Medical evidence on alcohol largely considers alcohol to be the root of all evil. In the final analysis, everybody pays for consuming alcohol, some slightly, others heavily.
According to Dr. Ezra M. Hunt, “The ability of alcohols for harming operations and the introduction and advancement of body lesions in important parts, is unrivaled by any performance in the entire history of medicine. These facts are so irrefutable, and so greatly established by the medical profession, as not to be questionable any more. Alterations in liver and stomach, in lungs and kidneys, in blood-vessels to the tiniest capillary, and in blood to the tiniest white and red blood disc disruptions of discharge, fatty and fibroid deteriorations in just about every organ, damaging of muscular control, impacts both nervous systems so acutely as to be frequently poisonous, these and things like these, are the frequently exhibited outcomes. Besides, these are not limited to those referred to as excessive.”
According to Professor Youmans, “It is clear that, instead of being a health safeguard, alcohol is a dynamic and strong cause of illness, hindering, as it does, nutrition, circulation, and respiration; at this moment, is any other outcome likely?”
According to Dr. F.R. Lees, “That alcohol should be responsible for the fattening process in specific conditions, and brings about in drinkers fatty deterioration of the blood, I understandable, as something routine, as, on one side, there is an agent that keeps hold of waste matter by reducing nutritive and excretory operations, while on the other side, a direct killer of the organs of the critical flow.”
According to Dr. Henry Monroe, “There isn’t any sort of tissue, whether strong or sick, that may not go through fatty deterioration; and there isn’t any organic disease so bothersome to the medical professional, or so hard to treat. If, with the help of a microscope, we study an extremely fine slice of muscle obtained from a healthy person, we observe that the muscles are compact, flexible and of a brilliant red hue, composed of parallel fibers, with lovely intersections or striae; however, if we in the same way study the muscle of an individual who lives an inactive, indolent life, and treats himself to inebriating drinks, we notice, straight away, a pallid, flaccid, inflexible, greasy look. Alcoholic narcotization seems to create this strange tissue conditions above any other known agent. ‘Three-fourths of the persistent ailments which a health professional has to deal with,’ observes Dr. Chambers, ‘are brought about by this malady.’ Lecanu, the well-known French investigative chemist, discovered nearly 117 parts of fat in 1000 parts of a tippler’s blood, the maximum approximation of the amount in health being 8 1/4 parts, while the standard quantity is below 2-3 parts, and hence the tippler’s blood holds 40 times more than the standard quantity.”
According to Dr. Hammond, who attempted to justify alcohol as holding a food energy, has remarked: “When I state that it, when compared to all other causative factors, is most productive in stimulating unhinging of the mind, the nerves and the spinal cord, I make an assertion which according to my own experience proves to be right.”
Another renowned physician declares of alcohol: “It swaps suppuration for development. It assists time to generate age-related effects; and, in brief, is the mastermind of deterioration.”
Dr. Monroe says, “Alcohol, consumed in minute amounts, or diluted to a great extent, like in beer, makes the stomach to slowly drop its tone, and renders it reliant upon synthetic stimulus. Atony, or deficiency of tone of the stomach, slowly occurs as an interruption, and fatal health condition comes about. If a measure of alcoholic drink is consumed everyday, the heart will extremely frequently become hypertrophied, or distended right through. Without a doubt, it is distressing to see how countless persons are really struggling with heart disease, due primarily to the consumption of alcoholic fluids.”
Dr. T.K. Chambers, the Prince of Wales’ physician states: “Alcohol is actually the most measly nutritional regime available. It causes blood depletion, and there isn’t a more definite route to deterioration of muscular fiber as this; and in a heart condition it is more particularly sharp, by hastening the beat, producing capillary blockage and erratic circulation, and therefore mechanically producing dilatation.”
According to the illustrious surgeon Sir Henry Thompson: “Don’t consume your regular wine under any excuse of its being good for you. Have it openly as an extravagance, which should be settled, certain persons pay for it in an extremely easy way, others pay a great price for it, but everyone always pays. And, more often than not, some failure of physical well being, or of cognitive ability, or of quietness of disposition, or of common sense, is the price.”
According to Dr. Charles Jewett: “The late Prof. Parks from England, in his famous research on Hygiene, has powerfully got rid of the thought, generally considered for a long time, that alcohol indeed is a precious prophylactic where an awful climate, appalling water and other insalubrious conditions, are present; and a regrettable experiment with the piece of writing, in 1863, in the Union military, on the embankment of the Chickahominy, showed decisively that, rather than protecting the human health against the impact of agencies unfavorable to health, its consumption endows them with further strength. The British army’s medical history in India imparts a similar lesson.”
But why give additional testimony? Isn’t the evidence absolute? To the person who appreciates fine health, who wouldn’t lay the groundwork for disease and distress in the later years of his life, we do not have to provide a single extra argument supportive of complete abstinence from intoxicating drinks. He will avoid them like the plague.