or increasing the action of the heart by alcohol follow this method of measuring the amount of work done. They generally add that it is like applying ‘the whip to a tired horse.’
“The other class of investigators who claim that alcohol diminishes the actual work done by the heart base their estimates on the amount of blood the heart passes through its cavities into the arteries in a given time. This is the physiological function of the heart; i.e. to aid in circulating the blood. Professor Martin’s experiments were admirably contrived to determine, not how frequently the heart beat, but the amount of blood it delivered per minute under the influence of alcohol and without alcohol.
“He, and all others who take this basis of work, found that alcohol in any dose diminished the efficiency of the heart in circulating the blood in direct ratio to the quantity taken.
“My own original experiments, made fifty years ago, uniformly showed that alcohol quickly increased the number of heart beats per minute, but at the same time diminished the efficiency of the circulation generally. Every experienced practitioner knows that the weaker the heart becomes, the faster it beats. Consequently, the number of times the heart contracts per minute is no measure of the efficiency of its work in circulating the blood. Indeed the mechanism of the heart is such that there must be sufficient time between each of its contractions for its cavities to fill, or it is made to contract on an insufficient supply, and the efficiency of the circulation is diminished.
“Yours respectfully,
“N. S. Davis.”
The International Medical Congress of 1876 adopted as its reply to the Memorial of the National Temperance Society, and of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union respecting “Alcohol as a Food and as a Medicine,” the paper by Dr. Ezra M. Hunt, one conclusion of which was, “Its use as a medicine is chiefly that of a cardiac stimulant.”
As experiments conducted since that time show that it is not a cardiac stimulant, but a direct cardiac paralyzant, what excuse is there for using it as a medicine now?
“Whenever the heart is compelled to more rapid contraction than is natural, it has less time to rest. Although it seems to be constantly at work, it really rests more than half the time, so that, although the periods of relaxation are very short, they are so numerous that the aggregate amount of rest in a day is very great. Now, if the rapidity of the contractions is increased materially and continuously, although the aggregate amount of time for rest may be the same as before, yet the waste caused by the contractions is greater, while the time for rest after each one is shorter. This lack of rest produces exhaustion of the heart-muscle, ending in partial change of the muscular tissue into fat. The heart then becomes flabby and weak and its walls become thinner, a condition known to physicians as a ‘fatty heart,’ often resulting in sudden death.”—Tracy’s Physiology, page 158.
Dr. T. D. Crothers, of Hartford, Conn., has made many observations with the sphygmograph to learn the effects of alcohol upon the heart. He says:—
“On general principles, and clinically, the increased activity and subsequent diminution of the heart’s action brings no medicinal aid or strength to combat disease. This is simply a reckless waste of force for which there is no compensation. Without any question or doubt the increased heart’s action, extending over a long period, is dangerous.
“The medicinal damage done by alcohol does not fall exclusively upon the heart, although this organ may show it more permanently than others.”—Transactions of Second Annual Meeting of A. M. T. A.
Dr. I. N. Quimby, of Jersey City, N. J., in an address before the American Medical Temperance Association, after describing two clinical cases which ended in death, made the following statement:
“There was nothing so strange about the death of these two patients, although they both died unexpectedly to the physician and their friends, but the declaration I am about to make may be somewhat new and startling, namely: That neither of these patients, in my candid judgment, died from the effect of disease, but rather from vasomotor paralysis of the heart, superinduced by the administration of the alcohol, which brought on a sudden and unexpected collapse and death.”
Alcohol causes fatty degeneration of the heart and other muscular structures. Old age also causes these degenerations, hence alcohol is said to produce premature aging of the body.
“In fatty degeneration the cells and fibres of the body become more or less changed into fat. If a muscular fibre undergoes fatty degeneration, the particles of which it is made disappear one by one, and particles of oil or fatty matter take their place, so that the degree or amount of degeneration varies according to the extent to which this change has gone on. When the fibres of which a muscle is composed have become thus altered by fatty degeneration they become softer according to the amount of it; they are more easily torn and may even tear across when the muscle is being used during life. The more a muscle is thus degenerated the weaker it is, because it contains less muscular substance and more fat. Not only do the heart and other voluntary muscles thus degenerate, but those of the arteries also.
