THE RELATION OF ALCOHOL TO CRIME IN 
 ALABAMA. 
 
 BANCROFT LIBRARY 
 
 By J. T, Searcy, M, D„ of Tuscaloosa, 
 
 Senior Counsellor, "and member of the Board of Censors and Com- 
 mittee of Public Health. 
 
 [From the Transaction, of the Medical Association of the State ol Alabama, 1891.] 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 Men in the world can be very readily graded as they ascend 
 from the lowest to the highest types, by two very essential 
 qualifications-the one, their degree of intellectual-sense,- 
 the other, their degree of moral-sense. 
 
 By the lowest type of man we mean one both ignorant and 
 immoral ; by the highest type, we mean one both highly intel- 
 ligent and highlv moral. These two qualifications can, to a 
 considerable extent, be separated. We often speak of the 
 mental and moral qualities as distinct ; and we recognize the 
 fact, that in the same individual, frequently, the levels of these 
 two qualities do not correspond. For instance, we can have a 
 person who will grade higher in his ethical sense than in his 
 intellectual, and another whose ethical sense will be lower than 
 his intellectual. The rule though is, capacity to think is ac- 
 companied by an equal ethical capacity. 
 
 In the gradual advance of a race from savagery to civiliza- 
 tion, this progress is occasioned by and marked by gradual im- 
 provement in both these particulars. 
 
 In any man, his intelligence and his ethics are exhibited at 
 a level correspending with his ability, which is acquired by 
 practice in performing these kinds of action. The savage, 
 compared with the more advanced man, is less able to perform 
 these kinds of thought, because he has been less practiced in 
 
 S>4- 
 
them. In human progress upwards through generations to 
 civilization, there is a gradual improvement in ability, until 
 the most advanced man shows his excellence by his high ca- 
 pacity to think and to do right. 
 
 The first essential in an advancing race is activity ; an indo- 
 lent, idle race never advances. It is the activity or exercise 
 of the brain that increases its ability. Accomplishments and 
 excellencies are acquired only by brain practice and exercise. 
 
 The rapid competitions of active society necessitate activity 
 on the part of the individual to avoid suppression and elimina- 
 tion. Hence improvement of individuals is most rapid in 
 active society. The continuous brain-work, which under such 
 circumstances becomes a necessity, improves the thinking ca- 
 pacity and increases intelligence. 
 
 The intellectual sense of the rising man, threfore, antedates 
 to some extent, his ethical sense. In active society, which 
 alone is the advancing one, competitive ability is acquired be- 
 fore the communal necessity arises for harmonizing the com- 
 petitions. As civilizing society advances, the safety and the 
 welfare of the community demand that the competitions of its 
 membership shall be harmonized. This gives rise gradually 
 to the evolution of higher and higher rules of conduct. Public 
 opinion and moral sentiment, with laws and government to 
 enforce them, thus become proportionally of a higher and 
 higher grade, as the intellectual competitive ability of the peo- 
 ple advances. Closely behind the intellectual level is the 
 ethical — almost concomitant with it. 
 
 In the gradual improvement of society the advancing man 
 becomes more practiced in ethical observances, until as an ac- 
 companiment to his brain ability to compete, there also grows 
 in him a higher and higher ethical sense of the rights of others. 
 A high ethical sense is the capstone of human improvement — 
 the latest evolved. 
 
 In the best communities to-day we find some individuals, — 
 in some localities they are comparatively few, in none do they 
 reach the majority — who have a high order of ethical-sense 
 inherent in them, at the same time they are inherently intel- 
 
3 
 
 ligent. This combination makes the best type of man. He 
 is the result of generations of these kinds of brain action. 
 
 We speak of civilized countries, and of civilized communi- 
 ties, as though their memberships are uniform. On the con- 
 trary, every civilized community (so-called) furnishes examples 
 grading all the way from the highest type, just described, to 
 the lowest. We can find persons in any community in this 
 country that grade very low, at the savage level, in thinking 
 capacity and in ethical sense. We might style them civilized 
 savages, or rather the savages of civilized society. Many of 
 such persons have the savage level of moral sense, while they 
 hold a higher level in intellectual sense. This is particularly 
 the case with deteriorating or degenerating individuals, they 
 lose their ethical sense in advance of their intellectual — the 
 latest evolved and most delicate goes off first. 
 
