Part 5

We all know that, when we drink alcoholic liquor, it affects the brain immediately. Most of us are aware, too, that it affects the brain injuriously, lessening at once its power to discern and discriminate. 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. Or, let any salesman, before beginning with a difficult but important customer, perform the idiotic action of "taking a drink," and he will soon discover that his ascendency over his customer is impaired. In some way this alcohol, of which we are so fond, gets to the brain and injures it. We are conscious of this, and we can observe it. It is among the wine-drinking classes of our fellow-beings, that absurd, incomplete, and reactionary ideas prevail. 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. 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! Now, 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. Compare the conversation of a group of Vermont farmers, gathered on the stoop of a country store on a rainy afternoon, with that which you may hear in the farmers' room of a market-town inn in England! The advantage is not wholly with the Vermonters; by no means, for there is much in human nature besides the brain and the things of the brain. But in this one particular--in the topics of conversation, in the interest manifested in large and important subjects--the water-drinking Vermonters are to the beer-drinking Englishmen what Franklin was to the London printers. It is beyond the capacity of a well-beered brain even to read the pamphlet on Liberty and Necessity which Franklin wrote in those times.

The few experiments which have been made, with a view to trace the course of alcohol in the living system, all confirm what all drinkers feel, that it is to the brain alcohol hurries when it has passed the lips. Some innocent dogs have suffered and died in this investigation. Dr. Percy, a British physician, records, that he injected two ounces and a half of alcohol into the stomach of a dog, which caused its almost instant death. The dog dropped very much as he would if he had been struck upon the head with a club. The experimenter, without a moment's unnecessary delay, removed the animal's brain, subjected it to distillation, and extracted from it a surprising quantity of alcohol,--a larger proportion than he could distil from the blood or liver. The alcohol seemed to have rushed to the brain: it was a blow upon the head which killed the dog. Dr. Percy introduced into the stomachs of other dogs smaller quantities of alcohol, not sufficient to cause death; but upon killing the dogs, and subjecting the brain, the blood, the bile, the liver, and other portions of the body, to distillation, he invariably found more alcohol in the brain than in the same weight of other organs. He injected alcohol into the blood of dogs, which caused death; but the deadly effect was produced, not upon the substance of the blood, but upon the brain. His experiments go far toward explaining why the drinking of alcoholic liquors does not sensibly retard digestion. It seems that, when we take wine at dinner, the alcohol does not remain in the stomach, but is immediately absorbed into the blood, and swiftly conveyed to the brain and other organs. If one of those "four-bottle men" of the last generation had fallen down dead, after boozing till past midnight, and he had been treated as Dr. Percy treated the dogs, his brain, his liver, and all the other centres of power, would have yielded alcohol in abundance; his blood would have smelt of it; his flesh would have contained it; but there would have been very little in the stomach. Those men were able to drink four, six, and seven bottles of wine at a sitting, because the sitting lasted four, six, and seven hours, which gave time for the alcohol to be distributed over the system. But instances have occurred of laboring men who have kept themselves steadily drunk for forty-eight hours, and then died. The bodies of two such were dissected some years ago in England, and the food which they had eaten at the beginning of the debauch was undigested. It had been preserved in alcohol as we preserve snakes.

Once, and only once, in the lifetime of man, an intelligent human eye has been able to look into the living stomach, and watch the process of digestion. In 1822, at the United States military post of Michilimackinac, Alexis St. Martin, a Canadian of French extraction, received accidentally a heavy charge of duck-shot in his side, while he was standing one yard from the muzzle of the gun. The wound was frightful. One of the lungs protruded, and from an enormous aperture in the stomach the food recently eaten was oozing. Dr. William Beaumont, U.S.A., the surgeon of the post, was notified, and dressed the wound. In exactly one year from that day the young man was well enough to get out of doors, and walk about the fort; and he continued to improve in health and strength, until he was as strong and hardy as most of his race. He married, became the father of a large family, and performed for many years the laborious duties appertaining to an officer's servant at a frontier post. But the aperture into the stomach never closed, and the patient would not submit to the painful operation by which such wounds are sometimes closed artificially. He wore a compress arranged by the doctor, without which his dinner was not safe after he had eaten it.

