Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1880-03-11
Temperance Textbooks ina the Pub.
lie schools.
BY EDWARD A. RAND, SOUTH BOSTON.

y
Any works on hygiene, as connected
with physiology, that should be taught
in our schools and yet never make any
reference to such a thing as poison,
would be considered fearfully lacking.
It is with fitness, then, that l noticed in
one of our textbooks long dark list
of poisons, frightened only by the
mention of their antidotes. In such a
work it would be thought timely to re-
fer to the possible poisonous exhalatiOns
excaping from drains, or marshes, or
flats. If there should be anywhere fats
of vast dimensions breathing up their
poison toward the sky, how that spot
would be branded and labeled as one to
be summed If its dimensions should
be so great as to be of national peril,
you would haYe had hygienie tossing
out their alarms in every school-FOOm.
The subject would cover pages of our
textbooks, and be thoroughly inVesti-
gated.
Now there is a poison going up all
over our land. Over our great cities
how it's exhalations hang a huge, ter
rible cloud of death! Over our towns
and villages smaller and yet pestilen-
tial cloud masses. What corner Of the
land does not know something of the sad
effects of alcoholic poisonings? Do we
realize how great the evil is, what seri-
business invests the drink problem? A
man staggers by US in fitintoxication; /;
this case becomes kind Of lOophole
through. which we look upon the ma
tional peril. We say alcoholic poison is
the sexton covering sixty thousand
bodies every year. It is the tempter
Turing to their crime nine tenths of the
transgressors of the law. 1t feeds poor
houses, stuffs jails, cOmpels armies Of
police to tramp up and down the land
day and night. 1t brings hunger and
cold and nakedness into thousands of
homes. 1t is the prolific parent Of
Hhard times" 1t is the great dragon
ravaging the morals of the land,
We begin to say all this as we notice
that one case of intoxication. But our
home may be in some city where fre-
ouent cases alarm us. The eYil of al
coholic poisoning may stagger against
us daily, disgust, and at the same time
terrify US. We think of our children.
We would save them from evil, and
drive the evil away from them. The
least we can do is to warn them, and
warn all young people of the terrible
effects of alcoholic poisoning. We
can't sound the warnings too soon.
Not far from the writer's home, little
bow not over seven years old, obtained
a bottle of liquor while at play with
his companions one day. He little un-
derstood that so much death was there
bottled, corked and sealed. He drank
freely only to sleep profoundly, and at
last slept the sleep that knows no wax
ing, Where was the parent, the
the friend, to explain to the
Door little victim that death was in that
bottle? We can not begin too early to
the children in our schools.
What if we should hear some day
that the Chinese government had re-
solved to put into the schools of China
4 textbook on the nature and effects of
opium poison? We would call it wise
craftsmanship. l contend that our
necessity is as great. If we don't
trouble the drink problem it will
,rouble us--is indeed troubling us.
Here is peril to the national industries,
he national morals, to the very ex-
stence of the nation itself.
The nation is divided as to methods
'or averting the peril. Some desire
moral suasiOn, and others would add
he argument of the law. There are
hose who stand with the Maine farm
RS. 'for the law, butagainst its enforce
nent." All substantially, though, are
lgreed concerning this thing-that the
7oung shall, or should, grow up pure
# the evils of intemperance.
We should commence with the young;
md to reach them thoroughly, and COM
BAT most successfully the national peril,
et us start in the public achOOls, /
would make the study Of alcoholic
as thorough and scientific as
possible. In the textbooks on hygiene
generally used, I think it will be found
nat this subject is gingerly noticed.