Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1855-07-26
Intemperance in the Crimea.


The repor, from Scutari that Florence
Nightingale was i'll, worn out by her heroic
devotion TO the duties she had undertaken,
le!l sadly on Multitude of hearts on this
side the ocean that now rejoice 10 know she
is recovering her strer 9Th. But as we learn
from letter of hers just published in Eng
land, the cause of this illness has been cor
recty understood. 1t is not the poison
breath of infection or the exhaustion of I'M
tirng toll or the glaring 81 miner sun which
already stares with fierce glow on the shores
of the Bosphorus that weighed down her
slender form. "All this could have borne
with deep jov," she writes, "but to see the
stretcher brought to the gates every hour
laden with men fooming in the mouth and
black in the face, not with the gore of battle
but with the horrible DETACHMENT of foe
more dreadful or deadly than the Russian or
the plague, oh It is terribe!"
This foe, of which she speaks in such
touching language, is intemperance. The
hawkers of poison that has worked more
ruin and wretche dness on earth than all 9th.
er wars and wickedness, have followed like
a pest in the wake Of the camp and stolen
on their prey. They have worked, Miss
Nightingale says, more havoc than the ball
Of the Russian or the stroke of disease. Nor
is this foul course of drunkenness confined
in the Crimea to men alone. Before Florence
Nightingale sank and abandoned her post OF
duty, she had night after night 10 sit up, un-
able to trust the women appointed as nurses
and paid TO watch over the couch of sickness.
! Until the grog-shops were started in the
Crimea er work was tolsome indeed, but
still labor of love and of hope. Her nurses
were vig ant and took pride in sharing the
honors of their task They are now profit
gate and abandoned dtunkards. So this
noble girl, not until after repeated efforts a,
reclamation, has been forced to admit. Be-
fure drink came, her patients were heroes;
they are now sots. Veins swollen with IL
/ quur are, under the Crimean sun glare, like
powder in the focus Of a burning lens. She
has had to move with disgust through lines
of beastly victims of intemperance. Hith-
erto she had overcome the incapacity OF
rulers, tho obstructiveness of subordnates,
dirt dearth, disease and death, but before these
last horrors, in which under the raging
4, physical distemper a still fouler moral disease
destroys, no wonder that, disheartened and
distressed, the brave heart which had SO long
supported her fruil strength gave away.
From her sick and almost dying couch she
has sent an inn loring voice, as many noble
children of humanity have done befole, call
ing upon that country whose incapacty her
heroism has redeemed, to sweep away those
II l., Co. ho ~.
cry and ruin of their fellow men, who, as she
says, "know not what they do" Danish she
cries, 5unish this deadliest D! enemies from
your own ranks! II can hardly be that such
an appeal, coming from such source and at
such an hour. can pass unheeded. 1t will
touch not alone the heart of England, bu,
will rouse and animate to new exertion the
brave and the good of eve-y land.
: The picture OF the work of this demon o
t drink in the Crimea is but faithful type o.
its dolngs in every spot in which it obtain.
dominion. If those only who often "kpow
. ing not what they do" engage in and sustain
this fatal traffic, could follow its victims ant
I have passed before them the brute degraGa
Y ton to which it has brought once honest mel
. and the misery it has planted on many hap
o py hearth, we cannot believe but that the,
: would shrink with horror from this wrngin!
5 of wealth out of the blood of their ellow-be
S ings. 1t is not in the revel round the camp
fires of the C.mea that the effects of intem
r perance are found. 1t is in those scene
= which have struck down the gentle spirit o
d Florence Nightingale, il is m tie hospital an
If death heap at Scutari. 1t is not in The gle
n of the gilded bar-room or the rioious royste
!. of the cornwall circle that drink is to be sec
ID in its true form, but in the foul dens OF vic
If in the poor-hOusc and the prison. to which
s. is the ever,teeming fountain of Posonou
Al supply. And let those everywhere who labo
r, to set bounds to this deadly evil, take neN
D, courage and gather more persistent resolu
e ton from the cooperation of this noble VIC
Of man, who now SO justly commands the sym
pathy and admiration o. the WORLDLY. \
e Tribune