 We have not yet invented a cerebral dynamometer by 
 which we can test and record a man's intellectual capacity or 
 his ethical strength, but in our associations with others we in- 
 stinctively know such information is very valuable. It is very 
 important to know the character and ability of those with 
 whom we associate. It is interesting to note how much we are 
 engaged in this sort of work ; we are continually making esti- 
 mates of this kind, and it is astonishing, in a crude way, how 
 expert we get at it. 
 
 In making our estimates in society, the position a person is 
 found to hold is one to which he has risen from a lower level, 
 or one to which he has lapsed from a higher one. Human 
 brain ability, of all kinds, is not a constant quantity — there is 
 no stand-still level — the index of ability rises and falls in the 
 course of the life of the individual ; and it varies in the course 
 of his line of descent. In so-called civilized communities, the 
 lapses probably constitute the large majority of the incompe- 
 tent classes. 
 
 Ability, at whatever level it is in an advancing man, is 
 raised to that height solely by previous brain exercise. Brain 
 strength of all kinds comes from individual or ancestral brain 
 work. The person receives his ability at a certain level from 
 
his ancestry and raises it by his habits of thought. It is either 
 individual practice or ancestral practice that raises ability ; and 
 by far the most stable and valuable ability, is that which is the 
 result of generations of ancestral practice, kept up or im- 
 proved by individual practice. 
 
 While it is true there is only one way of improving brain 
 capacity, namely by brain activity, there are several ways of 
 lowering it. There are several ways by which the person can 
 lapse into a lower grade of intellectual and ethical ability. 
 Inactivity, idleness, I have already stated, is the physiological 
 process of lapsing ability. Functional capacity immediately 
 begins to subside when there is a cessation of brain work ; 
 this is the physiological method. There are also a number of 
 pathological processes, which impair the functional ability of 
 the brain. 
 
 Our pathology is always nothing more than disturbed or 
 impaired physiology, and I have dwelt this long on the physi- 
 ology of the brain functions because this is necessary in order 
 to fully understand their pathology. 
 
 Whatever injures the structure of the brain impairs its 
 functional action — this impairment is exhibited in loss of in- 
 tellectual ability and in the loss of ethical ability. 
 
 We can go through the wards of our insane asylums and 
 find numbers of men who once ranked high in mental and 
 moral qualities now lowered in both. Defect, injury or dis- 
 ease now renders the brain of each of them incapable of per- 
 forming at as high a level as it formerly did. 
 
 Insanity indeed is only a name we give to a certain degree 
 of brain incapacity. As generally defined, it simply means 
 there is such a degree of incapacity as renders the person an 
 unfit member of society ; for this reason, for his own or his 
 fellows' safety, he has to be placed under forcible restraint. 
 His brain is so lowered in intellectual ability that he is unable 
 to compete for his living, or conduct his business properly, so 
 a support has to be given him; and so lowered in ethical 
 ability, that he is a nuisance or a danger to others, and has to 
 be restrained. 
 
In society, short of the degree called insane, we have a 
 great many kinds and degrees of peculiar, cranky and delirious 
 people. In all these the brain is more or less pathologically 
 injured or defective in structure. The difference between 
 them and the oam e is only one of degree. 
 
 Besides the long list of diseases, injuries and defects of the 
 brain, which impair its functional capacity, we also have a 
 large number of drugs, which taken into the circulation, bring 
 down the brain's capacity to a lower level. I need not go over 
 the long list nor point out the peculiarities of their actions, 
 but at once mention alcohol as one of them. This agent, from 
 its so universal use, probably next to idleness, does more than 
 anything else to impair brain capacity and produce the lapsed 
 members of society. 
 
 If it were not for the fact that alcohol has its principal 
 effect in the system upon the brain, men would never have 
 used it as a beverage. If its effects were confined below the 
 collar men would never drink it. In seeking it and taking it 
 the alcohol drinker is after its brain effect. 
 
 The brain is the organ of thought and all conscious feeling. 
 The partially altered condition of its delicate structure, that 
 alcohol produces, renders it less capable of cellular action. Its 
 conscious sensitiveness is lessened thereby. It is less able to 
 feel. The alcoholized man says he "feels better," because if 
 he have any pain or discomfort, his brain has less sense of it ; 
 and even, if he have no pain, in a state of health, he has a 
 pleasant feeling, because a benumbed condition is a comfort- 
 able one. So, under alcohol, the well man says he "feels good." 
 The luxury of alcohol drinking consists in this brain condition. 
 
