Much has been said concerning the stimulating effect of alcohol upon the heart, and this had been treated at length.  There is an increased action of about four thousand beats in twenty-four hours for every ounce of alcohol used.  This fact still misleads some physicians into prescribing it to strengthen the weak heart, but the increase is not due to new force.  The heart action normally is the result of arterial pressure and nervous action, two forces mutually balancing each other.  The nervous action is diminished by the introduction of the alcohol; this destroys the balance and deranges the arterial pressure.  Dr. James Edmunds, a great English physician, years ago said:  “When we see a man breathing with great vigor, does it occur to us that he must be in good health?  Is it an indication that he gets more air?  We all know better.  It simply shows that he has asthma or some such disease, and that his breathing is strained and imperfect.  He is making use of less air than the person who breathes quietly.  This is the case with the blood, work, so it plunges and struggles in the effort.  And the cause of both cases is the same.  There is more carbonic acid in the blood than either the heart or the lungs can handle.  If for example I were suffering from general debility and milk were the food best suited to my needs, and if I should discover a tramp in my apartments drinking of my already too limited supply, would it be reasonable to assert that the exhibition of strength which I made in forcing him to desist is an indication that the entrance of the vagrant bettered my enfeebled condition?  The greater activity of the heart is not due to the added strength resulting from recruits of friends but to a desperate struggle to beat back a reinforced enemy.”

That alcohol does not allay pain had been established when this committee was organized.  The only proper method of allaying pain is to remedy the disorder which produced it.  It is no remedy to deaden the nerves so that we cannot feel it.  This reasoning had been found good in the case of alcohol as a remedy in “colds.”  Whiskey does not relieve the uneasiness and oppression we experience when ailing from a cold, it only benumbs the nerves so we do not feel the trouble.  The cure is not hastened but delayed in this way.

          Isit the cause of disease?

Besides the fact that alcohol had, before this committee’s existence, been proved to be neither a drink nor a food nor a medicine, it had also been shown to be the cause of disease.  Over five thousand of the most prominent physicians in this country had so stated it, and the proportion was equally great in all the enlightened countries of Europe.  The most pronounced in this way, perhaps, have been the great leaders in medical science in Austria, Germany and France.  Some of the points made against the use of alcohol were that it interferes with digestion by rendering