That's a trick that Houdini did to the audience's amazement, reportedly dislocating his shoulders to accomplish. This movie seems to indicate that a man dying of alcoholic an insane asylum could do the same.
Of course, I mock a very seriously intended short subject. This is one of many shorts, like Robert Paul's better remembered BUY YOUR OWN CHERRIES, that moralists produced in the silent era. Alcoholism was, and remains a problem, but stridency of the temperance groups -- actually abolitionists, but using a softer term to avoid alienating the moderate and occasional drinkers -- was part of the Progressive movement, which held that if we only forbid people to do things we don't like, they would be much better off. So we would. Or we might go get our booze, tobacco, pot or hard drugs from people so disjoint from society that we destroy it in the process.
However, this is not the forum to argue politics. I will note this is a very advanced film for 1902, being offered in five scenes, on elaborately painted sets. It was probably not intended solely for movie programs, but for anti-booze lectures, Chautauquas, and conferences.