nerves,” “inhibition of the cortical centers,” etc.] Hence the temporary cheer must be paid for with usury by a much longer depression, resulting from the poisonous effects of alcohol upon the body.  A jolly evening is followed by the familiar symptoms of the morning after.  The extent of the physical and mental depression caused is not always realized, because it is spread out over a considerable period of time and may not be acute; a healthy person can stand a good deal without being conscious of the ill effects.  But they are there.  In bodily vigor, and so in mental buoyancy, the abstainer is in the end better off than if he drank even a little, or seldom.

(b) Careful and repeated experiments seem to show that even a very little drinking-a glass of beer or wine a day- decreases the capacity for both muscular and mental work.  This loss of ability is not usually perceptible to the drinker; he often feels an illusory glow of power; but he cannot do as much.  A bottle of beer a day means an appreciable loss in working efficiency. [Footnote:  Accounts of the experiments will be found in H. S. Williams, op. cit, pp. 5-23, 128, 137; H. S. Warner, op. cit, p. 116.  They had some realization of this truth even in the days of the Iliad.  Hector says, “Bring me luscious wines, lest they unnerve my limbs and make me lose my wonted powers and strength.”]

(c) Even a moderate use of alcohol increases liability to disease and shortens the chances of life.  In any case of exposure to or contraction of disease, the total abstainer has a proved advantage over even the light drinker.  The British life insurance companies reckon that at the age of twenty a total abstainer has an average prospect of life of forty-four years, a temperate regular drinker a prospect of thirty-one years, and a heavy drinker of fifteen years.  Many other factors enter into the individual situation, of course; we know many cases where inveterate drinkers have lived to a ripe old age; it takes a great deal to break the iron constitutions of some men.  But averages tell the story.  An authority on tuberculosis states that “if for no other reason than the prevention of tuberculosis, state prohibition would be justified” The use of alcohol predisposes the body to many kinds of disease; and according to conservative figures, approximately seventy thousand deaths yearly in the United States are caused by alcoholism and diseases that owe their grip to the use of alcohol.  Besides this, a great deal of insanity and chronic invalidism, and a large proportion of deaths after operations, are due to this cause. [Footnote:  See H. S. Williams, op. cit, pp. 25- 43, 149, 150; H. S. Warner, op. cit, chap.  IV, and bibliography at end.]