broken up; one runs the risk of being thought by the heedless a prig
and a Puritan. But that is a small price to pay for one's health and
one's influence on others.

(3) More important than any of these causes is the craving for a
stimulant. The monotony of work, the fatigue toward the end of the
day, the severity of our Northern climate, the longing for intenser
living, lead men to seek to apply the whip to their flagging energies.
This stimulus to the body is, however, largely if not wholly, illusory.
The mental-emotional effects, noted in the following paragraph, give
the drinker the impression that he is physically fortified; but objective
tests show that, after a very brief period, the dominant effect upon
the organism is depressant. The apparent increase in bodily warmth,
so often experienced, is a subjective illusion; in reality alcohol
lowers the temperature and diminishes resistance to cold. Arctic
explorers have to discard it entirely. The old idea of helping to cure
snake bite, hydrophobia, etc, by whiskey was sheer mistake; the patient
has actually much less of a chance if so drugged. Only for an immediate
and transitory need, such as faintness or shock, is the quickly passing
stimulating power of alcohol useful; and even for such purposes other
stimulants are more valuable. Reputable physicians have almost wholly
ceased to use it. [Footnote: See H. S. Williams, op. cit, p. 4,
124-127; H. S. Warner, op. cit, pp. 87]

(4) The one real value of alcohol to man has been the boon of
stimulating his emotional and impulsive life, bringing him an elevation
of spirits, drowning his sorrows, helping him to forget, helping to
free his mind from the burden of care, anxiety, and regret. As William
James, with his unerring discernment, wrote twenty-five years ago:
"The reason for craving alcohol is that it is an unaesthetic, even