The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-15
sPrRrT OF Tzn PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
MODERATE DRINKING. &"

whose idea of ''life" is to ape the Partisan
swell at a very great distance, assault the
question from the standpoint of their last
bottle of hook, or hotel hop, "wbere young
men and maidens drink champagne and
dance the German. 'Do they, triumphantly
cries one of these admirable reasoners, ''get
troonk ash pigs? Am l carried insensible to
bed by my familyp" To which we can of
course only answer that we do not know
The remainder of the column is filled
with equally powerful arguments, by
which moderate drinkers are assured
that they are engaged in as praiseworthy an
occupation as going upon a railroad journey,
and one no more likely to result in harm. We
are further informed, and with regret, that
the "aquarian atmosphere" of this country is
such that it prevents our knowing what
moderate" or any other kind of drinking
really is, and are finally told that aquarianism
is proper for y. b. Cough, as he has no alter
native between total drunkenness and total
abstinence but it is absurd for said Cough to
measure hock-drinking journalists or their
world by his standard. Because thou art
virtuous, shall l. Sir Toby, have no more
cakes and ale?"
We do not suppose that even the ''social
class of young men and madens who drink
champagne and dance the German" could be
seriously affected by such arguments as these.
There is, however, tendency of late worth
attention among really rational and earnest
class of thinkers, who are but partially in
formed on the subject, to react against the
vehement outcry of the temperance advo-
Gates They question, not unnaturally,
whether God made anything absolutely a
curse. ''Is alcohol not necessary dietetic
AGENT Can the moderate use of it by those
to whom it is harmless be properly inveighed
against as a sin?' To which we answer that
there has probably been too much talk
of the crime of drinking Our grandfathers,
khax,h aI 70 l1o ;,l, T,;cl o..
man, drank port, or whisky, or lager, to
good old age with no worse perceptible effects
very likely than gout or chronic ill-temper.
But in later years, especially in America, the
effect is different; not, we think, owing so
much to deterioration in the liquor as to
climatic influences. The first outbreak of
the temperance movement assumed the form
of an unreasoning religious crusade The
wrongs of the drunkard's wife and family
blinded the reformer to the greater sufferings
of the wretched victim himself. He was held
up to scorn and execration as the
chief of sinners; urged to repent and
hold his hand precisely as he would
from theft or any other moral dein-
euency. If he reformed and afterward went
back to the accursed thing, he was mourned
without hope at death as having gone to re-
ceive the punishment of damnation. Now,
in nine cases out of ten, the man should sim
ply have been placed under the care of ply
sioian, precisely as if he had been an heredi-
tary victim to scrofula or consumption. 1t is
but of late years that the question has been
brought under scientific treatment, but it is
already removed beyond the sphere of IRA
tional invective of temperance orators on one
hand, and the vaporing defense of ignorant
young men on the other. The treatise of DR..
Elam on physicians Problems, published
in London last year, is probably the
most complete essay on 'Oinomania"
yet issued, though it only meets the
saws. sthat this disease is almost
as we'll and Enthusiastically marked, in its
physical aspects, as small pox is in its physi-
cal, that it is hereditary, and that its victims
uniustly crowd our criminal assemblies. The
instincts of an oinomaniac seem to be as
violent and little under control from the in
tellect or will as that of a carnivorous animal
when it tastes blood" The alcohol-poison
acts. as any careful observer must have
noted. as rapidly upon the will as upon the
blood ana stomach. We urge this subject
gloomy and distasteful as it is, upon our
readers and shall not cease to urge
it. 1t cannot too soon be made popular
conviction that alcohol is not only ''liquid
damnation," but the generator of an
incurable physical disease, always in some
form transmitted to the offspring. Every au-
thority upon the subject comedies in the
opinion that the habit of moderate drinking,
apparently harmless in the parent, manifests
itself invariably in oinomania, or in epilep-
tic or insane tendencies. We ourselves
know cases where the grandfather yet lives,
a hale hearty tippler, and children and grand
children, in spite of moral and religious
training, have gone down the same inexo-
rable path, devoured by the irresistible crav-
ing for drink ''For this disease" saws Dr.
Elan, ''there is but one cure: total and en-
tire restraint, so as to prevent for a long
period any possibility of indulgence in the
depraved habits" We trust the day is not
far off when chronic alcoholic poisoning will
be as fully mastered as any other disease by
our physicians, and that the poor boy who
feels the first awful craving may have no more
shame in placing himself under medical care
than he would if threatened with any other
ailment Let science at least do what it can
to aid him in his struggle with Death, though
we legalize a grogshop at every corner to
tempt him downward
, There is no lack of statistics to prove the
effect of HARMLESS moderate drinking" upon
the next generation. The spirit duty was re-
moved in Norway in 1926. In the next gene
ration the increase of insanity was above 80
per cent advance on the previous proportion;
the increase of congenital idiocy $50 per cent.
In Sweden, in the same time, Magnus Huss
testifes that 'for this cause the whole ply.
sique of the people is degenerating; insanity,
suicide, and crime frightfully on the in
crease; new and aggravated diseases have in.
vaded all classes of society, and congenital
imbecility and idiocy are in fearful proper.
tion to the numbers born" Moderate drink
ing, says an eminent authority on diseases OF
the brain, sometimes produces in one or more
of fha nhildran Of the naraOn fhua md uloia