New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-07-14
" MODERATE DRINKING.p

record VIII be more satisfactory.
"MODERATE DRLNKING.'
The Temperance discussion has received a
new class Of essayists. Small journalists, who
have their column per week to fill, and whose
highest idea Of "life' is to ape the Partisan
swell at very great distance, assault the ques-
ton from the standpoint of their last bottle of
hook, or hotel hop, where young men and
"maidens drink champagne and dance the
" German "DO they" tIiumphantly cries
one of these admirable reasoners, " get troOnk
Z" ash pigs Am | carried insensible to bed by
"my family ~ To which we can of course only
answer that we do not know. The remainder of
the column is filed with equally powerful argu-
ments by which moderate drinkers are assured
that they are engaged in as praisewOrthy an
occupation as going upon 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 il prevents our knowing what
"moderater or any other kind of drinking
really is, and are finally told that aquarianism
is proper for j. Il. Cough, as he has no alter
native between total drunkenness and total
abstinence but it is absurd for said Cough to
measure hock-drinling journalists or their
world by his standard. Because thou art
"virtuous, shall ], Sir Toby, have no more
"cakes and ale !"
We do not suppose that even the "sOcial
"class of young men and maidens 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 a really rational and earnest
class of thinkers, who are but partially informed
on the subject, to react against the vehement
outcry of the Temperance advocates. They
question, not unnaturally, whether God made
anything absolutely curse. SIS alcohol not
"a necessary dietetic agent7 Can the mOder-
cate use OF it by those to whom it is harm
"less 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, if
they happened to be English, Irish, or German,
drank port or whisky, or lager, to good old
age with no worse perceptible effects very
likely than govt 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 in
fuences. 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 him
self He was held up to scorn and ex-
ecratiOn as the chief of sinners; urged
to repent and hold his hand precisely as
he would from theft or any other moral de-
linquency. If he reformed and afterward went
back to the accursed thing, he was mOurned
without hope at death as having gone to receive
the punishment of damnation. Now, in nine
cases out of ten, the man should simply have
been placed under the care of a physician
precisely as if he had been an hereditary victim
to scrofula or consumption. 1t is but of late
years that the question has been brought I'M
der scientific treatment, but it is already re-
moved beyond the sphere Of irrational invec-
tive of temperance orators on one hand, and
the vaporing defense of ignorant young men
ION the other. The treatise of DR.. Elan
on a Physicians Problems, published in
London last year, is probably the most COM
pete essay on "OinOmania" yet issued. though
it only meets the subject incidentally 81 as
" sert,' he says, that this disease is almost
" as well and Enthusiastically marked, in its
"psychical aspects, as smallpox is in its ply
" steal, that it is hereditary, and that its vic
" tins unjustly crowd our criminal assemblies.
" The instincts of an oinomaniac seem to be
" as violent and little under control from the
4" intellect or will as that of "a car
" niyorous animal when it tastes blood.r
The alcohol-poisOn acts, as any careful
observer must have noted, as rapidly
upon the will as upon the blood and stom-
ach We urge this subject, gloomy and dis
tasteful 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.
thonty upon the subject comedies in the |
opinion that the habit of moderate drinking. |
apparently harmless in the parent manifests |
itself invariably in the child in oinomana, or |
in epileptic insane tendencies. We our
selves know cases where the grandfather yet
lives, hale, hearty tpplcr, and children and /
grandchildren. In apite of moral and