The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1874-07-23
Alcohol.


which sugar undergoes in passing down
wards towards a dead, inorganic condi-
ton, substance is produced which has
been the cause of more sorrow, crime,
and suffering than all other evil agencies
| that have afflicted the world. 1t has
caused tens of thousands of murders,
and uncounted instances of robbery,
theft, arson, incest, and suicide; it has
brought misery and want into millions of
households; it has filled almshouses and
asylums with wretched victims; it sends
| a never-ending procession of crime-stain-
ed men and women to prison and to the
gallows. What an awful indictment this
is to bring against.a substance which
stands SO closely allied in chemical rela-
tionship to innocent sugarl Alcohol is
not natural product; it can only result
from spontaneous change which is ex-
cited in saccharine liquids under the in
huence of ferment. If in the order of
things this chemical change had been
impossible, the human race would have
been saved from shedding tears, the ag.
gregated volume of which reaches to that
of mighty river. But alas atoms of
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are per-
mitted to group themselves in way to
form the maddening liquid; and the
great enemy to human happiness con-
and commercial relations. If through
disarrangement of Natures laws, the
vinous Preventative process should sud-
denly cease, and not another drop of any
kind of spirituous liquors be produced,
no sensible harm would come to any in
dustrlal or art process, and no absolute
want in medicine would be encountered.
Carefully viewing the matter from the
standpoints of the chemist, physician,
and artisan, we unhesitatingly declare
that the world in its present advanced
stage has no need of alcohol; it is simply
convenient, but not necessary. Why not
then make determined effort to rid the
country and the world of the'monster Z?
Although alcohol results, as we have
said, from spontaneous changes, yet the
aid of man is necessary to form the vari-
GUS liquids containing it into attractive
and permanent beverages. The fer
mentation of the juices of grapes and
other fruits produces alcohol; but if let
alone, Nature will not allow the spirit to
remain except for brief space of time.
Nature abhors not only vacuum, but
manifestly one of her products, for alco-
hol is SO unstable in its attenuated COM
binations that, if left to itself, it speedily
runs down into the harmless form of
acetic acid
of natural changes which saccharine |
liquids spontaneously undergo, alcohol |
will not survive long enough to do mis-
chief. Why not then compel the great |
army of men, engaged in isolating and |
compounding the agent, to let it alone2 |
Alcohol is a poison; it acts inharmoni-
ously with vital processes in the animal
organism. In its purest and best form,
it slowly undermines the constitution,
and hinders or arrests metamorphosis of
tissues; in its vile associations, as pre-
sented in these modern times, it kills
with the certainty and almost with the
rapidity of strychnine and arsenic. We
ask again, why not attempt to arrest its
production, and thus strike blow at the
root of the evil !? There is virtue and
moral force enough in the country to
compel Congress to pass laws prohibiting
its Importation in any form; and there
is virtue and moral force enough in most,
of if not in all, the States to compel leg
islatures to enact laws prohibiting its
manufacture. This is the point to which
we must, sooner or later, come. All the
laws ever made, or that ever will be
made, oonjoined with all the prayers of
all the well intentioned women of the
country, will never stop the cravings of
human appetite, or prevent its gratifica-
tion, so long as rum, whisky, wine, malt
liquors, etc, are imported and manufac-
tured under the sanction of law. Alco-
holic beverages must cease to exist, be-
fore the world will be released from the
terrible thralldom which they exercise
over human appetite In making a
for the enormous evils caused by
nothing absurd or impracticable
is associated with the suggestion, and the
time is not far distant when the poison
will be placed under ban, as regards its
and manufacture, which will
give forced emancipation to the tens of
thousands of slaves now in subiugation
to the monster.-Boston Journal Of Chem
iStry,