Some Expert Opinions about Alcohol and ModernResearches on Alcoholism

Modern scientific research shows that the use of liquor has numerous undesirable effect on human life.  It upsets proper functioning of the body, the power of reasoning, the balance of mind and the structure of society.  Suicide, homicide, crime and insanity get great stimulus from this abominable habit.  Drunkenness gives rise to impulses which ar greatly anti-social.  The tragedy of alcoholism is that the alcoholic cannot discard this habit because alcohol destroys the greater part of his reason and self-control.  The modern scientists, after carrying on a long research on alcohol, clearly say that alcohol is the mother of all evils.

The credit for exploding the old, long established theory about wine is due to Mr. Krepelin, a psychologist, who has, with the support of some other psychologists,  shown that even a single doze of the smallest quantity of wine dies harm to the microbes in the human brain and impairs the finest sensitive centres.  Similarly, Mr. Hodge has made some experiments with regard to the effects of alcohol on the muscles and he has come to the conclusion that the use of wine injures the power of endurance and patience, and dulls one’s keenness.  Mr. Alexander Brice, an expert in dietetics, expresses his considered opinion about wine in the following words:

“There can no longer be any doubt that it is in reality a tissue poison of the first order which manifests its narcotising and finally degenerative action chiefly on the nervous system.  It has indeed no claim to be termed a stimulant, being in plain terms only a drug with a temporary exhilarating effect followed thereafter by a long period of depression.  The conclusion of practically all thoughtful medical men is that it is quite unnecessary in health, and if not of doubtful value in the treatment of disease, is at least capable of being replaced in most instances by less dangerous substances.”

When these researches opened the eyes of the people of understanding, persons of other professions also turned their attention to this subject.  For instance, Sir, Fredrick Treves, speaking of the troops who had been sent to raise the siege of Lady Smith in the Boer War, said in his report:

“In that enormous column of 20,000 men the first who dropped were not the tall men, or the short men or the big men or the little men-they were the drinkers, and they dropped out as clearly as if they had ben labeled with a big letter on their back.”

Walker and Freund have found that rats given nutritious diet with alcohol for a period of five months, and then taken off alcohol for a period of thirty years, obtained comparatively poor scores in learning and recent memory tests in relation to non-alcohol-imbibing control rats.  After carrying out a number of researches with human objects, Dr. Noble concluded that prolonged drinking of alcohol, even in small quantities, is implicated in permanent damage to memory and learning ability.

It is nor merely in the physical sphere that alcohol works such havoc, but its destructiveness extends to the most finely developed part of the human being, personality and his morals, owing to the fact that it affects first and foremost the higher function of the brain which determines ethical concepts even before it affects that part which determines physical action.  The people who are in the habit of using intoxicants sometimes appear to have no sense of shame and evince a lack of responsibility to others.  Alcohol also affects badly the female’s personality.  According to Charle E. Ramsgate of New York City, she becomes a spitting and slovenly animal incapable of anything but the sordid-a discharge of herself, to her sex and society.  William McDougall, the eminent British Psychologist, says:

“If you take a person of the inexpressive temperament, one who has an extreme example, who stands at the very bottom of the scale of readiness of emotional expression and administer to him successive small doses of ethyl alcohol, you push him step by step about the scale of expressiveness until when he has absorbed into his blood a reasonably large dose, he is ready to fall on your neck at the slightest provocation and to weep or love or laugh or rage or display himself an assert his powers and opinions with the utmost freedom, a total absence of his usual reserve.  These facts are no new discovers to the laboratory.  They were known to the ancients, but it seems to have been reserved to themselves to point out their illuminating bearing on the ancient doctrine of temperaments.”

McDougall invites the attention of his readers to his contribution to the volume, Physiological Action of Alcohol on Human Organism, where in the Chapter on the Nervous System he has shown reasons to believe that alcohol,  chloroform and ethyl act primarily on the synaptic function of the brain blocking the brain-paths in the order from the above downward, those of the cortex being first their inhibitory influence on the lower level being thus suspended.

            Goodman and Gilman have laid down the law in this respect saying:

        “Alcohol is not a stimulant but rather a primary and continuous depressant of the nerve system.”

Dr. Miller says:

   “Alcohol besides being absolutely avoidable as food is, when taken as something in addition to food, at all times perilous and often most harmful.”

What distinguishes man from animals is that man is endowed with conscience that enables him to differentiate between right and wrong and the willpower with the help of which he chooses a right course of action and avoids the wrong one.  Alcohol destroys these two remarkable qualities of man.  Dr. A.C. Selmon says: 

Almost all crimes, such as fighting, murder, rape etc , are committed while they are under the influence of alcohol.  According to the record of the criminal courts, a large number of those who are punished with capital punishment have committed crime when they were under the influence of alcohol.”

Some of the people who ae addicted to the use of liquor under the misconception that a small dose of liquor is not harmful.  The researches conducted on the effects of alcohol on human body have established this fact beyond any shadow of doubt that liquor is harmful even if  it is taken in very small quantity.  With every sip of the alcoholic drink, definitely there is a loss of brain cells which is irreparable.  Besides injury to the brain it does a great harm to the liver, kidney, lungs, stomach, nay, all the organs of the body.  “The only real difference between the loss of brain tissues and that of the heavy drinker is one of degree.”

