Alcoholism

ALCOHOLISM. - I. MEDICINA. - A morbid state due to the immoderate use of alcohol or of spirits, in quantities such as to reach alcoholic intoxication. Most commonly wine is used (Italy and France), beer (Germany and England), liquors (Scandinavia, Russia and the U.S.A.); in such beverages ethyl alcohol is contained from 3-4% in beer, up to 60-70% in liquors. The central nervous system is electively affected; at first with an excitatory action, which is soon followed by a paralyzing and narcotic one. In acute intoxication, if death does not occur, the damage may resolve; in chronic intoxication, lesions that are largely irreparable become established. Psychically, chronic a. produces moral and intellectual decay of the individual with characteristic alterations of the personality: weakening of memory, dulling of the moral sense, apathy with a strong reduction of working capacity. Polyneuritides develop (tremors, ataxia, paralysis); chronic catarrhal states of the mucous membranes, especially of the gastric one, with the classic « vomitus matutinus potatorum »; arteriosclerotic lesions; serious alterations in the most important organs of vegetative life: hepatic cirrhosis, renal sclerosis, degeneration of the myocardium, often a cause of premature death. Apoplexies are frequent (v.).

The most serious neuropsychic form is « delirium tremens » (motor overexcitation with a state of mental confusion and distressing auditory and visual hallucinations), which may be followed by death (10% of cases) or by a chronic demented state.

The high mortality and morbidity in the offspring of alcoholics is probably linked to the neuropsychic and somatic taints transmitted by the parents.

The most serious forms of chronic a. are given by the abuse of liquors. In the most affected countries (England and the U.S.A.) 40% of psychoses and 80% of crimes are caused by alcohol; the offspring of alcoholics from liquors is more seriously tainted: epilepsy and other diseases of the central nervous system are frequent.

In Italy, where a. is less widespread than in other countries, it is the cause of 8% of psychoses, and ethylism figures as a personal antecedent in 36% of the insane and as a family antecedent in 21%.

As to the question whether the small doses of diluted alcohol that are used as a beverage (wine, beer) are harmful, one can answer with certainty in the negative, provided one does not exaggerate in the dose (about one gram of alcohol per kilogram of weight in 24 hours).

The sense of euphoria that accompanies the ingestion of alcohol hides the damage of intoxication and strengthens the prejudices that recommend the use and abuse of alcoholic beverages. Similarly, the depressive action on the intelligence is often masked by the apparent hyper-ideation, linked to the tumult of ideas and images that it provokes in the brain, analogously to what happens with other poisonings (belladonna, opium, hashish); hence the relationship between alcoholism and poetic inspiration observed in certain subjects (Swift, Verlaine, Hoffmann).

BBL.: Royal Commission on liquor licensing Laws, Final Report, London 1899; L. Bianchi, Trattato di psichiatria, 2nd ed., Naples s. a.; E. Adami, Farmacologia e farmacoterapia, Milan 1942; U. Cerletti, Santi delle lezioni di malattia nervose e mentali, Rome 1946.

Giuseppe de Nino

2. SOCIAL MORALITY

1) Harms of a. Alcohol was defined as the narcotic of the conscience because it alters or destroys the centers of inhibition and reflection. Hence the great number (reaching 40 and 50%) of the insane due to a. and its frequent and very close connection with criminality, suicide, and workplace accidents. A., moreover, diminishes resistance to diseases, is a principal factor of prostitution and misery, with the squandering of money and the abandonment of family life, especially in proletarian environments. The harms suffered by the individual are transmitted to the offspring: the alienist Mozel formulated a law of the descent of alcoholics over four generations, finding in them the most serious forms of madness and degeneration. Alcoholic intoxication reveals particular importance in conception, pregnancy, and lactation, inasmuch as it gives the greatest number of mental and nervous diseases (hysterics, epileptics, idiots, imbeciles). The statistical proofs: a high number of military rejections due to alcoholic heredity; a high number of long-lived persons among the temperate and the abstinent. A. as a social disease is favored by industrial organization and by urbanism, especially among factory workers; it is widely diffused among the well-to-do classes of the Anglo-Saxon countries.

2) The Church and the struggle against a. The Church cannot remain indifferent before the physical and spiritual harms of a. Christianity affirms as a duty temperance for all the faithful, regardless of the renunciations of the abstainers. St. Paul extols the drunkenness that the Spirit of God gives as opposed to that which wine gives, and he grants Timothy the use of a little wine as a medicine. Among the pagans too there was no lack of condemnations of drunkenness and praises of abstinence. The laws of Lycurgus and the ideal laws of Plato and Aristotle forbade wine to the young. The athlete was prescribed to abstain from sexual intercourse and from wine. But paganism could not see the problem to its depths because many of its deities were devoted to wine, and in the rites of Dionysus and Bacchus sacred drunkennesses were celebrated. The Church therefore, a teacher in every age of temperance, accustomed to regard wine in the chaste holiness of the rite, found herself in the front line in the struggle against alcoholism. The first manifestations of private and state action occurred in non-Catholic countries because the social phenomenon of alcoholism appeared in them before it did in Catholic countries, with the exception of Ireland. To the Irish Capuchin Father Theobald Mathew (1790-1850) (v.) is owed the founding of the League of the Cross, a Catholic temperance society, fruit and instrument of a marvelous apostolate begun in Ireland (1837) and continued in North America: he received 5 million pledges of sobriety and organized 90 thousand abstainers. The propaganda was matched by a 50% decrease in criminal convictions and an 80% decrease in death sentences. From its beginning to the present day, Father Mathew's work, spread also in the United States and England, elicited the cooperation of Daniel O'Connell, of Cardinals Manning, McCabe, Newman, Logue, Gibbons, Vaughan. The importance of the Church's anti-alcohol action in the United States was confirmed in the deliberations of the Councils of Baltimore (1840 and 1884) and of the Synod of Cincinnati. Catholic Germany had valiant apostles of anti-alcoholism from 1843: the priest Seling, Monsignor Egger, the leader of the Center, Windthorst. Most flourishing were the League of the Cross (adults) and the Guardian Angel League (children). Noteworthy too were the Catholic initiatives in Poland, Lithuania, Switzerland, Belgium. In France — as in Italy and Spain — the high consumption of wine is linked with the interests of national production; hence the difficulty of propaganda. The French National League against alcoholism federates several associations, among them two Catholic ones, the White Cross and the Golden Cross. Protestants have established powerful anti-alcohol associations. In North America the Order of Good Templars (1852) with branches in Europe; in Europe the Blue Cross, spread in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, France; the Salvation Army takes part in anti-alcohol action. The workers' parties have often adhered to anti-alcohol action. The common basis of all of them is educational action (family, school, church, workshop) resting on example ("absolute abstinence from alcoholic beverages is the most effective means of struggle," as one of the resolutions of the French and Italian anti-alcohol Federations says) and supported by vigorous legislative action. To the reasons of a moral, hygienic and social character Catholics add the defense of the faith, because alcoholism is closely connected with blasphemy, foul language and vice.

3) Alcoholism in Italy and anti-alcohol action. Italy is among the countries where the consumption of the most harmful alcoholic beverages is lowest, while the consumption of wine, which is the least harmful of alcoholic beverages, is at its maximum there. Awareness of the social dangers of alcoholism manifested itself in Italy in the early years of the 20th century. Ephemeral, though significant, were the attempts at an anti-alcohol organization due to Dr. Clerici, in Turin (1861), and to the Patronato di temperanza, in Milan (1882). An effective movement began in Florence with the periodical Bene sociale (1898) and the founding of the Italian Anti-Alcohol Federation at the National Congress against alcoholism held in Venice in 1904. The initiative, of a neutral character, received notable support from the clergy and the laity. Catholic initiatives followed: the struggle against alcoholism was one of the cornerstones of the movement for public morality promoted in Turin (1899) by Prof. R. Bettazzi, who later (1912) founded the New Crusade — Italian Catholic Association against alcoholism — which had rapid success and effective manifestations: good popular publications (G. Masi, A. Portaluppi, A. Giacomelli), a pastoral letter of Monsignor Marenco, bishop of Massa Carrara (1915), the establishment of groups of abstainers, young people and priests, on the example of the German Catholic youth, and of the Union of Priests of the system, established in Belgium, under the patronage of Cardinal Mercier. A decree of Pius X (21 May 1914) granted indulgences for those enrolled in the "societies called of temperance, of abstinence from alcoholic beverages." As for the guiding criteria of action against alcoholism, they are summarized in the following declaration adopted by the national Federations of France and Italy: a) Wine and beer are neither necessary nor useful to the healthy individual. Distilled beverages are always harmful. b) For the normal adult man the daily maximum of wine, exclusively with meals, does not exceed half a liter. c) Wine and alcoholic beverages are to be forbidden to children, to young people, to pregnant women, to nursing mothers, to the neuropathic. d) Absolute abstinence from alcoholic beverages is the most effective means of struggle against alcoholism.

5) Legislative provisions against alcoholism. It is unanimously recognized that the struggle against alcoholism was strengthened above all by spiritual and social means — education and the higher standard of living of the worker in the home and in the workshop — which, however, must be integrated by the action of the law. The experience of a century and a half (the first legislative measures against alcoholism in the United States date back to 1868) has tested various measures, among which we recall: a) punishments for drunkards; b) internment of alcoholics; c) prohibition of giving alcoholic beverages to minors, to drunkards; d) limitation in the sale of them (in the number of outlets, in opening hours, etc.); e) right of sale recognized only to temperance societies; f) granting to municipalities and autonomous bodies of the power to issue provisions against alcoholism; g) imposition of heavy taxes on production, manufacture and sale; h) state monopoly of manufacture and sale; i) prohibition of the trade and sale of absinthe and alcoholic beverages; l) anti-alcohol instruction in schools, measures against intemperate employees and workers.

Italian legislation — which had its first systematic affirmation in this matter with the law of 19 June 1913 — coordinated in the Consolidated Text of the Laws of Public Security (18 June 1931) the various provisions regulating the sale of alcoholic beverages. The Penal Code of 1930 contains related provisions, in articles 686-91 (Contraventions concerning the prevention of alcoholism and of crimes committed in a state of drunkenness).

Of particular significance are the norms against alcoholism contained in the Law for the protection and assistance of maternity and infancy.

6) Alcoholism in the colonies and in Africa. Alcoholism in colonial territories and especially in Africa gives rise to a grave social problem — analogous to that of narcotics — which concerns the Christian missions. The ravages of alcoholism among the colored peoples provoked international measures agreed upon in the General Act of Berlin (29 Feb. 1883) and in the General Act and Declaration of Brussels (2 July 1890). Against the infamous trade of rapacious speculators, import duties and prohibitions or limitations of alcoholic beverages were established. Such measures were reinforced by the international Conventions of Saint-Germain (10 Sept. 1909), in which Italy also participated. They are moreover connected with the international action against slavery.

Per l'azione contro l'a.: I. Doogan, Manual of Temperance (Roman Cath. Temperance Society), Calcutta 1897; A. Bertillon, L'alcoolisme et les moyens de le combattre, Parigi 1904; A. Giacomelli, Il gran nemico, Treviso 1908; J. Witte, Die Alkoholfrage in religiöser Beleuchtung, Bonn 1910; A. Portaluppi, In faccia alla rovina, Legnano 1912; A. Cobelli, I pubblici esercizi nei provvedimenti per combattere l'a., Milano 1914; G. Masi, Fu bene l'alcool?, Torino 1914; A. Junod, L'alcoolisme chez les noirs africains, Ginevra 1930; A. Jamalio, s. v. in Nuovo Dip. Ital., I, Torino 1937, pp. 302-306.

Egilberto Martire