Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/39

Rh of the different varieties of beer and wine in the place of distilled liquors promotes temperance, and lessens the evil effects of alcohol on the health and morals of those who use them. Accurate investigations show that beer and wine drinkers generally consume more alcohol per man than the spirit drinkers; and while they are not as often intoxicated, they suffer fully as much from diseases and premature death as do those who use distilled spirits. Again, the beer drinker drinks more nearly every day, and thereby keeps some alcohol in his blood more constantly; while a large percentage of spirit drinkers drink only periodically, leaving considerable intervals of abstinence, during which the tissues regain nearly their natural condition. The more constant and persistent is the presence of alcohol in the blood and the tissues, even in moderate quantity, the more certainly does it lead to perverted and degenerative changes in the tissues, ending in renal (kidney) and hepatic (liver) dropsies, cardiac (heart) failures, gout, apoplexy and paralysis."

Sir B. W. Richardson says:—

"Alcohol produces many diseases; and it constantly happens that persons die of diseases which have their origin solely in the drinking of alcohol, while the cause itself is never for a moment suspected. A man may say quite truthfully that he never was tipsy in the whole course of his life; and yet it is quite possible that such a man may die of disease caused by the alcohol he has taken, and by no other cause whatever. This is one of the most dreadful evils of alcohol, that it kills insidiously, as if it were doing no harm, or as if it were doing good, while it is destroying life. Another great evil of it is that it assails so many different parts of the body. It hardly seems credible at first sight that the same agent can give rise to the many different kinds of diseases it does give rise to. In fact, the universality of its action has blinded even learned men as to its potency for destruction.