The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1890-05-16
w. C. T. U. DEPARTMENT.

w. C. T. U. DEPARTMENT.
recklessly used by mankind in all parts of
the world, and capable of inducing so many
and serious diseases must, of necessity, be
the eau Sc of a tremendous mortality, with
the usual precedence of many days of utter
disablement and disease. The fact is so.
1t is difficult to calculate the precise NOR
tally from alcohol, because we have never
yet fully diagnosed all the evils leading to
disease and death which spring from it.
For example, up to this time we have not
added the mortality due to alcoholic paral-
ysis in the large computations from which
our results nave been drawn. Some years
ago, from the best data | could obtain. l
estimated hat in England and Wales the
annual mortality from alcohol was fifty
thousand per annum, an estimate fairly
confirmed by other observers, of an impor-
tant and independent character. Admitting
its correctness, this estimate makes the
mortality from alcohol to be about one
tenth of the whole mortality-a view
which had previously been expressed by
the late DR.. Edwin Lancaster, the Coroner
for Central Middlcsex-and which places
alcohol, as one OF the causes of mortality,
at the head of those causes. This estimate,
however, must have been under the mark,
since it excluded altogether that fatality
which we,now know to arise from alcohol,
paralysis, and excluded also, too rigidly,
instances of direct poisoning from alcohol,
and all accidents of a fatal kind indirectly
due to alcohol. | would not, however,
run any risk of being charged with over
statement, and would be content to place
the mortality from alcohol at one-tenth of
the whole mortality, in places where the
article is consumed in the same proportion
as it is in England and Wales at the
present time; a proportion fairly repre-
sentative of alcoholic populations gener-
ally.
Connected with the two subjects of the
diseases from alcohol and the mortality
from it, the question has often been dis.
cussed as to the relative amount OF sick
ness presented by abstaining as compared
with non-a bstaing communities, and as to
the relative value of life in tho two COM
munities. 1t has been difficult to get at
precise conclusions OIL these subjects from
tho two circumstances, that in making
compa risons the social relationships of the
different classes are largely different, and
the returns from the registers ofdeath from
alcohol have been hitherto imperfect in
themselves, and imperfect in the interpre-
tations that have been put upon them,
but, Judging from the reports of those life
assurance companies in which there are
two classes of insured-one an abstaining
the other a Notwithstanding class-and
judging, likewise, from the returns of sick
ness and mortality of two clubs, one
abstaining the other Notwithstanding, ex-
listing in the same locality, holding the
same social status, and made up of the
same numbers, it is absolutely certain that
tie rate of mortality and the number of
days of sickness, present data largely in
favor of abstaining communities.
In summary, as to the effects of alcohol
on the health and life ofthe human species,
on which fortunately those effects have
alone been tried on a large scale, it must
be stated on physical grounds, apart alto
gether from moral considerations, that the
effects of alcohol are injurious both to mind
and body; that until it has produced an
artificial constitution alcohol does nothing
action; and that the establishment of the
alcoholic constitution is a false and unnat-
ural policy of human life-a source of
WEAKNESS, of disease, of premature old
age, and of excessive and unnecessary
mortality. Benz. Ward Richardson, in
Voice.