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God’s Message in Science to Thinking Men
Or, Science bs. The Saloon
Demonstrated Tacts of Science Demand Total Abstinence as the Only Temperance,
and Prohibition as the Only Policy Tor the State
Address delivered before the Southern Baptist
Convention at Hot Springs, Ark., May 16, 1908.
R. TAYLOR, the author of the address
given below, is a noted student of the
scientific aspects of the liquor problem.
He is one of the founders and a direc
tor of the Scientific Temperance Feder
ation of Boston, which is the American
branch of an international organiza
tion having for one of its objects the
establishment of exact truth by scien-
D
tifie demonstration as to what alcohol really is, and
the publication and dissemination of the facts.
Many distinguished scientific men in America and
in Europe are associated in this work.
Dr. Taylor embodies the findings of such men in
his address and weaves them in away peculiar to
himself into a telling argument against present so
cial drinking customs and license policies of govern
ment.
The address made a profound impression upon all
who heard it, and should be sent over the country
by tens of thousands of copies as a campaign docu
ment and be carefully studied by every voting citi
zen as a policy to be pursued, leading up to the per
manent solution of the saloon question. The ad
dress in substance is as follows:
THE ADDRESS.
The real origin of the present prohibition move
ment is to be found twenty-five years back, when
temperance physiology was first introduced into the
public schools. The publicity given that movement
resulted in much information being obtained by the
masses long before the subject began to bear its
natural fruitage through the instruction of the
schools. The principles which gave birth to the
movement should be steadily applied to guide it un
til it reaches its climax.
We know more about the subject today than we
did fifty or twenty-five years ago, or even one year
ago. The researches of chemical and physiological
science have brought to light new facts and princi
ples displacing old-time notions and guesswork. We
have temperance sentiment enough, but it is not up
to-date or scientific temperance sentiment. Every
body believes in temperance according to his notion
of what temperance is. Nobody believes in
intemperance. The question is what is tem
perance and what is intemperance in the light
of modern science? Some people expose their
ignorance on this subject as ridiculously as a young
man betrayed his ignorance of the Bible, who sup
posed that the Epistles of Peter and Paul were
wives of the Apostles, or as a young lady did who
supposed that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband
and wife. Thousands of otherwise very intelli
gent people suppose that alcohol holds some conju
gal relation to a great many good things.
President Hadley of Yale University is spoted as
having recently said that just as soon as the voting
men of this country get into their possession the
principal facts touching the nature of alcohol they
will drive every saloon out of the same. If this be
true,’ it is an indictment of the intelligence of every
advocate of the saloon.
What then, is this alcohol, the knowledge of the
nature of which voting men need so much? This
lecture is designed to answer that question, and
when answered, all other questions like, Does pro
hibition* prohibit ? will dwindle into comparative in
significance.
Alcohol, Not Beer, the Issue.
The issue in temperance today is not as touching
beer and whiskey or beer instead of whiskey, or the
abuse of either. It is the alcohol question. The
discussion of scientific men revolves around the na
ture of alcohol which is the essential property of all
liquors. If alcohol is good, then the beer and whis
key are good, if alcohol is bad—a poison—then beer
and whiskey are alike bad in proportion to the per
centage of alcohol they contain.
The Golden Age for May 28, 1908.
Ethyl Alcohol a “Waste.”
Few people can give an up-to-date or scientific
account of ’what common alcohol is or where it
comes from. Many suppose that it is everywhere
in nature; call it a “good creature of God,” and
say that it is to be found in sugar, apples, peaches,
grapes, barley, rye, beets, etc., whereas, there was
never a molecule of alcoho| found in any of them,
nor anything like it, nor is it to be found in any of
the constructive or building-up forces of nature,
but rather in what we call the decomposing process
es of nature. Yeast ferments, which live in the at
mosphere, otherwise called common yeast, or brew
er’s yeast, are put into barley juice, after the starch
of the barley has been changed into sugar by the
sprouting process. These germs absorb therein the
sugar, extracting from the same the oxygen. This
having been done, the remaining constituents of
the sugar, namely, carbon and hydrogen, are
changed about in their relatioi s and become some
thing entirely different from sugar—poisons—and
are thrown out of the germ bodies as a waste, called
carbonic acid gas and alcohol. In other words, li
quor men have called it “bug juice.” Or, accord
ing to another theory, the yeast germs extract the
oxygen from the sugar without absorbing it into
their bodies, leaving the waste, called alcohol. Both
theories are supported by eminent authorities.
Classification of Poisons.
As to the food value of alcohol the consensus of
scientific opinion today emphatically denies to al
cohol any food value in any proper sense of the
term food. That question appears to be settled.
On the other hand, the same consensus of opinion
places alcohol among the poisons. But what kind
of a poison is it? There are three general classes
of poisons: Narcotics, irritants and narcotic-irri
tants. A narcotic poison specifically attacks the
nerves and nerve centers. An irritant poison at
tacks the inner linings of the body, like the mem
branes of the mouth, throat and stomach, inflaming
and making them sore. A very few poisons com
bine the two characteristics of narcotics and irri
tants at the same time. Alcohol is one of the very
few and is therefore a more serious poison than if
it were only a narcotic or exclusively an irritant.
