TRUE TEMPERANCE TEACHING AND PRACTICE
By Kate Lindsay
ALCOHOL, tea, coffee, tobacco, and all other narcotics are poisons. The structures of the body can extract no nourishment from these substances. They furnish no heat or energy; and instead of stimulating the body to healthy action, they damage the structure, and impede the function or working powers, of every organ. From the misuse of proper foods and drinks, poisons are also made inside the body, and these often do the same work that is done by poisons formed outside. Alcohol is the result of the chemical changes due to fermentation of starchy foods and sugar. When these same foods spoil in the digestive tract, they generate poisons in the stomach and bowels, which are as detrimental to the body as is either alcohol or tobacco. Before the infant is three months old, it practically has no saliva, and even after that, during the first year of life, the digestive power of its saliva is very feeble. Nature recognizes this fact, so the natural infant food contains the carbohydrates in the form of sugar of milk, which requires very little digestive change to fit it for absorption. Knowing this to be true, it is a violation of the temperance pledge to give the young babe starchy food unless it has been predigested, or changed into a more soluble form. When simply boiled in the form of gruel or porridge, it will spoil in the stomach of the young babe, and will form gas and poisonous fluids, which will be carried to the blood by the absorbents. In the blood it is taken to every part of the body, and every organ is poisoned, and its structures are damaged, the same as if the food had been changed into poison outside the body. It does not matter how the food is destroyed by a decaying process, or whether the poisons are made outside the body or inside the alimentary canal. When they find their way into the circulation, the result will be the same. What mother but has seen some little one writhing in convulsions as the result of spoiling food in the stomach or bowels, and how often have the convulsions been relieved when the stomach was freed from its load of spoiling food. The ability of every mother to nourish her babe with perfect natural food, is the best temperance safeguard against the tendency to form alcoholic or narcotic habits in the young. When the nerves and other structures of the body are properly fed, and free from poisons, they are satisfied, and do not demand any stimulant or narcotic to render them unconscious of the discomfort that comes from the imperfect, damaged structures of nerves that have been injured by coming in contact with poisons. The little one has no choice in the matter of its surroundings, or as to what it will eat or drink. It must depend wholly on what others do for it in this matter. To keep the temperance pledge, people must study to know when and what to eat for strength, so that they may neither surfeit themselves nor compel their children to do so. If it is incumbent upon every one to love his neighbor as himself, then surely it is just as much a violation of the temperance pledge to compel the helpless child to take food or drink that will damage its body, as to take poisons one's self. There is room for much thought on this important subject of true temperance teaching and practice, and its relation to the future character of the child as well as to its physical development. Prove all things in this matter, and hold fast that which is good.