What Beer Drinking Does

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 20, 1906

What Beer Drinking Does

THERE is a quite general impression that the drinking of beer, especially in reasonable quantities, is a comparatively harmless thing; in fact, that it may even be physically helpful. But the testimony of medical men seems to be getting more and more conclusive against such a doctrine. Here is the testimony given by Dr. S. H. Burgen, a physician of thirty-five years’ standing, twenty-eight of which were spent in the city of Toledo, Ohio. And he has had exceptional opportunities of study along this line, for, unfortunately, there is almost as much beer drunk, according to population, in some of the large cities of the United States as anywhere else in the world. Dr. Burgen says: “I think beer kills quicker than any other liquor. My attention was first called to its insidious effects when I began examining for life insurance. I passed as unusually good risks five Germans—young business men—who seemed to be in the best of health, and to have superb constitutions. In a few years I was amazed to see the whole five drop off, one after another, with what ought to have been mild and easily curable diseases. On comparing my experience with that of other physicians, I found they were all having similar luck with confirmed beer drinkers, and my practise since has heaped confirmation on confirmation.”