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:
