Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1899-01-13
TEMPERANCE COLUMN
CONDUCTED BY THE ADDISON
COUNTY |. o. G. T.

|
COUNTY |. o. G. T.
Expert Testimony on Alcoholic Liquors
Article Third.
In the second article we heard from
France; in this one let us hear from
Germany. To us Germany is the land
of great scholars and of rivers of beer,
but the beer In no way helps the great
scholars. There Is an antagonlsm be-
tween them. Emmanuel Kant, one of
the great German philosophers, said,
"Beer Is very Injurious to health and
destructive to life." Bismarck said,
Beer makes stupid, lazy and lmpotent."
One of the professors in the university
of Basic, Switzerland, is DR.. G. Bunge.
His chair is that of physiological chem
istry. He is also a doctor of medicines
and scientist of great ability, recog
nized in Switzerland, Germany and
other countries. His native language is
German. He has had large experience
with students. When a student at the
university he was corps-student,
that is, he belonged to one Of those as
socations which are famous for their
drinking excuses. He can speak about
Intoxicating liquors from experience and
also as a scientist. In an address on
1.-THE Alcohol Problem" he pays his
respects to beer thus: "Of all alcoholic
drinks, beer is the very worst" He
gives this as point needing emphasis.
One of its evils is the ease with which
the habit of beer drinking is formed.
Beer is the most pernicious of all al
coholc drinks, because no other is so
seductive. All classes of people regard
it a disgrace to drink whisky, but the
intellectual elite of our people glory in
immoderate beer drinking. No
Other drink so greatly leads to intern.
perance." He makes the indictment
against beer that it destroys the appetite
for normal food more quickly than any
other alcoholic drink. Beer deadens
the consciousness. 1t makes men silly
and maudlin. Beer robs men of their
manhood and sends them to the dogs.
In speaking of the Germans in Amer
lea he says; at is well known that the
German in America, in spite of all his
German virtues, is lost among the other
nationalities chiefly because he cannot
be separated from his beer mug. In the
pPaceable rivalry of the nations, that
race will be ruthlessly trampled under
foot which will not obstain from alec
hol." DR.. j. ii. w. Stuckenberg, ma
tive German and great scholar, who is
at Cambridge, Mass, commenting on
these words of DR.. Bunge says: ut is
notorious that the Germans in America
do not occupy the place which their in
dustry and talent and education and
numbers warrant. Whoever knows the
facts in the case also knows that DR..
Bunge has given one of the causes
Munich is the capital of Bavaria, an
important province of South Germany,
and the great beer center of the world.
Bavarian beer is one of the most famous
of beers, if not the most. On March %,
1894, Or. Prendel delivered lecture be-
fore the Anthropological society of
Munich. In the opening of his lecture
he describes the present era as the al
coholic period of man, because drunken
ness had never at any previous age been
so prevalent as now. His lecture con-
tains the following language: Gal.
cohol, which apparently brings so much
pleasure to its partaker, acts as poison,
if even consumed in small doses daily,
by means of its cumulative action, as
strikingly shown here in Munich, the
center of beer consumption, by the fire.
quent sudden cases of death of apparent
ly healthy men. Fatty, enfeebled
hearts, shriveled kidneys, fatty or
hardened livers, changes in the texture
of blood vessels, which cause paralytic
strokes and softenings of the brain by
bursting In the brain, chronic catarrhs
of the stomach and bronchial tubes, etc,
trembling of the limbs, alterations and
diseases of the mental faculties, delirum
tremens, etc,-these are some Of the con-
sequences of an immoderate drinking of
alcoholic stimulants. Professor DR.. Bal
linger of this city has in the same man
ner proved the prevalence of various
diseases of definite nature of the inter-
nal organs caused by the universal
drinking of beer. A normal heart or
kidney is the exception only here in
Munich. This state of affairs also in
lures the progeny in a most serious
manner. DR.. Demme found that of the
children of non.drinkers 50 per cent
were sound, while of those of drinkers
only II per cent were sound. 4.
Although large quantities of beverages
were drunk formerly, still only in the
last century, and more especially only in
the last decades, in which the brewers
art was perfected, drinking has become
universal. 1t has spread everywhere
and increased to frightful, most
alarming extent. 1t has been introduced
even into country communities and the
only inevitable consequence will be the
thorough degeneration of the human
race, if this evil is not checked before it
is too late. Although it is contended
that beer contains less alcohol than