 I wish to call attention to the fact, that in order to obtain 
 the pleasant brain condition of lowered sensitiveness, the alco- 
 hol drinker does not avoid or fail to have the other effects. 
 The comfortable condition is the lowering of one brain ca- 
 pacity, of sensitiveness, but the other functions are lowered 
 with this one. When the brain's ability to feel is lowered, its 
 ability to think and to adjust conduct ethically is also lowered. 
 The keenness of a high ethical sense is probably the first thing 
 blunted. 
 
6 
 
 The disability of the alcohol drinker will vary according to 
 several conditions; first, it will vary according to the amount 
 taken. For instance, in proportion to the amount taken, con- 
 scious sensitiveness lets down from a slightly benumbed, com- 
 fortable condition to that of complete anaesthesia; the ca- 
 pacity for intellectual thought varies from being "a little off" 
 to the condition of a fool or a temporary dement ; the ethical 
 sense is lowered through degrees varying from the exhibition 
 of slight indecorum or impoliteness to the condition of full 
 viciousness or madness. All these capacities can be lowered 
 to any level by increasing the amount of alcohol taken. 
 Secondly, the degree of brain disability will vary according 
 to the inherent brain strength of the drinker. Weak brains 
 will be lowered in ability more than strong ones, and low 
 grade, savage brains, will be lowered more than advanced 
 brains ; and defective brains will exhibit their lessened capaci- 
 ties in the lines of their deficiencies. Third, the disability 
 will also vary in proportion to the length .of time the brain- 
 abuse is continued. A single debauch can be recovered from, 
 while long continued use produces such a degree of injury 
 that full function is never restored. 
 
 All three of these conditions, namely, a large quantity taken, 
 a weak or defective brain, and continued drinking, sometimes 
 obtain in the same person. When this is the case, the deteri- 
 oration and degeneracy of brain action is extreme. These ex- 
 treme cases constitute the inebriates. They are always degen- 
 erated to a very low grade in intellectual sense and in moral 
 sense. There is a tendency to return to original capacity, if 
 the brain-drug-abuse is left off, but, I question whether there 
 is any inebriate brain which ever rises to the level of intellec- 
 tual or ethical ability which it would have occupied without 
 the damaging abuse. 
 
 As society advances from savage life to civilization success 
 depends less and less upon muscle strength and more and more 
 upon brain strength. The most advanced society pays the 
 highest premium for brain capacity. In active, civilized so- 
 ciety, the individual is most interested therefore in his brain 
 
ability, for his safety and his success depend upon this. In 
 savage society muscle strength suppresses the weak, in ad- 
 vanced society it is the brain strength of the competent man 
 that suppresses the incompetent. 
 
 The drinking man loses money, lets down in business be- 
 cause his thinking capacity is lowered by his habit — his 
 ability to compete is impaired. He falls into vicious habits, 
 for the same reason, his ethical sense is impaired. 
 
 In modern society, brain idleness probably puts most men 
 into the eliminating level — next to idleness, comes alcoholic 
 drinking. The combination of these two agencies, more than 
 anything else, rids crowded society, particularly in cities, of its 
 unfit membership. Alcohol is a terribly rapid eliminator. 
 The least fit persons, both in the wealthy, idle ranks, and 
 in the poor, idle ranks, are most given to its use. The use 
 of alcohol, under the light of advancing science, is becom- 
 ing more and more confined to the class of the weak-brained 
 and the vicious ; the intelligent, for the sake of maintaining 
 their intelligence and superior fitness, are learning to leave it 
 
 Off. .ANCROFT u-.b^y 
 
 Society is much interested in the intellectual level of its 
 membership, but it is most interested in their ethical level. 
 The safety and survival of the individual is mo6t dependent 
 upon his intellectual ability. Society's safety and survival 
 depend upon the moral status of its people. The good of 
 society demands morals. The most successful community is 
 that whose membership is mostly composed of a high order 
 of ethical as well as intelligent persons. A race or a na- 
 tion of this kind will excel and surpass all others. Com- 
 munities, races and nations, like individuals, compete with 
 each other. The most successful is the one which has the 
 high intellectual capacities of its people welded into a har- 
 monious whole by a high ethical sense. There is a very sci- 
 entific explanation, therefore, to the fact that the most 
 altruistic persons, those most interested in public good, have 
 always been opposed to alcohol drinking, because they ob- 
 serve it lowers the intellectual and the moral level of the 
 
