STIMULANTS IN AMERICA.

Otago Witness, Issue 953, 25 April 1889, Page 32

STIMULANTS IN AMERICA.

With Americans the question of stimulants is very strictly national. Our peculiar climate and our stimulating methods of life j have created conditions quite unlike those of moist England and mid-Europe. Dr Beard has shown by many illustrations that in the northern range of States the conditions are such that tobacco and coffee, as well as alcoholic drinks, are far more injurious than in the Southern, and as a very general rule ought to be dispensed with. Coffee is a produot of warm climes, and in hot climates maybe used with great freedom. But the American temperament in our Northern States has now become a very sensitive temperament and will not endure stimulating at all. Opium does not a tithe of the harm J in Oriental countries that it does when used by our people. Alcoholic drinks produce with us very rapidly what is called " alcoholism," or . degeneracy of the brain. Their use is promptly followed by dyspepsia, neuralgia, epilepsy, paralysis, deliriums, and insanity. In other words, Americans are specially susceptible to alcoholic ruin. It does make some difference whether we are of recent foreign extraction, but- German phlegm and English pluck of constitution rapidly get Americanised under our -climate and habits of driving business. ' Our nervous system is undergoing a weakening and is in danger of a total break-down. ' Our remedy is not < alcohol or even> milder stimulants, or narcotics, but it is a reversal of those habits that have degenerated us. A very conservative writer on the subject says : ""it is the silent destruction of the nervous system ; the slow poisoning of the great centres of thought; it is the transmission by inheritance of thfi evil from parent to child from generation' to generation, even more, perhaps, than the groans of the widows, the cry of the murdered man, or the tears of the orphan, that has made the temperance reform a necessity." It is a mistake to suppose it is the adulterations of liquors that do the mischief; these adulterations are either harmless, or in such small quantities as to do no great harm ; the evil is in the direct effect of intoxicants on the nervous system. Foreigners coming to our shores rarely bring a prejudice against any form of the drink habit. They do, however, find it much easier to obtain the worst form of liquors, and, as a rule, become victims of the saloon. What they need to appreciate is the fket that instead of more and freer use of stimulants in America, they must use less, and with greater discretion. No stock breaks down so rapidly as the sturdy Irish in this country. It does not hold its own beyond three generations unless abstemious. The farms of New England and the Central States fell into the hands of Celts before the middle of our century ; but they are already fast passing into the hands of Germans and Italians. . . A very prominent' New York physician sains up'bi* experience in these sentences: " The ninubur of those in this country who fiad that they can not use tobacco in any form without injury appears to be continually iriciisasihg." ' "As to opium, I would xatier risk my life in jumping off Niagara faila* than by forming the habit of opium-

I with eating." «• Coffee is getting out of favour many of our people, because they find that they Cannot Use it.*' " Tea is used too freely by many, and too strong by nearly all." '" To work hard with the brain is possible only without any' stimulants and narcotics —and attain longevity." This is bur present problem : Not to convert Americans to temperance, but those of foreign blood. Nearly every shipload of immigrants is a cargo of drunkards.— M, MauKiCE, M.D., in the , St. Louis Globe Democrat.