Morland says :

              “In the matter of alcoholic intake there is much leeway, for its first effect is in the diminution of self-control.  In such a condition consent might well be given by a woman and with the act completed a return to normal awareness would arouse in the victim various conflicting emotions, the fears, out of these a charge of rape would come.”

Dr. Kinsay’s work has shown that liquor(once advised as a medication for victims of heart disease to help dilate the blood vessels that nourish heart muscles) may actually damage heart-muscle tissue by the very same capillary-clogging action it evokes in the brain.  Cardiologists, therefore, no longer prescribe drinking as a means of improving circulation of blood.

Dr. A.C. Selmon, M.D., states :

       “Alcohol is not a cute but it is a disease, rather a dangerous malady.  Until recent years, physicians as a rule gave alcohol to the sick, thinking it would help in curing disease; but today Physicians use very little alcohol as an internal medicine.  It is now known that alcohol does not cure disease; on the contrary, it aggravates diseases...

         “The newspapers frequently contain glowing advertisements of some brand of wine that aids digestion and energises the system.  Such advertisements are gross misrepresentations. The safe rule for a sick person to follow is to avoid using any kind of intoxicating liquor.

The learned author further states:

         “Life Insurance Companies in all countries have found that people who use alcohol do not live as old as those who do not use it.  The Life Insurance Companies state that there is twice as much sickness among alcohol drinkers ass among the same number of abstainers and that there are half as many more deaths among alcohol drinkers as among the same number of men who do  not use alcohol....

            “The evil influence and harmfulness of alcohol drinking is not only manifested in the one who drinks, but it is transmitted to his offspring.  In asylums for the care of feeble-minded children, it is found that 41 out of every 100 such children are the offspring of parents who drank wine.”

            Here we quote an extract from the Report drafted by Prof. DeBore, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dr. Faisans, Physician and Principal, General Hospital of Paris:

     “Alcoholism is chronic poisoning resulting from the habitual use of alcohol, even when this is not taken in amounts sufficient to produce drunkenness.”

 “It is an error to state that alcohol is necessary for workmen who are engaged in arduous manual labour, that it gives energy for work, ot that it renew strength.  The artificial excitement which it produces quickly gives place to nervous depression and weakness; in truth, alcohol is useful to nobody; it is harmful to all.”

  “The habit of drinking leads to neglect of family, to forgetfulness of all social duties, to distaste for work, to want, theft and crime.  It leads at the very least, to the Hospital-for alcoholism causes a great variety of diseases, many of them most deadly: paralysis, insanity, disorders of the stomach and of the liver, dropsy; it is one of the most frequent causes of consumption.  Finally, it complicates and renders more serious every acute illness; a typhoid fever, pneumonia, erysipelas, which would be mild in a sober individual, will rapidly kill the alcoholic.

 “The hygienic faults of parents are visited upon their children: if the latter survive the first few months of life, they are threatened with idiocy of epilepsy, or still worse, are a little later on carried off by tuberculous meningitis of consumption.”

      “Alcoholism is one of the most frightful scourges–whether it be regarded from the point of view of the health of the individual, of the existence of the family, or of the future of the country.”

            This moral degeneration due to drinking of wine and other intoxicants has assumed the most fearful shade in European countries.  Here an extract from a book entitled U. S. A. Confidential, is quoted:

             “Experts employed by the Public Health Service secretly estimate at least 300,000 school-age narcotics addicts in the country.  That’s the number they know of, who have been arrested, observed, reported or who have taken treatment.  The total may be a million.  It takes form one to five years for a user to become an addict, so there are no statistics on undisclosed juvenile or other users.”....” The eventual purpose is not to get their few pennies when they become addicted, but to force them into prostitution and crime to support their addiction.  It costs from $200 to $500 a week to keep up with a heroin habit and up to $1,000 a week for cocaine.  Once a victim is really hooked, the money must be raised, regardless of the consequences.  Boys become killers, burglars, stick-up men, dope pushers or anything; girls are turned over for prostitution, blackmail or extortion.”

The Time (N.Y., U. S. A) of 22^nd April, 1975, states that after heart disease and cancer, alcoholism is the country’s biggest health problem.  Most deaths, attributed to alcoholism, are caused by rhosis of the liver.  An alcoholic’s span of life is shortened by ten to twelve years.  The Magazine adds:

      “In half of all murders in the U.S.A., either the killer or the victim or both have been drinking.  A fourth of all suicides are found to have significant amount of alcohol in their blood streams.  People who use alcohol are seven times more likely to be separated and divorced than the general population.  The dollar cost of alcohol may be as much as 15 billion a year.  At least half of the each year’s automobile death and half of the one million major injuries suffered in auto accidents can be traced directly to a driver or pedestrian “under the influence of drink.”

Dr. Tony Smith says in an article in London Times of August, 1975, that each year 10,000 cases of alcoholism are admitted to Hospital and that alcohol is responsible for enormous amount of social destructive behavior.

            In short, it is 1400 years after the Holy Qur’an expressed its verdict about wine that the world has recognized the truth of the verdict.  It has now been scientifically established that the harms of wine are greater than its benefits.  The new scientific research conclusively prove that the teachings of the Holy Qur’an are pre-eminently superior to the teachings of all other religions, so much so,  that in order to realize the truth of certain of its teachings which it gives in direct opposition to the teachings of all other religions, the world has had to carry on its research work for 1,400 years and has at last, after stumbling thousand times, come to the conclusion that the Holy Qur’an is perfectly justified in proclaiming its verdict about wine.