FEMALE INTEMPERANCE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1910, 8 April 1880, Page 4

FEMALE INTEMPERANCE.

A lecture was delivered to the Christian Workers’ Temperance Union (Femsle), of which Lady Jane Ellice is the president, in the Yeung Women’s Christian Association Rooms, Old Cavendish street, London. Dr. Norman Kerr was the lecturer, and his subject was “ Female Intemperance, ” which he considered in regard to its prevalence, its effects, and its treatment. To effect a cure he insisted that total abstinence was a sine qua non. No alcoholic liquor must be given to the female drunkard, oven as a medicine, and she must not be allowed to approach a communion table where any fermented or other intoxicating wine was used. To restore the debilitated state of the brain and nervous centres it was desirable to employ gentian or other tonics. Parish’s chemical food, iron with calumba, or such agreeable sparkling brain and nerve tonics as the new populov beverage—Zoedone. To allay the drink crave it might be useful to order capsicum, ginger, or other aromatics in hot water, bromides of potaisium and ammonium, ipecacuanha in emetic doses, sips of iced or warm water, or fruit. For the building up anew of the whole system, bodily as well as mental, light and nourishing food was needed. Lentil and other soups were of great service, as also were hot drinks of milk, cocoa, coffee, tea, Liebig’s extract of meat, with fish, fowl, meat, and maltine, or other malt extract. With all these, sponging or bathing exerciss and cheerful society were indispensable. Dr. Kerr concluded with an appeal to Christian women to abstain—l. For their own sake. None of them, be said, could make sure she could never fall. Narcotic poisons were no respecters of persons, and laid low the good and the bad. They would enjoy better health, and have clearer heads, and would be able to do more and better work for God, by abstaining. 2. For the sake of their weaker eist is. For those who had fallen there was safety only in abstinence, and the terrible nature of Ike struggle inebriate women had to go through called for the comfort and encouragement of tne powerful example of the strong, that the fainting heart of the penitent might he cheered. A rich reward awaited Christian women who abstained, and the influence for good to many a despairing one. 3. For the sake of those who were to follow them. The saddest feature of the whole question was that drinking mothers might bequeath to their children an existence of physical and mental misery, a tendency to epilepsy and insanity, and various serious bodily eflliotions, and an hereditary predisposition to dipsomania. What a legacy to leave to a child—the legacy of a life-long struggle against an unceasing tendency to drunkenness. If they wished their children to have a fair chance of avoiding physical or moral shipwreck they must not only rear them in the practice of absti nence, but they must also launch them into existence with a body and brain free from the imprint of maternal alcoholic indulgence.