8 
 
 people. Probably one reason they have never succeeded 
 better in enforcing their opinions upon the attention of the 
 alcohol users, is because they have not had the advantage of 
 most recent scientific knowledge to back their instructions — 
 the brain has been left out of their philosophy altogether. 
 I have often been made impatient in listening to the lec- 
 turer presenting the "scientific aspects of the alcohol question" 
 to an audience, to see him illustrate with charts, and spend 
 hours to show the effects of alcohol upon the coats of the 
 stomach, upon the corpuscles of the blood, upon the struc- 
 tures of the kidneys, the liver and the lungs, and never al- 
 lude once to the brain ; when the fact is, alcohol's chief 
 and principle effect is upon this organ — especially are its 
 effects of great importance on this organ because the brain 
 functions so far transcend those of all the others — I might 
 say there is no comparison. 
 
 When a man realizes the fact that alcohol incapacitates the 
 very organ upon which his safety and success in the world 
 depen^fc he will be less apt to use it ; and when society recog- 
 nizes that with alcohol it can chemically make a vicious 
 man out of its most excellent man, and is continually doing 
 this with its less-fit classes, it will do more to spread scientific 
 instruction upon the subject. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 The above portion of this paper I had already prepared for 
 another audience when I received a letter from our worthy 
 President requesting me to "report upon the relation of Alco- 
 hol to Crime in Alabama." For reasons I won't mention here, 
 I reluctantly consented to do so. 
 
 On considering the subject, I thought probably the thoroughly 
 scientific standpoint I have taken, and the purely physiological 
 presentation I have made of the subject, would bring it, by 
 this new departure, more interestingly to your attention. 
 
 Such a method of approaching the "Alcohol question" to 
 me seemjthe only scientific and practicable one, and is entirely 
 within the bounds of medical science — although the subject is 
 
seldom discussed from that standpoint, especially its ethical 
 aspects. 
 
 I don't think any number of figures and statistics, compiled 
 by circular letters of inquiry to different portions of our state, 
 would alter the general conclusions I have reached ; and I 
 might very properly close at this point with the statement, 
 that all that is necessary is to apply these principles in our 
 different communities. 
 
 Examples of brain degeneracy by alcohol exist everywhere 
 in Alabama. Every doctor's practice brings him in contact 
 with these cases. This kind of disability comes under his 
 daily observation in all its kinds and degrees ; from those cases 
 where the person's brain is only temporarily impaired in its 
 intellectual and its ethical capacity by a single administration 
 of the drug, to those extreme cases where its continued use 
 has produced such a permanent injury that fully recovered 
 capacity is impossible ; the person remains permanently low 
 grade. 
 
 It is not at all necessary for me to illustrate my subject by 
 individual cases ; any intelligent person can recall numbers of 
 them. 
 
 It may prove interesting, however, to enter a broader field 
 and show how alcohol has affected some of the race degenera- 
 cies in our state. 
 
 We have three very distinct races in Alabama — the Indians, 
 he Africans, and the European whites. I think I can show 
 that alcohol use has had some distinct and peculiar effects upon 
 each of these races. 
 
 The Indians have been almost entirely eliminated from our 
 midst, very few of the race remain alive. 
 
 It is a very notable fact that not only in our state but no- 
 where in the country have the Indians been able to succeed in 
 industrial competition with the whites. I have shown, as civ- 
 ilization advances with any race in the upward progress, the 
 competitions of its members become more and more limited 
 to industrial pursuits in which the degrees of brain ability of 
 the different persons determine the results of survival or 
 
10 
 
 ascendency. When a savage race, therefore, is suddenly 
 forced into civilized society, it signally fails because of the 
 want of previous brain practice and sufficient brain capacity 
 in the performance of these kinds of thought. Such a pro- 
 cedure toward any low grade race is equivalent to forcing 
 them to take their position in civilized society at their natural 
 level, which is at the same level as the low grade eliminating 
 members of that society. When the Indians, therefore, in 
 Alabama were forced to confine themselves to the habits of 
 the advanced Europeans, they simply took this obvious course, 
 the only one they could assume, and fell into the grade of the 
 eliminating whites. They necessarily and naturally failed — 
 failed intellectually, in industrial competitive life, and failed 
 ethically in moral observances — in common language, they be- 
 came poor and vicious. 
 
