The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1884-10-10
Temperance Reading.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

The Importance to the Young of phys
zeal education can not be undulv 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, iudr-
es, legislators, merchants, manufactur-
ers and navigators all who are to carry
on the work of the world.
Civilization has already outrun the
bodies of men and women. Its COM
plicated work taxes body and brain
almost beyond endurance. In addition,
the self-indulgenee 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 a 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 rs the stronger alcoholic liquors.
They must be trained to maintain Sc
rene dominion over appetite-to lead
lives of wholcsomeness 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 man had
reached the age of thirty. The Spartans
denied intoxicating drinks to their sons,
and compelled their Slaves-the Helots
Ito 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 lot food, but a poison.
When we say a man is intoxicated"
we simply say that he is poisoned. For
our word ''intoXicate" 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
it's unwelcome and compulsory tour
through the body. Every organ rejects
andGexpels it, the liver, bowels, kid
neys, lungs and skin all throwing out
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 or
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, and
for which there is rarely any cure.
When to the wreck of the individual
are added the appalling facts that four
tifths of all the criminals in the prisons,
four-ffths of all the paupers in the
almshouses, three ffths of the insane
in fsylums. and one-half of the idiots,
are the direct products of strong drink,
how CHASTITY is the record! Ought not
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 that
can intoxicate?-Mrs. Mary 4. Liver-
more IN Vide AaOQke.