University of Virginia Library

PROGRESS DURING THE PAST YEAR.

Now as to the progress made during the past year. In June, 1901, the American Medical Association met in St. Paul. The branch of it giving special study to the temperance question held several sessions, about one hundred of the most distinguished physicians in the country attending. Much time was given to considering Dr. Atwater's teaching to the effect that he had proved alcohol to be a food. During the previous year he had published the details of his experiments, and at the convention it was shown that his own experiments upset his conclusions. It had been held that except in rare instances alcohol taken into the system passed away from it as alcohol without change. Dr. Atwater's experiments strengthened somewhat the position of those who held that change is not infrequent, but he concluded that the portion broken up while in the body served as a food. A closer examination of his own experiments showed that the portion oxidized had gone to form other compounds in the system which were possibly more harmful than if it had all passed off unchanged. Dr. Max Kassowitz, professor in the University of Vienna, said, after Dr. Atwater's statement had been published: "For the animal and human organism, alcohol is not both a food and a poison, but a poison only, which like other poisons is an irritant when taken in small doses while in larger ones it produces paralysis." In connection with the fact that alcohol is simply a poison, it may be worth stating, that the original meaning of the word "intoxicated" was "poisoned." After reading Dr. Atwater, the Russian Commission for the study of alcoholism, after two years' work, said: "The claim that alcohol is a food in any proper sense of the term is not sufficiently proved." In the St. Paul convention spoken of, politics obtained a foothold, and some weak resolutions in favor of the army canteen were adopted but not even the champions of the canteen were willing to subscribe to the statement that alcohol is ever a real food.

Just previous to our last convention much noise was made through the daily press concerning a finding of some English scientist to the effect that an acquired tendency cannot be transmitted to offspring. We were told that this would upset the theory that children inherit a craving for intoxicants from intemperate parents, and "the moralists and reformers would have to readjust this logic on these points." In the annual report of the president of the Union a year ago, attention was drawn to the fact that those who indulge in this sort of sophistry have not read what the teachings of temperance workers have been on the subject. Such was not the opinion of the scientists making the report, for it says "Children of drunkards are liable to be mentally and physically weak and tend to become paupers, criminals, epileptics and drunkards." It will be seen from what has been said that this is the position we have held all along. Dr. Davis, the dean of American physicians opposing the use of alcohol, has published during the year a number of articles showing the impossibility of alcohol's being of service as a medicine, and has dwelt especially upon its harmful effects in fevers, diseases in which it is still much prescribed.

The two influential temperance societies composed of American physicians have, during the past year, kept up the agitation against alcohol as a medicine, and good is coming from it, as gradually medical journals are giving more and more space to the question. The following international manifesto has been issued by the leading physicians of the world: