WHAT TO DRINK

THE question of alcohol, whether it be beneficial to man or injurious to him, is one that cannot be too frequently brought under notice. For, unfortunately, the general public has arrived at a conviction— comfortable, perhaps, but erroneous-that if what people are pleased to call moderation be practised, alcohol, taken daily, though no need of stimulation be felt, not only does no harm, but may even do good. But as moderation' is a word which means one thing to this man or woman and another thing to that, we are in presence of an important difficulty; for alcohol is admitted by everybody to be a powerful drug. And even if we could lay down definitely what amount of alcohol per day would constitute moderation, we should not, I fear, have advanced very far towards bettering the large percentage of the population which is being injured by it. Every man would still be a law unto himself. Scientific argument is of little avail. On this subject those who are convinced are usually convinced against their will, and, as we know, 'are of the same opinion still '; or act as if they were. But I have known many persons who have been led to give their judgment against the daily dietetic use of this powerful drug-upon whom argument produced no effect whatever-by means of some very simple and common-sense considerations regarding it.

You point to a plant in a flower-pot. It is looking somewhat dried up. In want of water, you say. Yes; the food is all right. There is plenty of good-looking clay in the pot. But liquid is needed so to dissolve the food as to enable the roots to carry it into the circulation of the plant. Water alone will not do, nor will clay alone do. There must be both. Now, it will occur to the reader that the natural solvent for carrying the food of all animals into the circulation is water; and it may occur to him (as to the persons of whom I have spoken) that probably nothing else will do as well. A trial will show that if he give a plant alcohol mixed with water it will fade away and die. And I may say here, that though animal tissues are not plant tissues, the insurance companies take a similar view of its effect on man: for they lay down that the man who habitually takes alcohol even in moderation must not be insured at the favourable rates which are allowed to abstainers from it. It is a point worth pondering that we find com

mittees of level-headed business men coming to a very definite conclusion on this alcohol question from the point of view of their financial interests. Surely, you will say, there must be something in it. And of course there is. There is reason and common-sense in it. For, the effect of alcohol on the tissues is to harden them, and, after the earlier effects pass off, to impede (though to a slight extent) the circulation in them. As it destroys the power of the plant to feed, so it acts, though in a lesser degree, in diminishing the desire for food in the human subject. Less food is capable of being assimilated, and therefore less is desired. Indeed, less food is capable of being digested in the stomach; for as alcohol hardens the tissues of the body, it hardens the food it mixes with in the digestive tract, rendering it difficult of solution and digestion. The capricious appetite of regular alcohol takers is well known, and is thus easily accounted for. We do not associate a hardening process with life, or the manifestations of life. On the contrary, we associate these manifestations with elasticity, plasticity, softness. As a hardening agent for preserving pathological specimens alcohol is excellent, but why become a hardened pathological specimen before your time by pouring it down your throat?

Common-sense, then, is on the side of the view that the animal body is, let us say, a machine to be worked by water. Sir Benjamin Richardson used to say that we can see at once the absurdity of using for our steam engines a liquid unadapted to their construction, and that our mistake is soon seen if we put the water where the oil, and the oil where the water, ought to be. The point is that the machine must be altered if you would have it work under new conditions. And so, if we proceed to work the animal machine with a liquid which is not natural to it, we, as a matter of course, commence a process of altering the machine to meet the new requirements. For, unlike the lifeless engine, the animal body does endeavour to adapt itself to the changed conditions; but, unfortunately, these conditions, not being physiological, entail the setting up of processes which are not physiological but pathological-in other words, disease processes. All that may seem an exaggeration in view of general experience, but in reality it

is not so.

What had we better do, then, with a drug a very slight overdose of which produces headache, mental confusion, redness of eyes, loss of appetite, indigestion? Evidently abandon its habitual use, not its occasional use when a stimulant to the circulation is suddenly required. For it is as certain as the insurance companies make it that the habitual use of alcohol in sufficient quantity to produce a stimulant effect (short of which few people want to take it at all) is an outrage on Nature, disturbs her processes of assimilation of food and of nutrition, and induces in time a morbid condition of the lungs, liver, kidneys, and brain.

