The Jimplecute. (Jefferson, Tex.) 18??-1907, 1906-08-04
INTEMPERANCE AND LUNAcY

While the statistics presented in the
fifty-ninth report of the commissioners
of lunacy are quite complicated, and
contain an immense amount of bewil-
dering detail, they convey very posi-
lively the conclusion that there is di-
rect connection between intemperance
and mental alteration. 0verwork and
worry account in small part for insan-
ity, but the great outstanding fact is
that alcohol is brain poison. Alcohol,
intemperance, insanity, crime--such is
the tragic process of degenera ton. The
districts freest from these cumulative
evils are Dorset, Devon. the Isle of
Wright, the Isle of Man, and North
Wales. The BLACKLIST sections on the
shaded map of inebriety are Southwest
Wales, Northumberland, Durham,
Yorkshire. Lancashire and Staffordshire
Some surprise is felt at the declaration
that London is not distinguished for
Grimm, intemperance and insanity as
sadly as some other cities, Density of
population appears to have little to do
with the increase of insanity. The num-
Der of persons known to be under care
in asylums, hospitals, etc., in England
and Wales on January L, 1905, was 49,
S29. composed of 3d. 1s9 male and GA, $50
female patients, being $3.50 in excess of
the total number recorded in 1904. The
increase in late years is evidently in a
diminishing ratio.
Recent statistics show that alcohol.
ism is making alarming ravages in
france, as well as in Switzerland. In
the year 1904 a population or 3S, $50, 1856
inhabitants consumed in LIQUIDS paving
a tax of 4O,354,913 hectolitres of wine,
5 ,407 1882 of cider, and l, 52l 1884 of alco-
hol Tor distilled liduor averaging over
40 per cent of pure alcohol.) and 1921
hectolitres of liqueurs, such as absinthe
and the like. This is equivalent to
yearly consumptive by every French
man, woman or child of more than
twenty-fi five gallons of American wine.
nearly eight gallons of cider, one gallon
of distilled alcohol, and half pint of
liqueurs. Entire social circles have in
some provinces been alcoholized-as in
certain sections of Normandy, where
the consumption of alcohol reaches
nearly five gallons head yearly. be-
sides fifty gallons of hard cider. Under
the empire and until 1874 there was in
France license in the American sense,
but the demogogues of the republic have
done away with all restrictions, with
the exception of commercial tax, hop
ing thus to secure control of the cleo
tons which are decided lover the zinc,"
that is, over the bars, which in France
are covered with zinc. The Siegfried
bill, which proposed to limit the num-
Der of liquor sellers by system of
natural decrease, and to reduce the
number of places where distilled liquors
should be sold from one for every
eighty-three souls in France to one in
three hundred inhabitants, has been de-
feated. The deplorable ravages of this
unmittgated alcoholism in France fall
chiefly on two classes of the populace--
the peasants in certain sections and the
workmen universally, This physical
momentum which alcoholism is thus
acquiring in the population makes the
enacting of remedial or preventive leg.
islation more difficult with the passing
years, and all bodies ill for the future of
the French epublic.-London Letter
in lions Herald.