 The vice of the whites to which they took with avidity, 
 was alcohol drinking, because of its temporary comforting 
 effect, and nothing could more effectually have added to their 
 further degeneracy. Such a procedure has put them "down 
 and out" rapidly. Only a few years find them almost entirely 
 eliminated. 
 
 The general government in its efforts to manage the Indians 
 finds that it must first stop their alcohol drinking. The rise 
 from savagery to civilization is due to a slow process of brain 
 practice through generations upwards, while brain degeneracy 
 by alcohol is almost traumatic in its rapidity downwards. The 
 missionary finds therefore his efforts to stem the current of 
 downward Indian degeneracy, if alcohol is allowed, to be "like 
 whistling at the wind." The inherent inability of the brain of 
 the Indian to compete industriously in white society, and the 
 still further disability of that organ that alcohol produces, are 
 the factors that have led so rapidly to his extermination. 
 These are the principle reasons we have so few of this race 
 left in Alabama. 
 
 When the Spaniards discovered America they set out imme- 
 diately to enslaving the Indians. They did this on a large 
 scale, by the hundreds of thousands, in the West Indies. This 
 
11 
 
 change of habits was so extreme and sudden that the Indians 
 were utterly unable to adjust themselves to it. They exter- 
 minated so fast, and proved so unsuitable for such a life, that 
 the Spaniards had soon to import Africans, whose submissive 
 habits were entirely different from the Indians — subjection 
 being their almost constant condition in Africa. Their suit 
 ableness for slavery has always made the Africans the prey of 
 other races for this purpose. Later they were largely imported 
 into this part of the continent as slaves. 
 
 During the more than 200 years that the Africans were sub- 
 jected in the United States to slavery, they were practiced in 
 higher orders of brain-work than they ever performed before. 
 The result of this forced discipline was a gradual elevation in 
 their intellectual and ethical abilities. At the time of their 
 freedom they were much improved in both these capacities 
 over their original level. And, at their freeedom, no where 
 else in the world did there exist 6,000,000 of people, who, in 
 a body, excelled them in three particulars — general healthful- 
 ness of system, prolificness, and sobriety. They excelled the 
 whites in each of these particulars. The general management 
 and government of them as slaves, incited it is true by the 
 masters' interests, tended to improve them in these three 
 directions. Better general sanitary conditions than they ever 
 enjoyed before, had improving effects. 
 
 The negro now, freed from slavery, but still retained in ad- 
 vanced society, being of a more submissive and adjustible 
 nature than the Indian, requires less forcible coercion to hold 
 him, and the change of habits is not so severe upon him, be- 
 cause he is inherently more passive ; still, intellectually and 
 morally, he assumes his level. That he fills our police courts, 
 our chain gangs, our penitentiaries and our convict camps is 
 but on exhibition of the physiological and natural rule, that 
 living in a civilization of a higher ethical grade than he is able 
 to make for himself or practice, when forced to live under it, he 
 necessarily falls short in that kind of practice, and in a larger 
 proportion than the whites, occupies the incompetent and im- 
 moral grade in society. Natural and artificial "selection" with 
 
12 
 
 miscegenation, have produced individuals among them that 
 rank well and high, who point toward excellent "survival," 
 and ability to compete. Still, it is very apparent that the gen- 
 eral average trend of the race has lapsed in level since their 
 freedom. They certainly have declined in the three particu- 
 lars in which they excelled — of healthfulness, prolificness and 
 sobriety. And, with the scattered exceptions cited, I think 
 their intellectual and ethical levels have let back, especially in 
 the thickly settled negro sections where they have been left 
 to themselves. Aryan civilization and management still con- 
 tinue to help the negro. He is still under the pressure of 
 forced European tutelage. The legislation of the state largely 
 spends itself in negro management. He is recognized as a 
 general incubus upon the industry and the government of the 
 country. The public opinion and the moral sentiment that 
 control legislation and general morals in the state, are almost 
 wholly manufactured, promulgated and enforced by the whites. 
 Negro violators of the peace of society, of the rules of honesty, 
 and of the rules of chastity, are not censured and punished, 
 except to a very limited extent, by the public opinion of the 
 negroes themselves. Their convicts, on return from the pris- 
 ons or penitentiaries, hold social status among them without 
 reproach. Although much elevated above its original African 
 level, the average, or aggregate ethical sense of the race still 
 ranks low. 
 
