New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-03-13
TJIF Social GEITENN1.

The Saturday Reriew, which delights in drag
ging to light all diseases and weaknesses IN
the feminine body and soul, has fallen lately
on promising cancer in what it decately
calls drawing Room Adjudication" The
London Lancet, treating the subject from the
physicians point of view, admits that the in
creasing prevalence of intempeIance among
educated English women is becoming alarming,
and asserts that medical men fail to see and
act up to their duty in the matter. q" care
"ful practitioner" it says. "shOud remember
"the peculiar constituencies OF women
during certain portions of their life
" to the influence of narcotics. Hence,
IF he prescribes alcohol for them at all, it
SHOULD not he for trivial ailments which are
"labe to recur frequently and for which the
patient will only be too ready to apply the
"agreeeblo remedy which was found 80 efica-
"cious before" The Lancet also urgently de-
precates the practice of allowing young girls
between the ages of fifteen and twenty to
acquire the habit of taking regular and often
large quantity of wine on account of supposed
deicacy. "Tho practice" it AYERS, " is utterly
"unjustiiied by any physiological need Gn the
"absence of positive dseasc) and the results
care most disastrous"
1t is worth our while to look at home and
see how this matter stands with us. There is
such sense of chivalry toward the weaker
sex and faith in their purity among Americans
that statement that drunkenness existed to
any appreciable amount among educated
women would be received with disgust and in
credulity. Yet there are certain facts which it
is high time should be taken at once into the
gravest consideration by both the pulpit and
the press. To physicians they are unfortu-
nately, but too familiar. Among these is the
too large proportion of female patients in
insane asylums, who have become 30 from
the use of stimulants. lnebriatc asylums for
women have been lately established in this
State and Pennsylvania, and are filled out of
the high ranks of society. The Ameri-
can fashionable woman, as we all know,
drinks often, at her own table. wines of a
strength which her European sister would not
dare to touch. She "mixes her liquors" too
in her teens is connoisseur of champagne,
delicately sips sherry cobblers and Roman
punches; AID all this with her indoor life,
her limp constitutions her bilious habit, and
under climatic influences which to the strOng-'
est man make alcohol q poison There are
certain quiet "ladies' restaurants" in all the
sea- board cities, so quiet and modest in ap-
pearance that gentlemen are not tempted into
them, where respectable women resort for
the stimuant which is probably inaccessible
at home. Deaths from mdnid-d- poht have
occurred this Winter, and that not in the de-
based lower classes, but among cultured, deli
catcly reared women some of them young
Oenorous lOyable girls. This il an uplv and
almost incredible story. If we did not feel
that the danger was imminent, we would not
drag such fOulness out from its hidden corners
into the public air.
So far the women who have snned have dope
so unconsciously or ignoranty. The hurry and
struggle of life in this country have told upon
their physical health far more than upon that
of men. The over-work, the haste to be reh,
the incessant effort to urge their hSbands,
their Children, or themselves uD to a higher