But objectors have, of course, something to say. And they will be quite in earnest when they tell us that this is an exaggerated picture. The alcohol they take, they will say, does not hurt them. But a few further considerations will appear which may give them pause. If an objector have read so far he will have had one more opportunity of noting that when he is taking alcohol he is adding something to his blood which was never intended to be there of necessity-something foreign and injurious to it-and I have good hope that that knowledge may lead him to, at all events, limit carefully the quantity he adds to it. Undoubtedly, objections have to be met. Are there not numbers of our acquaintances who habitually take a considerable quantity of alcohol in one beverage or another who, nevertheless, do not seem to suffer for it? That is certainly so. But it is only seeming. The capacity of such persons for work, and their general enjoyment of life, would be much enhanced if only they did without it as a ruleadmitting of the exception of which I have spoken. Moreover, that desirable feeling of zest and satisfaction in work, to which they are now strangers, would take the place of the sense of effort and fatigue brought about by very ordinary tasks. For the fact is, their constitutional powers are being used in efforts to eliminate the more or less of alcoholic poison they have ingested. The power of the body to eliminate poisons is very great; but the effort is not made on the part of the excretory organs without damage to them, and steady loss of this power. It is not merely a case of extraordinary work thrown on them, but unnatural work; and I need not argue that what is unnatural is necessarily injurious. Just consider what happens when the eliminating powers are a bit overtaxed. So polluted (the word is the right one) is the blood circulating in the delicate brain tissue, so congested are the cerebral vessels, that the head aches as if splitting; or, even, a state of fever is induced, necessitating days or weeks of medical treatment, during which the ordinary exercise and food of the body are intermitted, damage done to the constitution, and life unquestionably shortened. But, short of this manifest overtaxing of the eliminating organs, it is plain that the energies of the body are being employed in a wrong direction; and the capacity for work is lessened in proportion to the degree of the abnormal call on the bodily powers for the elimination of alcohol. Oxidation is going on under difficulties.

But are we to proclaim that alcohol is absolutely and entirely pernicious, because these things are so? Assuredly not. For what is this alcohol trouble? The trouble is that while there are occasions for the use of alcohol, it is most generally used when there is no occasion for it. Moreover, when there is occasion for it, and the prescribed quantity of it has had the desired effect, the patient does not crave for more; while if taken when not required the tendency of alcohol is to create a desire for more of it, and this because some constitutional

irritation produced by the first dose, though in a certain sense pleasurable, needs to be allayed. There are states, of which medical men know, in which certain regulated doses of alcohol are beneficial. The same is true of every other powerful drug. The notion that it is a food, to be taken every day as a matter of course, is a wholly pernicious one. People who are in health do not add to that state by taking wines or spirits. The bodies of the lower animals are maintained in vigorous health without them, a fact which disposes of the contention that the alcohol they contain is to be regarded as a necessary part of one's daily food. Alcohol is not a food. It is a poison, useful, like other poisons, in its due place. 'Infirmities' of which St. Paul spoke may call for it; and the Book of Proverbs advises the giving of strong drink to a man who is 'ready to perish,' for urgent need, and of wine to him who is of heavy heart.' These are occasions, however, of more or less urgent distress, which, once tided over, no longer need the remedy. Here in England we may assuredly say that without alcohol

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Life would be longer,

Hearts would be stronger.

F. A. DAVY, M.D., LIEUT.-COL. LATE R.A.M.C.

IDLE READING

THE austere housewife who called reading 'idle work' may have been unconscious of the oxymoron. But she uttered a profound truth all the same. There are popular authors it would be invidious to name who would apparently rather write than read. Most people would rather talk than do either. Of such was George Henry Lewes, who used, however, to say that when he was too much tired to read German he would read French, and when he was too much tired to read French he would still read English. An academic sciolist proud of his library was once showing off his shelves and bindings to a friend. 'I hardly know what to do with all these books,' he said. 'Read them, my dear fellow,' replied the candid visitor. There is a frame of mind, happily rare, in which printed words seem, like the hatter's remarks to Alice, to have no sort of meaning, although they are certainly English. Mere trash, compared by Mr. Goldwin Smith with bad tobacco, kills time and spoils taste. 'Idle work' is something more than that. It implies occupation without effort, and what else can be so agreeable? Reading for a purpose absorbs, engrosses, becomes in time an overmastering passion. But reading without a purpose is not altogether purposeless. The search for suggestion is a real pursuit. When Mrs. Glasse said in her cookery book that the first thing was to catch your hare, she had not really got to the beginning. You must start your hare before you can do anything else with it, and how many hares are started by idle reading! I don't mean such improving form of sport as looking out the references in Macaulay. Thackeray has an eloquent passage on the infinite possibilities involved in this method. But perhaps it could hardly be called idle, and in some cases it might be almost as difficult as verifying the numerous quotations in Hamlet, or proving that Milton borrowed without acknowledgment from a Dutchman. Dr. Johnson resolutely protested against the popular fallacy that you should begin at the beginning of a book. There was no knowing where that fatal theory might not land you. You might even feel bound to read to the

end. Which is absurd.

Only a proposition of Euclid, and perhaps a sonnet, requires to be taken as a whole. A great many people say, 'The world is too much