“Fatty degeneration is promoted by alcohol because alcohol prevents the proper removal of fat, which has been seen to accumulate in the blood; alcohol prevents the proper oxidation or burning up of waste matters; growing cells which are affected by the chemical influence of alcohol are not quite natural or healthy, so are more liable to degeneration; alcohol hinders the proper removal of waste matter from individual cells and tissues.”—Dr. J. J. Ridge, London.
Dr. Newell Martin says in The Human Body:—
“Although fatty degeneration of the heart may occur from other causes, alcoholic indulgence is the most frequent one. Fatty liver or fatty heart is rarely if ever curable; either will ultimately cause death.”
Dr. Ridge says these degenerations occur in the tissues of thin people as well as in those of stout persons. In thin people they are usually in the fibres only, not between them.
It is because of this degeneration of the heart and other muscles caused by alcohol that athletes in training need to be so very careful to avoid the use of beer and other intoxicating drinks.
Diseases such as fevers, diphtheria, and pneumonia which interfere with the reception, and internal distribution of oxygen, favor granular and fatty degeneration of the heart and other structures of the body. Hence non-alcoholic physicians urge that alcohol and such other drugs, as have like action in hindering full oxidation of the blood, and causing fatty degenerations should be studiously avoided. These physicians attribute many of the deaths from heart-failure in such diseases to the combined action of the disease and the alcohol in exhausting the heart, and weakening its structure.
Comparative death-rates with and without alcohol show conclusively the superiority of the latter treatment.
The liver is a very large organ, the largest and heaviest in the body, weighing in a healthy adult from three to four pounds. It secretes the bile. Its cells also store up, “in the form of a kind of animal starch called glycogen,” excess of starchy or sugary food absorbed from the intestine during the digestion of a meal. This it gradually doles out to the blood for general use by the organs of the body until the next meal is eaten.
Dr. William Hargreaves says:—
“The office of the liver is to take up new substances having not yet become blood, as well as the portions of integrated matter that can be worked over, and brought again into use. It is in fact the economist of the system. It excretes bile, and liver-sugar, and renews the blood. When the liver is disordered the whole body is more or less deranged and the proper nutrition of its parts arrested.”
Dr. Alfred Carpenter says:—
“The liver has to do several things; a considerable part of its duty is to purify the blood from débris (waste matter), to filter out some things, to break up and alter others, and to expel them from the body in the form of bile. There are certain diseases in which the liver suddenly declines to do any more work. Acute atrophy of the liver is the name of this condition, and when it arises death rapidly results from suppression of the secretion of bile. It brings about a state of things called acholia; the patient is actually poisoned by the non-removal of those ingredients from the blood which it is the duty of the liver to remove. This corresponds in effect to the condition which alcohol can bring about by slow degrees.”
The liver is the first important organ, next to the stomach and bowels, to receive the poisonous influence of alcohol.
“If alcohol is used habitually, though only in small quantities at a time, the liver may become the seat of serious changes. There may be a great increase of fat deposited in the cells, producing what is called ‘fatty liver,’ or it may lead to a great increase of connective tissue (membrane) between the cells, and surrounding the blood-vessels. This newly-developed connective tissue gradually contracts, and in so doing crushes the cells and obstructs the blood-vessels, making the organ much smaller than natural, and causing the surface to be covered with little projecting knobs, consisting of portions of liver-tissue that have been less compressed than the part that separates them. The pressure upon the liver-cells and the destruction of many of them, prevents the proper formation of bile and liver-sugar. The contraction of the newly-developed tissue, by obstructing the blood-vessels, interferes with the circulation. Malt liquors seem to produce fatty degeneration, while the stronger liquors cause the development of connective tissue.”—Tracy’s Physiology.
