The Temperance Movement; Or, the Conflict Between Man and Alcohol  (English, Paperback, Blair Henry William)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. ALCOHOL NOT A FOOD. Can it be a very Bad and a very Good Thing at the Same Time—How Ale and Beer Fatten—Dr. Richardson's Examination of the Qualities of Alcohol as a Food—No Claim to Efficacy in Structure Building—The Search of the Physicians for a Virtue in Alcohol—Four Stages of Change Produced on the Body by Liquor—How Alcohol gets out of the Body—If it is not a Food there is no Occasion for its Consumption as a Drink. SO far, we have traced the action of alcohol from its introduction to the body in its known effects, as demonstrated by actual experiment, or by the admitted facts of common experience. Its action, so far, is evil, and that continually. It would be singular if an agent which works such destruction, should also at the same time, in the same body, exert any beneficial effect. How can it be possible that the same thing which, in certain quantities and methods of administration, is known to paralyze the nervous force, to derange the circulation of the blood, dominate the muscular power, disintegrate the vital organs, drive the heart like a slave to its task with whip and scourge, dethrone reason and turn loose the faculties, emotions and passions, in full riot over the prostrate moral nature for the time, and, if long indulged, then for all time, completely effacing the image of God, and producing a hideous caricature abhorrent even to the beasts that perish—how can it be possible that the agency which is admitted to do all this, and more of horror which language cannot portray, is also a healing angel, a nourishing mother, a messenger of life and happiness to that normal and healthy organization which the Almighty bestowed upon man in the beginning? I speak not now of what may sometimes be done by poison to arrest disease, or to mitigate the ag...