Its specific type and potency as a narcotic poison
places it in rank with opium, morphine, chloral and
cocaine. Its type and potency as an irritant poison
places it in rank with carbolic acid and arsenic.
The logic of this classification is that we are com
pelled to, treat alcohol socially and legislatively ex
actly the same as we treat every other drug with
which it is properly classed. We have no more
reason in chemical science for using alcohol as a
luxury than we have for using cocaine as a luxury.
The difference between cocaine and alcohol lies
chiefly in the fact that the former is a powerful
local concentrative and will “knock a man out” in
short order; whereas, the latter is a slow diffusive
poison. But it gets there after a while.
The cocaine fiend is filled with hallucinations,
will lie, steal, sell clothes from his wife’s back and
shoes from his chidren’s feet to get more money
with which to buy cocaine in order to gratify his
appetite, but he is seldom vicious. But alcohol,
which is classed with cocaine, will do all for its user
that cocaine does and, in addition, when he goes
home, he will blow his wife’s brains out. This is
chiefly because alcohol has the two-fold characteris
tic of a narcotic and irritant poison which cocaine
has not.
The larger cities in many parts of the country
are passing ordinances forbidding the sale of co
caine by drug stores except upon a physician’s pre
scription under a penalty provision of S2OO, more or
less, for every violation, which is scientifically the
thing to do; but for every argument in favor of the
prohibition of cocaine there are two arguments in
favor of the prohibition of alcoholic liquors.
The following conclusions are incontrovertible:
There is no more reason in science for the bever
age use of alcohol in solutions called beer, wine or
whiskey than there is for the beverage use of so
lutions of opium, morphine or cocaine, and there
is no more justification in the legalization of places
where alcoholic liquors may be Sold than there is
in legalizing opium or cocaine joints. The appetite
for liquor is as abnormal unfortunate and unscien
tific as is the appetite for any other narcotic drug.
It is logically, and constructively, as much of a
crime for any voting citizen to cast a ballot fbr a
policy of government whereby another man might
gratify his appetite for liquor as it would be to
cast a ballot to make legal a joint wherein an opium
fiend may gratify his appetite for opium.
The argument that prohibitory legislation inter
feres with a man’s right to eat and drink what he
pleases is as absurd as it would be to affirm the
same concerning morphine or cocaine. The same
may be said of the argument that, “they will have
it anyway, therefore, we might as well legalize it;
tax it and get some money out of it.” Would any
decent man say that of morphine fiends? Or the
argument that if you abolish the saloon, it will
drive business to some other town. Would any
self-respecting man use such a plea in behalf of any
other narcotic drug with which alcohol is classed?
Should any man, professing intelligence, undertake
to build up his business by advocating a law legaliz
ing the sale of cocaine for luxury purposes, he
would be warned to leave town between two days.
And yet it is equally absurd and criminal to ad
vocate the legalized saloon.
From every angle at which one considers alcohol
he gets a correct view only when it is classed as a
narcotic-irritant, to be treated in no way different
from other like poisons.
Such is the argument drawn from a proper classi
fication of alcohol among the poisons.
Alcohol a Brain Poison.
A no less startling or potential argument against
the beverage use and legalization of liquor is found
in the direct action of alcohol on the brain.
Every poison likes some one part of the body
better than it likes another. For instance, the
poison of lead likes the muscles of the wrist. Mer
cury likes the salivary glands the best. Manganese
likes the liver. Tobacco likes the heart the best.
Arsenic likes the coating of the stomach, strychnine
the spinal cord, and alcohol likes the brain the best.
This places alcohol at the top of the list as the
most serious poison of all those mentioned because
it likes the brain the best, which is the most vital
and sensitive part of the human body, the home of
the mind.
In the light of that statement I have a choice as
to what poison shall attack my body. I would pre
fer to have a “wrist-drop” from lead poisoning
than a brain-drop from alcohol; or a liver complaint
induced by manganese than a brain complaint in
duced by liquor. You may have an arm, both arms,
a limb, both limbs, rob me of my sight, my speech,
my hearing, maim my body as you please, but spare
my brain. You may send me to a hospital for the
surgeon’s knife, but keep me if you please from an
insane asylum. I want to be able to think, to think
right, and know, and reason. The brain is the home
of the mind and alcohol has a selective affinity for
the brain.
But why does alcohol like the brain the best ?
Recent investigations by Prof. Hans Meyer of the
University of Vienna, confirmed by other noted spe
cialists, show that nerve substance contains a larger
proportion of fat than other tissues; that all the
substances called narcotics are able to dissolve fat.
They enter into a loose chemical combination with
tlie fatty constituents of the cells, “ilnd imme
diately inhibit the vital processes of the cell.”
It is also well understood that alcohol has a pe
culiar selective affinity for some cells over others;