Speaking of diseases of the liver, Dr. Trotter said in his Essay on Drunkenness:—
“The chronic species is not a painful disease; it is slow in its progress, and frequently gives no alarm, till some incurable affection is the consequence. Hence, the fallacy and danger of judging merely by the feelings of the beneficial effects of the use of intoxicating drinks; for the liver and stomach may be seriously diseased, while a man imagines himself in moderate health.”
Hardening of the liver, or “hob-nailed” liver, is said to be the result, largely, of taking liquor upon an empty stomach. Dr. E. Chenery, of Boston, in his excellent book, Facts for the Millions, tells of a patient of his who was well up to the evening before, when he went out and drank with some companions, taking the liquor on an empty stomach. That night, vomiting and pain in the right side came on, with high fever. Headache began and increased, followed by delirium and a general jaundiced condition. He died as a result. The disease was acute inflammation of the liver, brought on by the one broadside of alcohol poured “point blank” into the organ.
Dr. Chenery says further on in the same book:—
“There is another disorder of a very serious nature which science is now laying at the doors of the liver—diabetes mellitus, or sugar in the urine. Till quite recently, this formidable affection has been regarded as having its seat in the kidneys; and it is so classified in medical writings. Later researches, however, show that the sugar has been formed in the economy before it reaches the kidneys, and that these organs act only as strainers with respect to it, removing it from the blood as they remove salt and various other substances. In seeking for the fountain-head of diabetic sugar, it is found that the liver is the great glycogenic, or sugar-originating factory of the body. In an ordinary state of health this substance is produced in just the proper amount for the uses for which it is intended, so that it is all disposed of in the organism, and does not pass off by the kidneys. If any cause interrupts the processes by which the sugar is consumed, while its manufacture goes on normally, there will come to be an over-supply of sugar in the blood, which, when it reaches 3 parts to 1,000 of the blood, will begin to pass off by the kidneys and appear in the urine. On the other hand, if an undue amount of it is formed, the consumption remaining normal, it will also accumulate in the circulation, and be eliminated by the kidneys. In either case we have diabetes, the sugar irritating and diseasing the kidneys as it passes.”
Dr. Harley, of the Royal Society of London, has made the subject of alcohol and diabetes matter for considerable study. He says a small quantity only of alcohol injected into the portal (liver) circulation of healthy animals will cause diabetic urine.
“If any one doubt the truth of the assertion that alcohol causes diabetes, let him select a case of that form of the disease arising from excessive formation, and after having carefully estimated the daily amount of sugar eliminated by the patient, allow him to drink a few glasses of wine, and watch the result. He will soon find the ingestion of the liquor is followed by an increase of sugar. If alcoholics increase the amount of saccharine matter in the urine of the diabetic, we can easily understand how their excessive use may induce the disease in individuals predisposed to it.”—Dr. Harley.
Some physicians claim that in jaundice and certain other bilious disorders even medicines prepared in alcohol are decidedly prejudicial and aggravating.
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, and other writers draw attention to the effects of alcohol in hindering the liver in its duty of destroying the toxic substances generated within the system of a sick person by the specific microbes to which the disease owes its origin, saying that the activity of the liver in destroying these poisons is one of the physiologic processes which stand between the patient and death.
The more this question is studied the more apparent is it that, other things being equal, the sick person who is cared for by a non-alcoholic physician has a much better chance of recovery than the one dosed by “a brandy doctor.”
“The kidneys, being the chief organs for the excretion of nitrogen waste, are among the most important organs of the body. Any defect in their healthy activity leads to serious interference with the working of many organs, due to the accumulation in the body of nitrogenous waste products. If both kidneys be cut out of an animal, it dies in a few hours from blood-poisoning, due to the accumulation of waste poisonous substances which the kidneys should have got rid of. Serious kidney-disease amounts to pretty much the same thing as cutting out the organs, since they are of little use if not healthy. It is always fatal if not checked, and often kills in a short time. The things which most frequently cause kidney disease are undue exposure to cold, and indulgence in alcoholic drinks.”—Martin’s Human Body.
