Scientific Temperance.

White Ribbon, Volume 7, Issue 74, 1 July 1901, Page 10

Scientific Temperance.

The popular idea, once held also by the majority of medical men, to the detriment of their patients, that alcohol acts upon the human body as a food, as a warming agent and a stimulant, has long since been proved false by the investigation of such eminent experimenters as Dr. Benjamin Richardson and others. As one error is exposed, however, the advocates for the use of alcoholic beverages advance others to be refuted. Thus many claim, upon the assertion of physicians too, that tissues saturated with spirituous liquor are best able to resist the onslaughts of disease-producing germs: and it is a dinmon practice to give porter and ether alcohol-containing drinks to the expectant mother, with the idea that she is then better able to nourish her 1

child and to bring into the world offspring highly capable of resisting disease A series of experiments recently entered upon have emphatically disproved all such claims. (Here follow a series of scientific experiments which were made with alcohol upon dogs ana rabbits, with an exact description of results.)

It was demonstrated that alcohol perceptibly lowers the vitality of the animal tissues, and, if long continued, actually changes the structure of the organs, predisposing to the implantation of various physical disorders. Science and experience both agree in asserting that alcohol in any form is deleterious to the animal body. It starves, chills, and depresses the systern, so weakening the tissuesthat they become an easy prey to the agencies of disease and death. Herald of Health .

Field Marshal Earl Roberts has become a patron of the United Kingdom Railway Temperance Union.

“ Muny of the ills o’er which men grieve, Acd still more women, cotne from not em ploying Some hours to make the remnant worth en joying.