The lungs, heart, digestive
organs, muscles, in fact, every structure in the body loses working
capacity. Alcohol seems to have a special affinity for nervous tissue.
A glass of beer or wine taken daily is no more harmful than a cup of
coffee per day, but the coffee drinker does not make of himself such a
public nuisance and menace as the man often does who drinks alcohol to
excess.
Formerly it was respectable to drink. Some of our most noted public men
were drunkards. Now a drunkard could not maintain himself in a prominent
public position very long. To drink like a gentleman was no disgrace.
Now real gentlemen do not get drunk.
In backward Russia they are becoming alarmed about the inroads of vodka,
and are trying to decrease its consumption. France is trying to teach
total abstinence to its young men because it disqualifies so many of
them from military service to drink. Scandinavia is temperance
territory. The German Kaiser has recently given a warning against
drinking. The United States discourages drinking in the army and navy.
Field armies are not supplied with alcoholics. Drinking is becoming
disreputable.
It is very difficult to prove the harm done by excessive drinking of tea
and coffee, also by the use of much tobacco, even if we do know that it
is so.
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