Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 23.

Health and Temperance.

POINTS FOR PROHIBITION.

THE physical effects of the use of intoxicants are of such a character as to lessen the capacity to labor and the will to labor, and, therefore, the individual power to contribute to the general prosperity. Every person who consumes more than he is able to supply is a hindrance and a burden on society. Idiocy, insanity, drunkenness, disease, incapacitate men for the serious business of life. That which tends to produce or increase these afflictions is at war with society and the State. Drunkenness contributes to the increase both of idiocy and insanity as well as of other diseases. Delirium tremens is a form of temporary insanity produced directly by the excessive and habitual use of alcoholic beverages. There is an abundance of medical testimony showing that drunkenness is a prolific cause of insanity and idiocy.

Dr. E. T. Wilkins, Commissioner in Lunacy for California, says (1872) that intemperance is a far mightier cause of mental diseases than all other causes combined. Dr. Lewis D. Mason states (1883) that in a study of 600 cases of inebriety treated at the Inebriate Asylum at Fort Hamilton, N. Y., he found that 166 had attacks of alcoholic mania. Dr. Baer, of Berlin, says that in Germany the census report of 1871 shows that the number of the insane is largest wherever the consumption of alcohol is the greatest. Dr. Finkleburg, of the Russian Public Health Commission, says alcoholic liquors cause two-fifths of all the insanity in Russia. Another European physician, Dr. Lunier, estimates that fifty per cent. of all the idiots and imbeciles in the large cities of Europe are the offspring of notorious drunkards. Dr. T. S. Clouston, superintendent of the largest insane asylum in Scotland, says in a lecture to the students of Edinburgh University (1883):—

"We know as a statistical fact that from fifteen to twenty per cent. of the actual insanity of the country is produced by the excessive use of alcohol. . . . For every one of the really insane there are no doubt a large number who have become partially affected in mind."

Earl Shaftesbury, who was connected with the British Lunacy Commission over fifty years, stated (1877) in the House of Commons that "fully six-tenths of all the cases of insanity to be found in these realms and in America arise from no other cause than intemperance."—Independent.