WINE-DRINKING FRANCE

Southern Cross, Volume 7, Issue 36, 2 December 1899, Page 2

WINE-DRINKING FRANCE

People are ready to talk of ‘alcoholism’ for a day orstwo, and then think no more of it, but its terrible flood does not pursue its ravages only in a hidden and silent way ; from time to time some statis tical report surprises us, and we are obliged to face the evil which it is accomplishing. According to the official figures, the Department ot the Seine contained in 1867, ,7,805 lunatics ; in 1896 there were 21,700 ; in thirty years the number of insane persons in Paris and its suburbs had tripled. To what must we attribute this terrible increase ? No doubt, there are several causes, but medical men say that the steadily increasing habit of alcoholism is the most fruitful one. Last year, at Ville Evrard, out of 100 new patients, twenty-two were there through alcoholism —that is to say, nearly 25 per cent. We must not imagine that this increase of lunatics is peculiar to the neighbourhood of Paris ; it is the same in Picardy, in Normandy, in Bretagne, and in the centre of France ; even in the South, which seemed to have until recently, the same phenomenon is recorded. Almost all the departments are complaining of the insufficiency of the asylums. Alcoholism —this is the enemy. It is the scourge of destruction par excellence, which sweeps away, those races who do not know how to defend themselves against it.—Le Temps. [Published by arrangement < with the Southland Prohibition League .]