The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1912-04-06
DOMAIN OF TEMPERANCE.
THE MORTALITY or ALCOHOL

Edward Bunnell Phelps has made a
scientific study of the mortality of al
cohol in this country in book re-
Gently published. He has based his
figures on the year 1908, and finds
that alcohol caused $1,000 deaths, di-
rectly or indirectly, in that year. Com
menting on this, the Medical Record
says:
"The. effect of alcohol upon the NOR
tality figures of community has be-
come threadbare subject in speeches
and writings of prohibition and anti
prohibition publicists; yet, indeed, few
subjects of sociological nature deserve
more frequent mention. The trouble
has been, however, that such mention
was rarely, if ever, founded upon a real
study of the subject, but was simply
an indicator of the intolerance of the
defenders of one or the other political
or social creed.
Year 1908 Taken for Study.
There is no question that for men
interested in insurance matters the
problem of the mortality of alcohol is
one of foremost rank, and it is to the
| credit that one of the best scientific
studies of the matters that has vet an
peared comes from one of their num-
ber Mr.. Phelps, who has published
several statistical studies in similar
fields, has taken the total adult NOR
tally in the United States for the wear
1908 as the groundwork of his study.
His method was simple He OBJ
| tanned from the medical directors of
three large insurance companies their
estimate of the percentage of male
deaths between the age Of twenty and
seventy flour, directly or indirectly due
to alcohol, for each of the 106 causes
| of death listed in the census statistics
for the year. From these estimates he
figured the probable mortality from the
same cause among females, and then
made an approximation of the prob
able mortality of the entire country, in
Guiding the so-called non-registration
area, from which direct mortality sta
tlstics were not available.
In defense of this method of study
it may be granted that medical direc-
tors of insurance companies have
much broader knowledge of the gen
eral subject of mortality and the effect
upon it of certain specific causes than
even the busiest and most prominent
of practitioners of medicine. More
over, the differences in the individual
estimates were such as to lead to the
1 reasonable conclusion that a poll of,
say, several hundred physicians would
not have resulted in a nearer average
approximation than the average OBJ
tanned from the poll of these three
physicians only.
Other Estimates Made.
Before stating the results of Mr..
Phelps study, it may be of interest to
name the various estimates previously
made. G. Archibald Reid, in his work
Alcoholism: A Study in Heredity,'
places the mortality from the use of
alcohol in the United Kingdom at
about one-sixth of the total mortality
from all causes, or at more than 16
per cent! Rev. Christian F. Reisner,
in speech from the pulpit of the
Grace Methodist Episcopal church of
New York, is reported to have said
that liquor kills 440 out of every 1000
every year or A per cent!
Without going into minute analysis
of the methods used by Mr. Phelps, we
may state that, to a disinterested
mind, his use of the statistical tables
seems to be quite correct from the
standpoint both of statistical science
and of everyday methods Of arriving
at approximations. His final result is
that $4,000 deaths was the mortality
directly or indirectly due to alcohol in
this country during the year 1908, or,
in percentage figures, about per cent
of the total mortality from all causes
at all ages during that year.
This, then, forms the first scien-
tiffcally constructed approximation of
the effect of alcohol upon mortality in
this country. To the rabid prohibit
tionists it will, of course, appear to be
too low figure. To the medical men,
however, this figure is large enough to
prove the appalling waste of life due
to the excessive use of alcohol. More
over, no mere mortality statistics can
give an idea of the economic waste
due to loss of working time and of
productive efficiency among habitual
and heavy drinkers, and the daily
scenes in our courts of law, both low
and high, are but an indication of the
number of crippled and unhappy lives
which result rom the abuse of alcohol.
| BorderIand Problem.
'The whole subject of alcohol is a
borderland problem between medicine
and sociology. AS a medical man and
physician must defend the use OF alco-
hol in medicine, as drug and as a
vehicle in the preparation and admin
istration of drugs; he must work at the
task of preventing or curing chronic
alcoholism by better methods than are
at present available. AS a citizen the
physician must lend the weight OF his