By a most blessed chance it happened that this Dr. William Beaumont, stationed there on the outskirts of creation, was an intelligent, inquisitive human being, who perceived all the value of the opportunity afforded him by this unique event. He set about improving that opportunity. He took the young man into his service, and, at intervals, for eight years, he experimented upon him. He alone among the sons of men has seen liquid flowing into the stomach of a living person while yet the vessel was at the drinker's lips. Through the aperture (which remained two and a half inches in circumference) he could watch the entire operation of digestion, and he did so hundreds of times. If the man's stomach ached, he could look into it and see what was the matter; and, having found out, he would drop a rectifying pill into the aperture. He ascertained the time it takes to digest each of the articles of food commonly eaten, and the effects of all the usual errors in eating and drinking. In 1833, he published a thin volume, at Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, in which the results of thousands of experiments and observations were only too briefly stated. He appears not to have heard of teetotalism, and hence all that he says upon the effects of alcoholic liquors is free from the suspicion which the arrogance and extravagance of some teetotalers have thrown over much that has been published on this subject. With a mind unbiassed, Dr. Beaumont, peering into the stomach of this stout Canadian, notices that a glass of brandy causes the coats of that organ to assume the same inflamed appearance as when he had been very angry, or much frightened, or had overeaten, or had had the flow of perspiration suddenly checked. In other words, brandy played the part of a _foe_ in his system, not that of a friend; it produced effects which were morbid, not healthy. Nor did it make any material difference whether St. Martin drank brandy, whiskey, wine, cider, or beer, except so far as one was stronger than the other.

"Simple water," says Dr. Beaumont, "is perhaps the only fluid that is called for by the wants of the economy. The artificial drinks are probably _all_ more or less injurious; some more so than others, but none can claim exemption from the general charge. Even tea and coffee, the common beverages of all classes of people, have a tendency to debilitate the digestive organs.... The whole class of alcoholic liquors may be considered as narcotics, producing very little difference in their ultimate effects upon the system."

He ascertained too (not guessed, or inferred, but _ascertained_, watch in hand) that such things as mustard, horse-radish, and pepper retard digestion. At the close of his invaluable work Dr. Beaumont appends a long list of "Inferences," among which are the following: "That solid food of a certain texture is easier of digestion than fluid; that stimulating condiments are injurious to the healthy system; that the use of ardent spirits _always_ produces disease of the stomach if persisted in; that water, ardent spirits, and most other fluids, are not affected by the gastric juice, but pass from the stomach soon after they have been received." One thing appears to have much surprised Dr. Beaumont, and that was, the degree to which St. Martin's system could be disordered without his being much inconvenienced by it. After drinking hard every day for eight or ten days, the stomach would show alarming appearances of disease; and yet the man would only feel a slight headache, and a general dulness and languor.

If there is no comfort for drinkers in Dr. Beaumont's precious little volume, it must be also confessed, that neither the dissecting-knife nor the microscope afford us the least countenance. All that has yet been ascertained of the effects of alcohol by the dissection of the body favors the extreme position of the extreme teetotalers. A brain alcoholized the microscope proves to be a brain diseased. Blood which has absorbed alcohol is unhealthy blood,--the microscope shows it. The liver, the heart, and other organs, which have been accustomed to absorb alcohol, all give testimony under the microscope which produces discomfort in the mind of one who likes a glass of wine, and hopes to be able to continue the enjoyment of it. The dissecting-knife and the microscope so far have nothing to say for us,--nothing at all: they are dead against us.

Of all the experiments which have yet been undertaken with a view to trace the course of alcohol through the human system, the most important were those made in Paris a few years ago by Professors Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy, distinguished physicians and chemists. Frenchmen have a way of co-operating with one another, both in the investigation of scientific questions and in the production of literature, which is creditable to their civilization and beneficial to the world. The experiments conducted by these gentlemen produced the remarkable effect of causing the editor of a leading periodical to confess to the public that he was not infallible. In 1855 the Westminster Review contained an article by Mr. Lewes, in which the teetotal side of these questions was effectively ridiculed; but, in 1861, the same periodical reviewed the work of the French professors just named, and honored itself by appending a note in which it said: "Since the date of our former article, scientific research has brought to light important facts which necessarily modify the opinions we then expressed concerning the _rôle_ of alcohol in the animal body." Those facts were revealed or indicated in the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy.

