Self-Slaughter

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 14, 1907

A NEW form of suicide, called by the doctor “automatic poisoning,” is reported in the London Globe of September 23. A carman was admitted to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital on September 2 with a fractured ankle. The fracture was set, and he appeared to be getting better, but on the seventeenth he was found to be in a comatose condition, and died shortly after. At the inquest it was stated by the house surgeon that “death was due to slow poisoning; deceased had been automatically poisoned. He had been such a heavy drinker that when he had the accident and had to be still, the liver refused to do its ordinary duties, and the poison accumulating, he actually poisoned himself automatically.”

The victim perhaps thought that in his arduous work he needed the strong drink, but he was actually committing slow suicide, fatally undermining his health. This was made evident when the accident tested his physical condition. The case simply indicates what every consumer of alcohol is in some degree doing to himself.—Present Truth.