Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/246

232 conditions, which enter into the phenomena of life and living, are the basal factors of drunkenness and inebriety. Remedies—legislative, social, and medical—to be effectual must be founded on some general knowledge of these causes. Such are some of the general facts of the drink problem as seen to-day. Many of them are very significant, and have a meaning which is unmistakable.

Tlie great revolutions of theories concerning alcohol and its physiological action on the body, together with the rapid accumulation of evidence contradicting all previous conceptions of its value as a nutrient, stimulant, and beverage, are conclusive that the facts are not all known. Countries and cities where wine and beer and other alcoholic drinks have been used freely, without question, are invaded by temperance and total abstinence societies. Theories of the value of spirits that have come down unquestioned are being challenged and proof of their truth demanded.

The French National Temperance Society, the Society against the Abuses of Alcohol for the Rhine Provinces, the Belgian Total Abstinence Society, the Netherland Society, the Swiss Society, the Italian Society, the Austrian and Prussian Society, the Norwegian, Russian, Danish, and numerous other societies, are urging total abstinence theories, and denying the value of spirits in the very centers of all spirit-drinking countries. Four international congresses have been held in these countries during the past ten years, in which eminent medical men have presented and defended the total abstinence side of the drink problem.

The real facts, separated from all partisan sensationalism, agree that alcohol is a poison, a paralyzant, and narcotic, and its defenders admit this as true, but only in large and reckless quantities. The question then turns on what quantities are safe or dangerous, and what is the possible amount that can be taken within health limits. This is similar to drawing boundary lines between twilight and darkness, and is obviously impossible with the present limits of our knowledge.

The evidence up to this time from the chemical laboratory, from experiments, from hospital studies, from statistics, and other sources, clearly proves that alcohol is a poison and is positively dangerous to health—in what way, in what conditions, and under what circumstances is yet an open question, in which difference of opinion will exist until more exhaustive experimental studies are made. Text-books for schools and colleges and partisan discussions often contain statements conveying the misleading impression that the facts about alcohol are known, when, in reality, beyond a few general principles, we are profoundly ignorant of its physiological action. The facts concerning its ravages and baneful influence are too common to be called in question,