 Alcohol drinking in those localities where they gain access 
 to it, is on the increase among them. And, as tested by 
 the elections held on that question, if left to their own 
 suffrages, there would be a grocery at every cross-road in the 
 country. If it were not for white legislation to prevent it, 
 much of the same condition of afairs that prevail in portions 
 of Africa to day, would prevail in the negro sections of the 
 South. In south Africa whole tribes have melted away and 
 disappeared in the countries contiguous to the English Cape 
 Colony, largely and much more rapidly because of alcohol 
 drinking. And, if European and American rum, in its rapidly 
 increasing proportions each year, continues to be poured into 
 
13 
 
 these sections as well as the Transvaal and the Sierra Leone 
 countries, they will all be evacuated for European occupation, 
 without the firing of a gun. The same is the case in the new 
 Congo Free State. This condition of affairs has already 
 occurred among similar races in the large islands of Tasmania 
 and New Zealand which for a number of years were English 
 penal colonies. The natives have now entirely disappeared. 
 The same is occurring in the Continent of Australia — the 
 natives are being exterminated like our Indians. These races 
 were all of negro type. Alcohol is the most rapid extermina- 
 tor of savage and barbarous races yet invented. It serves the 
 same purpose upon low grade races that it does upon low grade 
 individuals in advanced society. 
 
 In the "black belt" and thickly settled negro portions of 
 our State, the pecuniary interests and personal safety and com- 
 fort of the whites, continue to be the influences that legislate 
 for the negroes good. The prohibitory laws in those portions 
 of the State are better enforced than anywhere else, because 
 the white sentiment that makes them also enforces them. 
 The whites know the wide spread damage and destruction that 
 follow their omission — their own interests demand their en- 
 forcement. The legislation and government of these sections 
 of the State are still largely spent in negro improvement and 
 propagation. 
 
 As regards the effects of alcohol degeneracy upon the Euro- 
 pean white race of the State I need have little more to say. I 
 have already shown its effect in broad generalizations. Gen- 
 eral information and intelligence is increasing on this subject 
 so as to have greatly stayed the wide-spread deterioration that 
 once prevailed. Within the memory of most of us, alcohol 
 drinking once pervaded all ranks of society. It was con- 
 stantly used in every house. The two most potent methods of 
 brain degeneracy used to prevail among the whites of this sec- 
 tion much more generally than at present — I mean brain 
 idleness, and brain injury with alcohol. Among the wealthy 
 slaveholders these habits were the rule — and they have played 
 sad havoc among what used to be our most prominent families? 
 
14 
 
 Brain deterioration and degeneracy and consequent elimina 
 tion from these causes, can be traced largely in all our com-" 
 munities among the names of our once wealthy people. But I 
 need not here specialize, individual cases are familiar to you 
 all. 
 
 Increasing brain activity over the whole State is now having 
 an elevating effect to bring back the whites to their proper 
 Aryan level, to recover them from the deterioration that the 
 brain idleness consequent upon the institution of slavery once 
 produced. In my opinion, while the negro race was greatly, 
 upon the whole, improved, the white race was sadly deteriora- 
 ted by that institution. Increased brain exercise and the 
 cessation of brain injury with alcohol, are, on the part of the 
 intelligent people, now doing more than anything else to pro- 
 duce and develop " the new South." 
 
 I think I have probably said enough to illustrate and make 
 plain " the relation of alcohol to crime " in the state, and I 
 insist that I have done this from a purely scientific and medi- 
 cal standpoint. 
 
 I believe that the heretofore totally neglected subject of 
 brain sanitation is the direction in which, in the near future, 
 there will open up a field for the highest order of public 
 hygiene. Old metaphysical notions and sentimental preju- 
 dices have heretofore shut out this field from medicine. We 
 have acted as though the brain had no functions and did not 
 belong to our province of science.