Soldier With and Without Alcohol.

White Ribbon, Volume 17, Issue 200, 17 February 1912, Page 12

Soldier With and Without Alcohol.

Here let me briefly allude to some experiments which were tried many years ago by an anuy surgeon named Parker. In the army, where a great number of men live together under conditions practical lv identical, there are obvious facilities for trying experiments of a certain kind, and P&rkee availed himself of these facilities in order to test the effect of alcohol on a soldier's marching powers. Thus on a certain day when severe marching had to he done he would serve out rations of rum to half a battalion and rations of beef tea to the other half, and he found to his surprise that the soldiers who had the beef t Q a could march further and faster than those who had the rum. Then another day he would reverse the experiment. To those soldiers who had the rum he would give the beef tea and rice rer»<t, but again he found that the soldiers marched better on the beef tea than on the rum. These experiments were repeated ad uauHeatn and endlessly varied, all kinds of alcoholic drinks being substituted for the rum and various Temperance drinks for the beef tea. Rut the result was always the same, proving up to the hilt that alcohol impairs a soldier’s marching power. Indeed so convincing was the proof that it impressed even the minds of the military authorities, which are not easily impressed, so that now when severe maifiling has to f r done the soldiers are, as a rule, kept teetotal.

Here one i* reminded of the fact that Sir Frederick Treves became an ardent advocate of total abstinence as a consequence of bis experience in the South African war. He tells us that during the march to Ladysmith “ the men who fell out of the ranks were the drinkers, and they dropped out as clearly as if they had been labelled.’’

This serious impairment of a soldier’s marching power is reallv due to the effect of alcohol on the nervous system, for it is not the muscles themselves, but the nerve-supply to the muscles that first becomes exhausted.

I)r T. R. Hyslop, of England, says: — “ Intemperance does not necessarily mean only obvious and palpable drunkenness. From the very moment in which alcohol has disturbed the healthy exercise of the mental faculties, or has impaired the moral sense by unduly exciting the animal passions, or has in any way unfitted a person for discharging his duties in the proper struggle for survival, from that moment has there been guilt of intemperance.”