“The kidneys are supplied with arterial blood, which, having given up water, urea, salt, and certain other substances, either secreted or simply strained from it, returns to the kidneys nearly as bright and fresh as when it entered them. While the lungs are concerned in removing carbonic acid—the ashes of the furnace—it is the peculiar province of the kidneys to remove the products of the wear and tear of the bodily machinery—the wasted nerve and muscle—in the form of urea, or other crystallizable substances, the presence of which in the economy for any considerable time is attended with disastrous results.
“Now, nature has put these organs, charged with so important work, as far away as possible from any source of irritation. Could alcohol get as direct access to them as to the liver, there is no doubt that their function would be destroyed almost at once, since the change in arterial blood by alcohol is much more extensive and damaging than that wrought in such venous blood as the liver receives from the portal veins. Thus while the liver takes the alcohol immediately from the alimentary canal, the kidneys receive it only after it has passed through the liver, the heart, the lungs, and the heart again; by which time much of it has escaped, while the remainder has been greatly diluted by the blood of the general circulation; yet coming to the kidneys even so considerably diluted, it has power to congest, irritate, and excite them to the excretion of an unusual amount of the watery elements of the urine, as if to wash the irritant away.
“But it is only the watery element that is increased, not the urea, which is the substance representing the waste of vital action, and is a poison to the system; this it is the special office of the kidneys to remove. Not only does alcohol not increase its elimination, but actually lessens the discharge. And should the irritation of the spirit continue, or be augmented in force, inflammation would follow, and the excretion of urea nearly or entirely cease and life be in the greatest jeopardy. Relief or death then must speedily follow.”—Dr. E. Chenery, of Boston, in Alcohol Inside Out.
“Alcohol causes kidney-disease in several ways. In the first place it unduly excites the activity of the organs. Next, by impeding oxidation it interferes with the proper preparation of nitrogen wastes: they are brought to the kidneys in an unfit state for removal, and injure those organs. Third, when more than a small quantity of alcohol is taken, some of it is passed out of the body unchanged, through the kidneys, and injures their substance. The kidney-disease most commonly produced by alcohol is one kind of “Bright’s disease,” so called from the physician who first described it. The connective tissue of the organ grows in excess, and the true excreting kidney-substance dwindles away. At last the organ becomes quite unable to do its work, and death results.
“The three most common causes of Bright’s disease are an acute illness, as scarlet fever, of which it is a frequent result; sudden exposure to cold when warm (this often drives blood in excessive quantity from the skin to internal organs, and leads to kidney-disease); and the habitual drinking of alcoholic liquids.”—Dr. Newell Martin in The Human Body.
“Every physician knows or should know, that the quantity and quality of the effete, or waste, material separated from the blood by the kidneys and voided in the urine, is such as to render a knowledge of the action of any remedy or drink on the function of these organs, of the greatest importance in the treatment of all diseases, and especially those of an acute febrile character. As was long since demonstrated by clinical observation, and more recently by patient and accurate experiments by Bouchard and others, the amount of toxic, or poisonous, material naturally separated from the blood by the kidneys and passed out in the urine is so great that if wholly retained by failure of the kidneys to act for two or three days, speedy death ensues. Equally familiar to every observing physician is the fact that in all the acute febrile and inflammatory diseases, not only is the quantity of the urine secreted generally diminished, but its quality or constituency is also changed to a greater degree than even its quantity. Thus, some of the more important constituents are increased, others diminished, and often new or foreign elements are found present, all resulting from the disordered metabolic processes taking place throughout the system during the progress of these diseases.
“It is, therefore, hardly necessary to remind the physician that it is of the greatest importance to know as correctly as possible both the direct and the indirect influence of every medicine or drink on the action of the kidneys and all other eliminating organs and structures, lest he unwittingly allow the use of such as may not only retard the elimination of the specific causes of disease, but also favor auto-intoxication by retarding the elimination of the natural elements of excretion.
“That the presence of alcohol in the living system positively lessens the reception and internal distribution of oxygen, and consequently retards the oxidation processes of disassimilation by which the various products for excretion are perfected and their elimination facilitated, is so fully demonstrated, both by observation and experiment, as no longer to admit of doubt.
