EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL
by Dr. W . Robert Smith
O NE IS APPALLED TO REALIZE how many men, high in business af fairs or in the military, have become slaves of liquor. A young woman came to me on a college campus a few weeks ago in great distress. Her mother was an alcoholic and had abused her. For this reason she was taken to a neighbor’s where she lived most of her life. The real mother had seemed to take her resentment out on this dear child. She was the eldest of four children. While in the other home she found the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. Now in college she had only been a Christian for about two years. Her father, she told me, was also an alcoholic. There was no one now to care for the children since the mother had recently died. She asked me if she should give up her education and stay home. She was concerned about the children for her father, while he was a good man, was such a slave to liq uor. Sometimes he could earn money but other times there was little to eat. Obviously the ideal situation would have been to prevent the father and mother from ever becoming alcoholics. It may have all started with some thing so seemingly insignificant as a “little party.” This tragic scene is repeated over and over again. The well-known Dr. Alvarez, consultant at Mayo Clinic, pertinently pointed out, “If I knew what I now know about alcohol, I would never have tasted the first drop.” Some people have a tremendous propensity for alcohol. Someone will probably say, “Well, temperance ‘has moderation.” It has been well said, however, that “Temperance is the quality of moderation in healthful indulgence, and a b s tin e n c e from things harmful, such as the use of in toxicating wines.” The problem of alcohol is far more deep-seated than the fact that you may become an alcoholic and thereby
have a real problem in your home. Alcohol causes a limitation and a weakness any way you have it in the human body, no matter how small the quantity. The nerves are bathed in a fatty substance which is dissolved by alco hol. Because your nerves are proto plasm they are destroyed. Alcohol ab sorbs the water in your body with great harm. Alcohol is a narcotic and has this very affect upon the nervous system. Alcohol may affect the life cell, hurting the ovary or the ovums, as well as the sperm cell of the hu man offspring. The data of science re veals these truths. It was Aristotle who declared, “I would suggest that a judge who is going to administer justice, a magis trate who is a ruler of his country and has the right to speak, a soldier who is protecting his nation, or a father who is to go in with his wife and cohabit to have a child, should leave alcohol strictly alone.” The an cients believed that alcohol did affect the offspring. There is a definite af fect on the human cells. A laboratory experiment was con ducted using four cocker spaniels which were mated. They were the same strain and vigor as far as the scientists were able to judge. Two of them were named “Meg” and “Topsy.” The other two were called “Bum” and “Tipsy.” They had the same kind of physical characteristics and were given the same kind of care with the exception that Bum and Tipsy had a small quantity of alcohol with their meals while Meg and Topsy did not. In tests it was shown that Meg and Topsy retrieved 922 balls, nearly twice the number of the other pair. Other such activities went on, but the startling effect was on their off spring. Bum and Tipsy only had 22 pups born to their union, only four of which lived and were normal. 9
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