Medicine: Paean to Nepenthe

The ancient Greeks combined syn (with) and posis (a drinking) to produce —as it is now anglicized—symposium, a drinking party. Last week a group of psychiatrists and other physicians gathered with sociologists and biochemists at the University of California School of Medicine for a symposium on drinking. The consensus: symposiums are wonderful.

Yale’s Dr. Leon A. Greenberg reported on experiments made with 1) rats that he was trying to make neurotic by subjecting them to unexpected noises, and 2) rats that he had already made neurotic by the same means. He found that a couple of rat-size drinks greatly helped those in the first group to ward off neuroticism; the same treatment for the already neurotic rats merely turned them into confirmed drunks.

How to Be Inefficient. Northwestern University’s Psychiatrist Jules H. Masserman amplified the thought, arguing that all use of alcohol is an attempt to stave off neurotic reactions to stress. “Addiction to drink,” said Masserman, “is a ‘disease’ only in the sense that excessive smoking, gambling or wandering are also ‘diseases,’ that is, condoned ways in which men try to haze over, compensate for, challenge, or escape from uneasiness.” In appropriate doses, he said, alcohol is one of the most effective of “nepenthics,” which he defined as drugs that “soothe both the patient and the physician.”

Columbus’ Dr. Chauncey D. Leake boldly endorsed the dinnertime drink ritual: “Use of alcoholic drinks at the end of an emotionally grueling day may have a real civilizing effect on the overtense, overwrought, overanxious and overirritable husband seeking rest and peace in his home. A couple of drinks perform wonders in helping husbands and wives to feel more tolerant and understanding of each other.”

The cocktail hour was singled out for approval by Dr. Giorgio Lolli, who divides his research time between Rome and New York. To be efficient much of the time, he argued, every man must have some time to be inefficient and recharge his batteries. The cocktail hour is ideally inefficient, Dr. Lolli suggested. As for the man who takes too many: “Inebriety, from its mildest manifestations to the extremes of stupor, is only an alcohol-induced form of inefficiency at the wrong time, the wrong place, and for the wrong reasons.”

As every social drinker knows, the way to enjoy drinking without getting too drunk, too fast, is to eat as well. Dr. Lolli suggested that this device may not be simply a matter of food volume or blood-sugar levels: “I have a suspicion that some very spicy food items might help a lot. South Americans use these, and tolerate alcohol relatively well. I am going to investigate such items as pizza and anchovies.” He also explained a common experience—that of the anxious girl on a date who may at first show remarkably little effect from drinking and then suddenly passes out. Her tenseness, he said, closes the pylorus (the gate valve at the lower end of the stomach) and keeps the alcohol in. When she suddenly keels over, stoned, it is because the pylorus has opened and spilled all the alcohol at once into the small intestine, from which it reaches the blood and brain.

Two Took to Port. If some people drink too much, many old people drink too little, suggested Brooklyn’s Dr. William Dock. “The carefree attitude derived from alcohol, so dangerous for the automobile driver,” he said, “is most helpful for the aging parents of normally ungrateful children, for the man or woman with failing sense organs or vital organs, with dying contemporaries and narrowing circle of friends,” or with income eroded by inflation.

Dr. Dock cited three of his own aunts who had lived happily and usefully until they were 70, then began to suffer the afflictions of age. Two took to port wine and gloated that they did not need drugs, while the third took to valerian (a root drug laced with alcohol) and gloated that she did not need wine. All three enjoyed life more (one to the age of 99) and became easier to get along with. “Ever since seeing this,” said Dr. Dock, “I have felt that what is needed in retreats for ailing or aged people, and even in city hospitals, is a regular alcohol ration.”

After three days of mixing thinking and drinking, Physiologist Greenberg summed up the symposium consensus: “Alcohol is the safest, most available tranquilizer we have.”