New-York tribune., 1868-06-17
Prom The Cincinnati Commercial, January Q. 1863

Ayowed Advocates Even it's slaves curse the
vice to which they yield, OF regret with maud
lin tears, their inability to resist the false ap-
petite for stimulants which long-continued ex-
cess has engendered. OF all the millions whom
it degrades, brutifes and ruins, there is not
one who. in his sober moments, stands forth
its champion. Temperance on the other hand,
has host of active and energetic friends.
Society, as body, breaches it, although so
many members of society fail TO practice it.
1t is advocated in every pulpit; its promulga-
ton Is the object of large and respectable
social organizations it is made side issue,
and sometimes main issue, at the polls, and
stringent laws are enacted to enforce it.
In short, all parties, all creeds, all interests,
unite in deprecating drunkenness, and the only
question connected with it upon which they do
not agree is as to the wisest method OF con-
trolling the evil. Prohibitory State legislation
has been thought by many sincere and good
men to be the best remedy; but it has been
tried again and again in New-England and
elsewhere, without having produced any bene-
fetal effects expected from it, and at last Mas
sachusetts, so long the stronghold of prohibl-
ton has repudiated that policy by an immense
majority. The Federal Government, partly III
the interest of temperance and partly for rev.
enue purposes, has imposed tax upon domes-
l. Iot
cuted, would at once lessen their consumption
and increase the sum total of the national
revenue but it appears to have signally failed
in both these objects. There is no perceptible
decrease in the manufacture or consumption OF
domestic spirits, and no prOpOrtionate aug
mentation in the receipts of the Government
from that source. Laws of this nature are
always extensively evaded, and result IN
large amount of official corruption and pubic
decentralization, without accomplishing the pTi-
mary objects which their originators had in
view.
Experience seems to teach us that moral in
fuences are more potent than penal statutes in
restraining this species Of excess. Father
Mathews moral and religious crusade against
inebriety probably did more good than all the
prohibitOry laws that have ever been enacted.
The extreme prohbitionists insist that alco-
hol has no uses rs a medicine; that it is, when
taken into the stomach necessarily poisonous.
But here the faculty that has made disease
and the remedies for disease its study for so
many ages increasing its knowledge and per-
fecting its system of treatment with every
passing year., meets the allegation with point
blank denial Who are best competent to
decide this question, in which the health and
lives of millions of human beings are involved
the professors of the art of healing or indl-
viduals who, confessedly, are incompetent to
prescribe for their own ailments, ana VINO,
when prostrated by illness, place their chef re-
reliance upon the dOctori Does not the pro-
fession in whom, next to God, they put their
trust in sickness, know better than they do
whether alcoholic tonics are or are not neces-
sary in certain phases of disease Common
sense answers in the affirmative. Physicians tell
us that alcoholic medicines are among the
most valuable remedial agents in the Materla
Medica, specifies which cOnnOt be dispensed
with without sacrificing the health and lives OF
multitudcs of their patients If we put trust IN
unenI-and that put fn tironI 10 v'f-
IL,
to MS when in danger-we are bound to sub
scribe to their dictum.
So far, then, as medication is concerned the
object of the philanthropists who advocate tenn
peraIne should be to aid the profession in Its
praiseworthy efforts to secure pure, unad-
ulterated alcoholic stmuant for curative and
preventive purposes. If any law could be de-
vised for keeping the unwhOlesOme and I'M
pure liquors of commerce out OF the slck-room,
il would be an inapprecable blessing and If,
on the other hand a law guaranteeing pure
stimulant to all who are professionally declared
TO need it could be practically enforced, that,
too, would be of infinite benefit to mankind
But no such special legislation could be rem
dered effective. 1t would be evaded, and rem
dered null and void 10y the interests in conflict
with it, just as the liquor laws are now nulli-
fed by similar causes.
But when-as in the case, for example,
of IIostetter's Stomach Bitters-a medicinal
stimulant has been proved, beyond all cavil,
TO be absolutely free from adulteration, and
complete specific for n large class of diseases,
no benevolent and enlightened friend of Tenn
perance can consistently lift his voice against
it. On the contrary, every proper effort should
be made to procure the substitution of such
tonic for the acrid, fiery and poisonous fluids
too frequently administered to invalids.
Ii should be powerful argument in favor
of preparation like this that it has been de-
prived by rectifcatiOn, and by the medicinal
vegetable ingredients of which it partly con-
sists, of all the deleterious properties present
in ordinary alcoholic stimulants, and which be-
get an unnatural craving for strong drink, there
by leading directly to ntemperance. This, we
sav should he n strong argument in its favor