Temperance

Feilding Star, Volume X, Issue 98, 23 February 1889, Page 3

Temperance

Perhaps there is no delusion of the present time, to which many people ding with greater tenacity — in many cases in spite of the clearest decisions of science —than the belief that alcoholic drinks are not only non injurious hut even useful to the physical human luring. There are various ways to account for this loving of darkness rather than the precious light of truth. There is the power of vicious habit already beclouding and waTping the judgment, and weakening the will power, so that when conviction and a desire to do right takes hold of the mind there is no reserve of energy left to carry out the good resolutions arrived at, perhaps this is the best excuse that can he made for those who profess to believe in this delusion. Then there are those who uphold, both by example and precept, the drinking customs of the day out of ©heer indifference to the welfare of their fellows, making use of the flippant remark, when remonstrated with, •" I know how to take care of myself, let others learn to do likewise," at the same time preventing his friend taking caTe of himself by inviting him to partake of the deadly draught, and oblivious of the fact that the only difk ierence betweeu himself and the hopeless inebriate is that one is hurrying; towards ruin, and th« other is, for sooth, carefully walking iv. the same direction, both, in many instances, arriving at one awful destination. Again, a blind selfishnes, is another reason why many profess to believe m the usefulness of intoxicating drinks, whether it be the business man, who refuses to run the slightest risk of losing a patron by taking the stand his conscience would urge him to, though he readily admits the great advantage to his business if all his neighbors and customers were temperance people, or the vendor, who claims the right to make a living for himself and family, utterly regardless of the mischief he will do others in the meantime ; and of the dreadful lessons taught by experience, that the ruin he spreads around him, rebounds on himself or those near and dear to him. Now then, let the health-giving beams of science scatter once for all this baneful delusion. We confine ourselves to one of the best authorities on the subject, Dr F. R. Lees, of Leeds, who has given a lifetime on this theme, says:—" Alcohol is utterly foreign to the human body and its normal wants, never gives power like food, nor aids circulation like water, nor produces heat like oil, nor purifies like fresh air, nor helps elimination like exercise. It is an agent, the sole, perpetual, and inevitable effects of which are to arrest blood development, to retain waste matter, to irritate mucus and other tissue, to thicken normal juices, to impede digestion, to lower animal heat, to deaden nervous fil lament, to kill molecular life, and to waste, through the excitement it creates in heart and head, the grand controling forces of the nerves aud brain." Just one more at present. Sir Benjamin Brodie, surgeon to the Queen, and about two thousand other i_ eminent medical men testify that ■ft « the most perfeat health is compatible with total abstinence from all intoxicating beverages, whether in the form of ardeut spirits, or as wine, beer,, ale, porter, &c, that persons accustomed tosuch drinks may, with perfect safety, discontinue them entirely, and that total and universal abstinence trom alcoholic liquors and intoxicating bey-

I erages of all sorts would greatly contribute to the health, the prosperity, the morality, and the happiness of the human race."