Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1910-07-29
The Beer Octopus.

Years ago Victor Hugo in one of
his greatest works thrilled the civil
lied world with a vivid, intense de-
scription of the fight of a sailor with
a hitherto little known marine mon
ster, the octopus or devil fish. These
monsters have great, bag-like bodies
of soft, fiabby material, from which
extended enormously long arms fur
nished with suckers. They have
large, fearsome, staring eyes to pene-
trate the dark depths of the waters,
and their rope-like tenacles wind
around their victims, which are held
fast by the suckers until they are
devoured by the monster. Many of
them squirt out an ink-like liquid
which clouds the water and helps to
prevent the escape of their victims.
The fight described by Victor Hugo
had a thrill and terror not to be
found in any other species of COM
bat. With a tiger, lion or other wild
animal a battle is sharp, intense,
natural, but far less terrible than one
with a cold, clammy, Shiny, remorse-
less fiend that does not strike or bite,
but simply envelopes his victim in
his noisome folds and brushes and
sucks the life out of him. OF such
nature is the fight to-day for the
morals and health of the country
against the terrible beer octopus,
which is undermining the manhood
of Germany, destroying its physical
fiber and it's moral character, and
unless checked will, in the opinion
of the best thinking Germans, utter
ly destroy the country. A battle
with whiskey is like a fight with
lion or a tiger There is something
thrilling, exciting, inspiring about it,
even though it ends in the death of
its victim. Not so a battle with the
remOrseless, unshakable, Overpower-
ing, Shiny monster beer. 1t paralyzes,
less prey.
Where whiskey burns out man in
year or two beer simply rots him
in every fiber and tissue through a
long period of physical and mental
deterioration.
Where whiskey may for a time
stimulate a man from some weak
ness or inspire him to some unusual
exertion, beer beclouds, deadens,
dulls and decays him.
Where whiskey may possibly pre-
serve bodily tissue beers putrefes it.
For the truth Of this one need only
look around among his acquaint-
ances and see men who have sur
vived whiskey drinking possibly for
fifty years, where he cannot find one
who has outlived continuous and
heavy beer drinking a decade. The
whole medical fraternity in Great
Britain, France, the United States,
and even Germany, testify that far
the most dangerous patient that can
come under their care is one who
has been in the habit of drinking
considerable quantities of beer.
Every one of them will bear willing
testimony that even under mild at
tacks of such customary diseases as
pneumonia and fever their patients
at the moment when any other man
would begin to recover, slip through
their hands with the suddenness and
completeness of blowing out a can
die. Large-limbed, full-bodied, ap
parently robust men who have been
drinking beer will sink under light
attack of disease that a child slolld
have easily survived.
The facilitating effect upon the
lower animals is quite as marked. A
few years ago a yellow illustrated
paper made quite sensation by CIV
ing actual photographs of COWS and
hogs which were fed upon brewery
Stops. The COWS lost their tails and
horns, most of their hair, and suffer
ed other diseases, and the hogs were
similarly affected.
Probably the same evils exist to-
day, and are responsible for a large
proportion of the death rate in the
cities where the people drink the
milk from these cows and eat their
flesh. If the medical history of
every man, woman and child who is
carried to the grave could be written
it would be found that instead of dy-
ing from pneumonia, heart disease,
Bright's disease, diabetes, fever, liv-
er troubles or neurasthenia, the real
cause was beer drinking either by the
victims themselves or by the fathers
and mothers Of the victims. The lit
tie children died from the vitiated
milk or the polluted meats that had
been fed them.