The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-10-18
Temperance Reading.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

The Importance to the young of phys
ical education can not be unduly en-
phasized. For out of the school room
of to-day are to come the skilled work
men and women of the next generation
the physicians, clergy, lawyers, judg-
es, legislators, merchants, manufacture
ers and navigatOrs all who are to carry
on the work of the world.
Civilization has already outrun the
bodies of men and women. It's COM
plicated work taxes body and brain
almost beyond endurance. In addition,
the self-indulgence of the age is so
general and wasteful that it creates
physical degeneracy, and mental imbe-
cility. 1t crowds the hospitals, peoples
the asylums, increases the tenants of
almshouses, fills the prisons, empties
the churches, dethrones manhood, and
brutalizes alike the rich and the poor.
| allude to the indulgence of intoXicat-
ing drink. All the while, the severity
of the struggle for life increases, and
the difficulties of earning q livelihood
grow intenser with every generation.
What is to be done?
The young must be taught the hy-
giene of intoxicating drinks. 1t must
enter into their school education. They
must be carefully instructed in the
damaging physiological results of in
diligence in the cider, beer and wine,
so largely used as beverages, and
which, in the main, become as destruc-
tive as the stronger alcoholic liquors.
They must be trained to maintain Sc
rene dominion over appetite-to lead
lives OF wholesomenesS to practice
rigid total abstinence from all that can
intoxicate. Plato laid down the rule
that boys must not taste wine until they
were eighteen years old. The early
Romans forbade its use until a man had
reached the AGE of thirty. The Spartans
denied Intoxicating drinks to their sons,
and compelled their slaves-the Helots
to get drunk in the presence of their
young men, that they might witness
the degradation of drunkenness Their
great aim was to develop q superb
| physical manhood.
Science to-day teaches that alcohol is
not only not food, but poison.
| When we say man is "intoXicated, "
we simply say that he is poisoned. For
our word ''intoNicate' comes from the
Latin word ''toXicum," which means
| poison. From this we have the word
''toxicology," which is the science that
treats of poisons. If one takes into the
stomach meat, bread, potatoes, or other
food, it is digested, and converted into
muscle, brain. bone, or some other part
OF the body. Thus by food the waste
| of the human system is repaired, which
is occasioned by the work Of life. But
when alcohol is taken into the stomach,
that organ resents its intrusion, and
drives it into the liver, which, in turn,
forces it to the heart, and that throws
it into the lungs-and so it goes on, in
its unwelcome and compulsory tour
through the body. Every organ rejects
and expels it, the liver, bowels, kid
neys, lungs and skin all throwing out a
portion of it, until the system is rid OF
it. In this process of expulsion every
organ, by and by, becomes seriously
damaged.
At last, both body and mind are
ruined. The perceptions are bewild-
cred, the memory weakened. the reas-
oning power clouded, the moral sense
benumbed, the will dethroned, the self
respect dead, and there is no vice OF
crime to which the victim is not liable
A terrible dipsomania is established
when there is only an insatiate craving
for alcohol, that knows no bounds, ant
for which there is rarely any cure.
When to the wreck OF the individual
are added the appalling facts that four
fiiths of all the criminals in the prisons
four-fifths of all the paupers in the
almshouses, three-fifths of the insane
in 'sylums and one-half of the idiots
are the direct products of strong drink
how CHASTITY is the record, Ought no
these facts to constitute powerful
array of reasons why the youth of to
day should VOW in high honor absolute
and lifelong aloofness from all tina
can intoXicate? -lkrs. Mary 4. LiUer
more in VIDE ADaLe.