Ether and chloroform,--their mode of operation; why and how they render the living body insensible to pain under the surgeon's knife; what becomes of them after they have performed that office,--these were the points which engaged their attention, and in the investigation of which they spent several years. They were rewarded, at length, with the success due to patience and ingenuity. By the aid of ingenious apparatus, after experiments almost numberless, they felt themselves in a position to demonstrate, that, when ether is inhaled, it is immediately absorbed by the blood, and by the blood is conveyed to the brain. If a surgeon were to commit such a breach of professional etiquette as to cut off a patient's head at the moment of complete insensibility, he would be able to distil from the brain a great quantity of ether. But it is not usual to take that liberty except with dogs. The inhalation, therefore, proceeds until the surgical operation is finished, when the handkerchief is withdrawn from the patient's face, and he is left to regain his senses. What happens then? What becomes of the ether? These learned Frenchmen discovered that most of it goes out of the body by the road it came in at,--the lungs. It was breathed in; it is breathed out. The rest escapes by other channels of egress; it all escapes, and it escapes unchanged! That is the point: it escapes without having _left_ anything in the system. All that can be said of it is, that it entered the body, created morbid conditions in the body, and then left the body. It cost these patient men years to arrive at this result; but any one who has ever had charge of a patient that has been rendered insensible by ether will find little difficulty in believing it.

Having reached this demonstration, the experimenters naturally thought of applying the same method and similar apparatus to the investigation of the effects of alcohol, which is the fluid nearest resembling ether and chloroform. Dogs and men suffered in the cause. In the moisture exhaled from the pores of a drunken dog's skin, these cunning Frenchmen detected the alcohol which had made him drunk. They proved it to exist in the breath of a man, at six o'clock in the evening, who had drunk a bottle of claret for breakfast at half past ten in the morning. They also proved that, at midnight, the alcohol of that bottle of wine was still availing itself of other avenues of escape. They proved that when alcohol is taken into the system in any of its dilutions,--wine, cider, spirits, or beer,--the whole animal economy speedily busies itself with its expulsion, and continues to do so until it has expelled it. The lungs exhale it; the pores of the skin let out a little of it; the kidneys do their part; and by whatever other road an enemy can escape it seeks the outer air. Like ether, alcohol enters the body, makes a disturbance there, and goes out of the body, leaving it no richer than it found it. It is a guest that departs, after giving a great deal of trouble, without paying his bill or "remembering" the servants. Now, to make the demonstration complete, it would be necessary to take some unfortunate man or dog, give him a certain quantity of alcohol,--say one ounce,--and afterwards distil from his breath, perspiration, &c., the whole quantity that he had swallowed. This has not been done; it never will be done; it is obviously impossible. Enough has been done to justify these conscientious and indefatigable inquirers in announcing, as a thing susceptible of all but demonstration, that alcohol contributes to the human system nothing whatever, but leaves it undigested and wholly unchanged. They are fully persuaded (and so will you be, reader, if you read their book) 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.

There is a boy in Pickwick who swallowed a farthing. "Out with it," said the father; and it is to be presumed--though Mr. Weller does not mention the fact--that the boy complied with a request so reasonable. Just as much nutrition as that small copper coin left in the system of that boy, plus a small lump of sugar, did the claret which we drank yesterday deposit in ours; so, at least, we must infer from the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy.

To evidence of this purely scientific nature might be added, if space could be afforded, a long list of persons who, having indulged in wine for many years, have found benefit from discontinuing the use of it. Most of us have known such instances. I have known several, and I can most truly say, that I have never known an individual in tolerable health who discontinued the use of any stimulant whatever without benefit. We all remember Sydney Smith's strong sentences on this point, scattered through the volume which contains the correspondence of that delicious humorist and wit. "I like London better than ever I liked it before," he writes in the prime of his prime (forty-three years old) to Lady Holland, "and simply, I believe, from water-drinking. Without this, London is stupefaction and inflammation." So has New York become. Again, in 1828, when he was fifty-seven, to the same lady: "I not only was never better, but never half so well; indeed, I find I have been very ill all my life without knowing it. Let me state some of the goods arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep; having never known what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a plough-boy. If I wake, no needless terrors, no black visions of life, but pleasing hopes and pleasing recollections: Holland House past and to come! If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, but of Easter dues and tithes. Secondly, I can take longer walks and make greater exertions without fatigue. My understanding is improved, and I comprehend political economy. I see better without wine and spectacles than when I used both. Only one evil ensues from it; I am in such extravagant spirits that I must lose blood, or look out for some one who will bore or depress me. Pray leave off wine: the stomach is quite at rest; no heartburn, no pain, no distention."

