A FAMILY TRAGEDY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Nov 8, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 45.

[The following is a true tale of a recent happening in an American city. It is a good story to relate to patients and legislators in the campaign against nostrums and against adulterated foods and drugs.]

A RESPECTED clergyman fell ill, and the family physician was called. After examining the patient carefully, the doctor asked for a private interview with the patient's adult son.

"Harry," said the doctor, "do you know what is the matter with your father?"

"No. We sent for you to tell us that."

"Well," the physician said, "I am sorry to tell you that your father undoubtedly is suffering from chronic alcoholism."

"Chronic alcoholism! Why, that's ridiculous! Father never drank a drop of liquor in his life, and we know all there is to know about his habits."

"Well, my boy, it's chronic alcoholism, nevertheless, and at this present moment your father is drunk. How has his health been recently? Has he been taking any medicine?"

"Why, for some time, six months I should say, father has often complained of feeling unusually tired. A few months ago a friend of his recommended to him [mentioning a much-advertised remedy], assuring him that it would build him up. Since then he has taken many bottles of it, and I am quite sure that he has taken nothing else."

In this connection it might be added that a very prominent anti-saloon worker, a clergyman, lately said that in shame he was compelled to admit that he had run across indubitable proof that there are ministers of the gospel who receive pecuniary commissions from the makers of alcoholic nostrums whose wares they recommend! Than this there can be no worse form of graft. The time is here for the organized profession to join hands with all other workers and organizations, whether anti-saloon leagues, temperance unions, or courageous anti-nostrum publications, to set a definite limit to the progress of respectable and innocent intemperance.

—Journal of American Medical Association.