“As nearly all the toxic elements of urine are the results of these oxidation processes, the presence of alcohol in the system could hardly fail to interfere with them in a notable degree.
“The direct and somewhat extensive series of experiments instituted by Glazer, as published in the Deut. Med. Wochensch., Leipsic, Oct. 22, 1891, demonstrated this, as shown by the following conclusions:—‘Alcohol, in even relatively moderate quantities, irritates the kidneys, so that the exudation of leucocytes and the formation of cylindrical casts may occur. It also produces an unusual amount of uric acid crystals and oxalates, due to the modified tissue changes produced by the alcohol. The effect of a single act of over-indulgence in alcohol does not last more than thirty-six hours, but it is cumulative under continued use.’
“Dr. Chittenden kept several dogs under the influence of alcohol eight or ten days, and found it to increase the amount of uric acid in their urine more than 100 per cent. above the normal proportion.
“Mohilansky, house-physician to Manassein’s clinic, in the conclusions drawn from his interesting experiments on fifteen young men to determine the effects of alcohol on the metabolic processes generally, stated that ‘it does not possess any diuretic action: but rather tends to inhibit the elimination of water by the kidneys.’ It is further stated that this result is owing to the coincident effect of diminished systemic oxidation and of blood pressure.
“On the other hand, several observers have reported that the flow of urine was increased by the use of alcohol. From as full an examination of the subject as I have been able to make, it appears that the diverse results obtained have depended upon the previous habits of those experimented on, and the widely varying quantities of water drank with the alcohol. When the alcohol is taken with large quantities of water, as is usual with those who use beer and fermented drinks generally, the total amount of urine passed is usually increased, but not more than is found to result from taking the same quantity of water without any alcohol. When alcoholic drinks are taken by those already habituated to its use, it has less marked effect on the quantity and quality of the urine than when taken by those who had previously been total abstainers. This was illustrated by the experiments of Mohilansky on the fifteen men, some of whom were habitual drinkers, some occasional drinkers, and others total abstainers. When all were subjected to the same diet and drinks, with alcohol, in two the daily amount of urine voided remained unaltered, in five it was increased seven per cent., and in eight it decreased twelve per cent. But whatever may be the variations in the mere quantity of urine voided under the influence of alcohol, the alterations in quality pretty uniformly show an increase in the products of imperfect internal metamorphosis or oxidation, such as uric acid, oxalates, casts, leucocytes, albumen and potassium, with less of the normal products, as urea and salts of sodium.
“During the past year I have met with three cases in which the regular daily use of alcoholic drinks for several months, in quantities not sufficient to produce intoxication, had so altered the blood, and the renal function, that the urine contained both casts and albumen, and some degree of œdema was observable in the face and extremities. These changes were so marked as to justify a diagnosis of incipient nephritis, or Bright’s disease. Yet after totally abstaining from the use of alcoholic drinks and remedies, and taking such vasomotor tonics as strychnine and digitalis, with a regulated diet and fresh air, they completely recovered.
“When it is remembered that in diphtheria, pneumonia and typhoid fever, the acute diseases in which a large part of the profession administer most freely alcoholic remedies, the function of the kidney is altered in almost the same direction as are found to take place under the influence of alcohol, it should certainly cause every practitioner to pause and critically review the pathological basis on which he has been prescribing. An anæsthetic, like alcohol, may certainly render a patient with diphtheria, pneumonia or typhoid fever more quiet, and cause him to say he feels better, but if it at the same time diminishes the internal distribution of oxygen, retards the oxidation and elimination of waste and toxic products through the kidneys and lungs, and lessens vasomotor force, it cannot fail to protract the duration of disease, and increase the ratio of mortality.”—Dr. N. S. Davis, A. M. T. A. Quarterly, April, 1894.
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, by a series of carefully executed experiments, conclusively demonstrated that alcohol hinders the elimination of poisonous matter by the kidneys. This property of alcohol is one of the objections which he sees to its use as a medicine. He says:—
“Water applied externally stimulates elimination by the pores of the skin, and employed freely internally by water drinking, and enemas to be retained for absorption, aids liver and kidney activity. If the patient dies it is because his liver and kidneys have failed to destroy and eliminate the poisons generated with sufficient rapidity to prevent their producing fatal mischief in the body.”
Although nearly all of the foremost scientific investigators of the effects of alcohol upon the body have lost faith in the old views of the usefulness of alcoholic liquors as remedial agencies a considerable proportion of the medical profession do not seem yet to have learned how to treat disease without recourse to the alcohol therapy. This is largely due to the fact that the new thought has not yet crystallized to any large extent in the medical text-books, and also to the widely variant views held by professors of medicine.
The medical use of alcohol has been, and still is, the great bulwark of the liquor traffic. The user of alcoholics as beverages always excuses himself, if hard pressed by abstainers, upon the ground that they must be of service or doctors would not recommend them so frequently. In all prohibitory amendment, and no-license campaigns, the cry of “Useful as Medicine” has been the hardest for temperance workers to meet, for they have felt that they had to admit the statement as true, knowing nothing to the contrary. Indeed, thousands of those who advocate the prohibition of the sale of liquor as a beverage, use alcohol in some form quite freely as medicine, and are as determined and earnest in defence of their favorite “tipple” as any old toper could well be. Many use it in the guise of cordials, tonics, bitters, restoratives and the thousand and one nostrums guaranteed to cure all ills to which human flesh is heir.
The wide-spread belief in the necessity and efficacy of alcoholics as remedies is the greatest hindrance to the success of the temperance cause. It is impossible to convince the mass of the people that what is life-giving as medicine can be death-dealing as beverage. The two stand, or fall, together. Hence there is no more important question before the medical profession, and the people generally, than that of the action of alcohol in disease, and, as a goodly number of the most distinguished and successful physicians of Europe and America declare it to be harmful rather than helpful, it behooves thoughtful people to carefully study the reasons they assign for holding such an opinion. Certainly it is true that if physicians and people would all adopt the views of the advocates of non-alcoholic medication the temperance problem would be solved, and the greatest source of disease, crime, pauperism, insanity and misery would be driven from the face of the earth.
To understand the arguments advanced in favor of non-alcoholic medication it is needful to make some study of the effects of alcohol upon the body, and of the purposes for which alcoholics are prescribed medically.
Alcohol is used in sickness as a food, when solid foods cannot be assimilated, “to support” or sustain, the vitality; it is used as a stimulant, a tonic, a sedative or narcotic, an anti-spasmodic, an antiseptic and antipyretic; it is used in combination with other drugs, in tinctures and in pharmacy. It is not wonderful that the people esteem it above all other drugs, for none other is so variously and so generally employed. Those who discard it as a remedy teach that only in human delusions is it a food or a stimulant, and for the other uses to which it is put, outside of pharmacy, there are different agents which may be more satisfactorily employed.
So well agreed are all the scientific investigators that alcohol has no appreciable food value that it would seem foolish to spend time upon a discussion of alcohol as food were it not that the idea of its “supporting the vitality” in disease, in some mysterious way is deeply rooted in the professional, as well as the popular mind.
Foods are substances which, when taken into the body, undergo change by the process of digestion; they give strength and heat and force; they build up the tissues of the body, and make blood; and they induce healthy, normal action of all the bodily functions.
Alcohol does none of these. It undergoes no change in the stomach, but is rapidly absorbed and mixed with the blood, and has been discovered hours after its ingestion in the brain, blood and tissues, unchanged alcohol. In many of the experiments made with it upon animals, considerable quantities of the amount swallowed were recovered from the excretions of the body, without any change having taken place in its composition. This, of itself, is sufficient evidence to show that it is a substance which the body does not recognize as a food.
Foods build up the tissues of the body. All physiologists are agreed that since alcohol contains no nitrogen it cannot be a tissue-forming food; there is no difference of opinion here. Dr. Lionel Beale, the eminent physiologist, says that alcohol is not a food and does not nourish the tissues.