The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1891-09-04
TEMPERANCE NOTES.
TEMPERANCE AND HEALTH.
Valuable Testimony of Leading Physicians
and Chemists.


it may be. They are not always the
deliberate expression of private judg-
ment or public opinion and do not al
ways formulate the best methods of
dealing with great themes. But they
do give expression to the opinions of
expressive men and women, some of
whom have great thoughts and great
experience, and others of whom have
an individuality, an originality, or
radicalism that is worth being thrown
into the great cauldron of the press to
be boiled so as to be evaporated, subli-
mated or exploded. Just now the
temperance conventions are on hand,
and well they may be. Besides that at
Saratoga, there are unusual notices of
other like gatherings, and the subject
is being more discussed by doctors,
divines and statesmen than ever before
Men like Chauncy Depew cannot pass
it over when they speak of the country
and its perils. In his grand speech at
Woodstock, he says:
I'VE have the peril of the saloon;
but we will overcome it. The saloon
destroys eighty thousand youths year.
| IL StDNlS tllCHl W IL grave,
but we will control it. Because we
have not yet found the way is simply
an incentive to the genius of the
American people, for the government
to find the way"
AS it was once with slavery the way
is dark but the nation that is rid of the
first will not cease pleading with God
and for man until works meet for re-
pentance appear. A progress is made
when we come to realize that life itself
with all it means for health, for home,
for country, is in peril.
The individual man has need as never
before to inquire what alcohol does
with the body; the head of the home as
to what it does with his family, and
the statesmen what it does with the
mere industrial and manual ability of
its people. If only it can be known
how far it is destructive force, the
law of self-preservation will assert it.
self. The great voice of the nation
will be heard saying we cannot give
over our people 10 self destruction.
There has for a good while been the
ADM. zion that the drunkard is out of
health, that he is factor of invalidity
for himself and for postcrity: but it is
of later years that the facts in evidence
have accumulated; that moderate
drinking, also. is the bane of health.
In saying this, we are at once con-
fronted with the statement that Mr.. A,
and Mr. b, hearty old men, have al
ways used their wine, just as when
alcohol is shown to be foOdleSs, we are
pointed to this or that old topper Who
seems to have lived and thrived on the
bottle. Neither in the one case or the
other does this prove anything, since
we need to know what has happened
to ten thousand, and not what has hap
pened to few among the ten thou
sand.
There are favors and juices and
ethereal oils and a slight appetiZinG
and pleasure giving effect from alcohol
thus combined which will ever lead to
its use, in spite of the general fact that
| alcohol is injurious. That is no reason
why the world should not know how
threatening to health always, and in
| furious generally, alcoholic liquors are
even in so-called moderation. The testi-
monies ofsuch physicians as Dickinson,
Harley, Draper and host of others who
study medicines and foods therapeutic
ally, must be allowed to have their
full weight. Outside all questions of
home and of erals, the physical harm
being done by beer is appalling. Even
Germany has been compelled to raise
its voice against it. Binz, who is an
advocate for alcohol as an economic
factor in sickness, expresses his pro-
found conviction of the terrible evil
it is infiicting on the health
of the nation. There is no one com
mon error of diet that is 50 pronounced
in its results. Out from amid other in
dulgences it can be singled by the
symptoms in diseases and by organic
changes. The dead room or the post
mortem tells many tale of a short
encd or embarrassed life which has
never been told by a single lapse into
INVESTIGATION or by what has been re-
cognized as an excess. II is true that
there are laws of adjustment, and that
a certain degree of liberation is estab-
liShed il many cases. But it is also
true thai this process often gives in
ternal without external marks. A jury
of medical men to-day cannot be found
who will not say that the healthy man
is better off without alcohol than with
it. If so, this at once puts it in the
category of medicines. AS such it
should be the subject for prescription
under the most rigid restrictions.
The medical profession is now called
upon to put itself definitely on the side
OF restraint as never before. We are
glad that Prof. w. r. Davis has initia-
ted movement for a national medical
temperance organization which among
other things will, from a professional
as well as ethical standpoint, urge the
physicians to be more circumspect and
technical in advising the use of fer
mented or distilled liquors as medi-
cines, and more pronounced in their
utterances in disapproval of beer
drenchings and other forms of popular
drinking If only for the body we
plead, the profession must come to the
front in this behalf The appeal ought
to be especially strong, since no class
sees more of evil results in the hos
! pitfalls, the infirmaries and the tene-
ments of the poor. Have we not as
! physicians far more power to let in de-
Tense of bodies and so aid those who