ALCOHOLISM "REFINED" CAUSES DEATH.
SOME months ago attention was called to the verdict of a coroner's jury concerning the death of a man in Pennsylvania, whose brain was found to have been "pickled" by alcohol. This man had been a hard drinker. Now comes a coroner's jury in New York with the announcement that a man of so-called extremely temperate habits has died of "refined alcoholism." He had never been intoxicated in his life, and his only indulgence in liquor consisted in a moderate drink of whisky in the morning and another before he retired at night. This habit he had pursued for thirty years, and it was regarded by those who had known him as impossible that his death could have been due to alcoholism. Nevertheless, it was demonstrated by the autopsy that the man had been suffering from chronic meningitis, softening of the brain, and other maladies attributable to whisky, hence the coroner's verdict was that the gentleman's death had been due to "refined alcoholism."—Union Signal. Commenting on this case, the Chicago Tribune says:— May there not be a warning in this case that is worth heeding? It is, perhaps, no exaggeration to say that three men out of every ten in the great cities of this country are indulging in "refined alcoholism." They are not sots or topers. They would, if questioned, claim to be temperate. But they take a drink or two of whisky or of some other alcoholic beverage every day, supposing that they are as free from the danger which besets the drunkard as if they were total abstainers. It is true that comparatively few of these devotees of "refined alcoholism" die with delirium tremens or of softening of the brain, but it may be no more than reasonable to suppose that the maladies to which they fall victims are often aggravated by, if they are not primarily due, to "the occasional drink."