“IS WINE SAFER THAN WATER?"

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2753, 19 January 1882, Page 2

“IS WINE SAFER THAN WATER?"

The Rev. Henry Clay Turnbull, editor of the “ Sunday School Times,” who has recently travelled considerably in Europe, Palestine, etc., has written an article entitled “Is Wine Safer than Water?" in which he soys : “I have travelled not a little in my lifetime; I have averaged nearly 20,000 miles a year for twenty years at a time ; I have been through the length and breadth of our land from Maine to California and from Minesota to Florida. I have journeyed also in . Europe, Asia, and Africa. Yet I. never found the place, where it. was necessary forme to drink wine or brandy, nor yet where I deemed a native wine'as safe as the native water, judging from apparent effects on those who used the one or the other.

“ I have found some pretty poor water in my day—limestone water, brackish water, muddy water, sulphurous water, water well-nigh putrid with decaying vegetation. , I have drank water through,a little pocket filter from the prints of my horse’s hoofs in the travelled road after a rain storm, asf the only mode of quenching my thirst with water. I have drank water from the tangled swamps in the sea islands of the South Carolina Coast, when I had to hold my breath as I drank’ because of the water’s stench. But I was sure in all these cases that water was safer as a drink than wine would, be, and that if I added anything to it .to render it inocuous there was less ‘reason for my trying whiskey or brandy than ginger or mustard. Among all the personal risks that I have been called to take, in my life of varied experiences, I really count water-drinking the very least; and of all the personal risks I, have had occasion to note in, others, from; ray earliest recollection to' the present hour, I put wiqe - drinking among the greater. .... For myself I am afraid to venture on the moderate use of those drinks which have, by their very use, led so many to use them im moderately. I have seen that winedrinking anywhere is dangerous. I have found that water-drinking is safer than wine-drinking everywhere. That is my testimony on the wine question.” “ National Temperance Advocate."