I have also a short catalogue of persons who, having long lived innocent of these agreeable drinks, began at length to use them. Dr. Franklin's case is striking. That "water American," as he was styled by the London printers, whose ceaseless guzzling of beer he ridiculed in his twentieth year, drank wine in his sixtieth with the freedom usual at that period among persons of good estate. "At parting," he writes in 1768, when he was sixty-two, "after we had drank a bottle and a half of claret each, Lord Clare hugged and kissed me, protesting he never in his life met with a man he was so much in love with." The consequence of this departure from the customs of his earlier life was ten years of occasional acute torture from the stone and gravel. Perhaps, if Franklin had remained a "water American," he would have annexed Canada to the United States at the peace of 1782. An agonizing attack of stone laid him on his back for three months, just as the negotiation was becoming interesting; and by the time he was well again the threads were gone out of his hands into those of the worst diplomatists that ever threw a golden chance away.

What are we to conclude from all this? Are we to knock the heads out of all our wine-casks, join the temperance society, and denounce all men who do not follow our example? 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. This truth becomes so clear, after a few weeks' investigation, that I advise every person who means to keep on drinking such liquors not to look into the facts; for if he does, he will never again be able to lift a glass of wine to his lips, nor contemplate a foaming tankard, nor mix his evening toddy, nor hear the pop and melodious gurgle of champagne, with that fine complacency which irradiates his countenance now, and renders it so pleasing a study to those who sit on the other side of the table. No; never again! Even the flavor of those fluids will lose something of their charm. The conviction will obtrude itself upon his mind at most inopportune moments, that this drinking of wine, beer, and whiskey, to which we are so much addicted, is an enormous delusion. If the teetotalers would induce some rational being--say that public benefactor, Dr. Willard Parker of New York--to collect into one small volume the substance of all the investigations alluded to in this article,--the substance of Dr. Beaumont's precious little book, the substance of the French professors' work, and the others,--adding no comment except such as might be necessary to elucidate the investigators' meaning, it could not but carry conviction to every candid and intelligent reader that spirituous drinks are to the healthy system an injury necessarily, and in all cases.

The Coming Man, then, so long as he enjoys good health,--which he usually will from infancy to hoary age,--will _not_ drink wine, nor, of course, any of the coarser alcoholic dilutions. To that unclouded and fearless intelligence, science will be the supreme law; it will be to him more than the Koran is to a Mohammedan, and more than the Infallible Church is to a Roman Catholic. Science, or, in other words, the law of God as revealed in nature, life, and history, and as ascertained by experiment, observation, and thought,--this will be the teacher and guide of the Coming Man.

A single certainty in a matter of so much importance is not to be despised. I can now say to young fellows who order a bottle of wine, and flatter themselves that, in so doing, they approve themselves "jolly dogs": No, my lads, it is because you are dull dogs that you want the wine. You are forced to borrow excitement because you have squandered your natural gayety. The ordering of the wine is a confession of insolvency. When we feel it necessary to "take something" at certain times during the day, we are in a condition similar to that of a merchant who every day, about the anxious hour of half past two, has to run around among his neighbors borrowing credit. It is something disgraceful or suspicious. Nature does not supply enough of inward force. We are in arrears. Our condition is absurd; and, if we ought not to be alarmed, we ought at least to be ashamed. Nor does the borrowed credit increase our store; it leaves nothing behind to enrich _us_, but takes something from our already insufficient stock; and the more pressing our need the more it costs us to borrow.

But the Coming Man, blooming, robust, alert, and light-hearted as he will be, may not be always well. If, as he springs up a mountain-side, his foot slips, the law of gravitation will respect nature's darling too much to keep him from tumbling down the precipice; and, as he wanders in strange regions, an unperceived malaria may poison his pure and vivid blood. Some generous errors, too, he may commit (although it is not probable), and expend a portion of his own life in warding off evil from the lives of others. Fever may blaze even in his clear eyes; poison may rack his magnificent frame, and a long convalescence may severely try his admirable patience. Will the Coming Man drink wine when he is sick? The question is not easily answered.