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White Ribbon, Volume 6, Issue 68, 1 January 1901, Page 10

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Drinking Amongst Women. F'rom a Paper by Miss Agnes E. Slack (Hon. Secretary World's Women's Christum Temperance Vnow, and Hon. Secretary National B IE. T. A). The Fact. It is, I fear, tr«,? that drunkenness has lately increase ' amongst English women, and not only amongst those of them who are dwellers in the slums, but also amongst the well-to-do and the wealthy. Indeed in regard to this vice the women of Great Britain, of all social grades and all degrees of culture, have a bad pre-eminence amongst tbe Fmglish.speaking women of tbe world. In the United States and Canada intoxication amongst women is comparatively rare. 1° Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, the condition of women as legards this vice is far better than it is with us in Fmgland. It is true that of the total number of persons arrested for drunkenness in this country women constitute

rat;.er less than a tlmd ; but in that third few save abandoned women of the street, and those belonging to the “ submerged ” section, are included. Of the working class and the middle and upper class female drunkards very few ever see tli3 interior of a police-court. Secret drinking is their scourge; but there is a great deal of that. The Cause. In this country it is customary to attribute female intemperance almost exclusively to grocers’ licenses ; yet, in Gothenberg grocers’ licenses form a far larger proportion of all licenses than they do in England ; yet women there, and throughout Scandinavia generally, are exceedingly temperate. It is to something deeper-reaching and much less manageable than grocers’ licenses—bad as these are —that we owe this curse. Our fathers ate sour grapes, and our teeth are set on edge. Doctors. Some forty years ago the: doctors “ went clean off their heads ” on the question of the employment of alcohol as a medicine, as a cordial, as a food. Sir William Gull, in his evidence before the Lord’s Committee on Temperance, thus states the case, so far as the use of alcoholic liquor as a medicine is concerned: “ Forty years ago wine was moderately used, and so was brandy; then there came a change, owing chiefly, I think, to the School of King’s College, headed by Dr. Todd. His theory was that diseases were chiefly due to debility, and required alcohol almost universally. Formerly diseases were divided into two classes, viz, phlogistic and anti phlogistic. Dr. Todd’s theory was that all diseases were weak or antiphlogistic, and his treatment, therefore,

was always with brandy, or, at least, I should say, almost universally in cases of acute disease. Since that time there has again been a great change.” It would be difficult to exaggerate the evil effects of the teaching of Dr. Todd and his school. For a time it dominated the minds of a large proportion of the medical men of England. The medical men thus dominated were for years practically missionaries for the effusion of false beliefs as to the medicinal and dietetic, value of alcoholic liquors, as well as active promoters of habits of excessive drinking. They planted false beliefs in people’s minds and diseased appetites in their bodies. Their intentions were honest enough. What they did was what they believed to be for the best, hut, I insist, so far as their actual influence on the beliefs and health of the people are concerned, they might just as well have been honoured and trusted missionaries for the establishment and development of habits of intoxication amongst the people. From day to day, from week to week, year in and year out, they went trom house to house on their pernicious mission The majority of their victims were women and girls, who, much more than men anil boys, are subject to “ diseases of debility,” which, according to the prevailing doctrine, “ required alcohol almost universally.” When a young woman, or, indeed, a woman of any age, felt “ low ” or “ out of sorts,” some kind of alcoholic liquor was prescribed. The result, of course, was that tippling, in addition to that ordered, became very much commoner In fact, to the teaching and practice of Dr. Todd and his school, far more than to anything else, the intemperance of the women of this country —which at present is so much commented upon and deplored is attributable. It is hardly needful to

say that during all this period many individual medical men aided the temperance reformation with wisdom and energy, and did so at great self-sacrifice. And now, in daily increasing numbers, they are stepping out to the front as the most trusted and capable leaders of ttie people in the fight against what Sir Andrew Clark stigmatised as “ the enemy of the race.” But it is just, and it is necessary, that those who were responsible for the maintenance of the curse of the liquor traffic, for so long a period and in such strength, should be hel i responsible for the immeasurable evil which they have caused.