Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/197

Rh are not only no tables of statistics as to its effects in existence, but there are no means of acquiring them; the statistics of the effects of drunkenness, of which there are abundance of greater or lesser value, being unfortunately of no service whatever in solving the problem of the effects of moderate drinking either on mind or body. 2. In no instance are the effects sufficiently marked to necessitate any special form of treatment in a public institution. 3. The deleterious influences on the bodily functions are so insidious as in the early stages either totally to escape detection, or, what is more common, to lead them to be attributed to some entirely different cause. 4. The effects of moderate drinking manifest themselves in such a variety of different forms, that, even when their true nature is recognized, the general practitioner has not the opportunity of seeing a sufficient number of any one of them to admit of his drawing conclusions from them. 5. The men who have most experience of the severer forms of functional disease directly traceable to the effects of moderate drinking are, in general, merely those who, like myself, make liver and kidney diseases a special study; the liver, kidneys, heart, and brain being those organs of the body most affected by alcohol when indulged in within the limits of what is called moderation. Notwithstanding this fact, it being impossible for me, or even any one else specially engaged in the treatment of liver and kidney diseases, to collect a sufficiently large number of telling cases from which to deduce crucial data of the deleterious effects of small quantities of alcoholic stimulants habitually indulged in by temperate men, I purpose adopting the plan of drawing conclusions from the statistical data of the effects of alcohol on the human constitution when it is taken in the form of what is called "nipping"—that is to say, small quantities only being taken at a time, but frequently in the course of the day. Of these, fortunately, the registrar-general's reports of our national mortality in different industries furnish us with something approaching to reliable data. So I shall make use of them, along with some German statistics of a similar character, in illustrating the probable pathological effects of moderate drinking on the human constitution. For when one can not get what he wants, it is good policy to make use of what he has got, on the principle that half a loaf is better than none. 6. Added to all these drawbacks to the formulation of reliable conclusions regarding both the direct and indirect effects of alcoholic stimulants, taken in small quantities at a time, upon the vital functions, there is yet the other of reconciling different minds with what is exactly meant by the term "moderate drinking," seeing that a quantity which one would call moderate is not at all unlikely to be by another designated immoderate