TESTIMONY OF LEADING JOURNALS. 157 record in the cause of humanity together. March 2, 1884, the Tribune says in an editorial on the liquor traffic, with a force and moral elevation seldom excelled in human composition: It is impossible to examine any subject connected with the progress, the civilization, the physical well-being, the religious condition of the masses, without encountering this monstrous evil. It lies at the center of all political and social mischief. It paralyzes energies in every direction. It neutralizes educational agencies. It silences the voice of religion. It baffles penal reform. It obstructs political reform. . . . . There is needed something of that sacred fire which kindled into inextinguishable heat the zeal of the abolitionists, and which compelled the abandonment of human slavery to rouse the national indignation and abhorrence against this very much greater evil. Resuming the thread of Dr. Rembaugh's pamphlet: Our school children should be early taught the chemical and physiological effects of alcohol. Dr. Channing, "A people should be guarded against temptation to unlawful pleasures by furnishing the means of innocent ones, such as produce a cheerful frame of mind." Mr. J. A. Partridge asks "why the honest working man should carry a drink-made pauper on his back as he now does." "I would appeal to the myriads of the dead, dead through drink, whose history is still vocal with the anguish and despair that found no utterance from the living lips." With a fact knotted into the lash, Dr. Rembaugh gives a mighty parting stroke to the blood-streaming back of the excoriated traffic, and closes thus: "One million people depend on the beer traffic for support in this country. In 1840 four gallons of liquor were consumed for every man, woman and child in America; in 1883 the amount has increased from four gallons to twelve." Nothing is so terrible to the traffic as the publication of the truth. As we have already seen, this increase of quantity is attended with diminution of intensity, but of pure alcohol we now consume more per capita than in 1840. The poisonous effect of a given quantity of alcohol is not diminished by its administration through a large mass of fluid, and the aggregate evil was never greater among us than now. Dr. William Pepper of the University of Pennsylvania, author of the great work on Medical Practice, and whose conceded prominence in the profession gives a special significance to whatever he may say, sends the following brief, but decided and invaluable communication. I think it one of the most encouraging indications of the time that the men who are making the medical history of to-day, and whose names are to survive to coming generations, are more and more espousing the cause of man against alcohol. Commonly one hears the question put in this form: Is Alcohol a food or a poison? It is neither the one nor the other. It is not a food in the common and correct acceptation of the term, though it has points of resemblance with foods. It is not strictly speaking a poison, though it often produces highly-poisonous effects. It is to be regarded as a medicine or a drug, and belongs to the same class with Opium, Indian Hemp, Tobacco and some analogous substances. Nearly all healthy persons can with impunity take occasionally a small amount of dilute alcohol. With some individuals, however, even the smallest quantity disagrees and disorders digestion; on the other hand a very small proportion of individuals seem able to take large amounts regularly for many years without damage. But I do not doubt that this impunity is more apparent than real, and that nearly all such persons are slowly but surely injured by the habit. One of the worst features of the action of alcohol in a large majority of young persons is that, though taken in small amount and even in the form of light wines or beer, its first agreeable effect is followed by a feeling of lassitude and depression, readily mistaken for debility, and suggesting a repetition of the stimulant. But these unpleasant feelings are the direct result of the presence in the blood and tissues of poisonous matters, coming from the imperfect digestion of the alcohol, or of food with whose complete assimilation the dose of alcohol has interfered. Here evidently is a fruitful source of functional disorder; and still more is it a source of gradually-increasing use, ending in actual excess, with its inseparable physical and moral degradation. It is impossible to exclude from our consideration this enslaving tendency which separates alcohol so widely from all ordinary articles of diet, and relegates it to a special class of drugs. I am indeed satisfied that all persons in good health are better without alcohol in any form or in any amount, as a regular beverage. If this is true of dilute alcohol, by which I mean light wines or beer or greatly-diluted spirit, it may be asserted without hesitation that all stronger forms of alcohol capable of causing positive local stimulation or irritation of the stomach should be regarded purely as drugs, and DR. PEPPER'S LETTER. 159 be used exclusively under medical advice. Their habitual use by healthy persons is highly injurious and involves the risk of developing serious disease. It is, however, impossible to deny the great value of alcohol even in large amounts during critical stages of some acute diseases. And I can speak with confidence of the beneficial effects, in suitable cases as determined by a physician, of small amounts of dilute spirit, or of generous wine, taken as a stimulant by weak and elderly persons. While, however, we admit the therapeutic value of alcohol in these and other suitable cases, it is clear to me that every medical man should prescribe it with a distinct recognition in each individual case of the special danger attaching to its habitual use. WILLIAM PEPPER. This long chapter must close. But there is no one thing more important to the temperance reform than that the mediical profession should set its face firmly-like a flint, against the use of alcoholic beverages, and should restrain so far as possible the administration of this dangerous drug in disease. I believe that the grave degree of responsibility for the prevalence of intemperance, which attaches to those who pursue this high calling by reason of the deserved and almost universal confidence reposed in them by the people, is more and more realized; and that as the teachings of Dr. Davis and Dr. Richardson are studied, and more and more prevail, "the day of our redemption draweth nigh.” CHAPTER IX. ALCOHOL IS PAUPERISM AND CRIME. The Two Great Burdens of Society-The Difference and the Likeness PA AUPERISM and crime are the two great burdens of society. Nearly every other form of taxation upon the income or productive force of the people, whether imposed by the state or submitted to voluntarily from motives of charity or otherwise, is in the nature of an investment made with a view of affirmative beneficial returns. Even money paid for the relief of the sick, anticipates their restoration to health and profitable life. But money paid to a pauper, simply because he is a pauper, too poor to live from his own exertions, has in view his individual relief from suffering-not any pecuniary good to those who support him. Better for society that he be removed-he is a mere cumberer of the ground. Relief which gives opportunity for labor and a return for aid received, is but the discharge of the great debt of society to afford every human being the opportunity for honest toil, and I do not consider that in any sense charity. I refer to the support of pauperism pure and simple. In the case of crime, its detection and punishment, the whole is a dead loss and burden placed upon honesty and good citizenship; indispensable, to be sure, for protection and defense of society, but still the whole is an expenditure which endeavors not to relieve the original injury, but to prevent the infliction of like losses in future. Whatever has been done is without remedy, even when a money penalty is exacted, for then the loss is only shifted from the victim or the State |