Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why: What Medical Writers SayAllen, Martha Meir
Science
Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why: What Medical Writers Say
Allen, Martha Meir
Alcohol -- Physiological effect; Temperance
"In Albany, N. Y., the same year, cholera carried off 366
persons above sixteen years of age, all but four of whom
belonged to the drinking classes. Packer, Prentice & Co., large
furriers in Albany, employed 400 persons, none of whom used
ardent spirits, and there were only two cases of cholera among
them. Mr. Delevan, a contractor, said: 'I was engaged at the
time in erecting a large block of buildings. The laborers were
much alarmed, and were on the point of abandoning the work. They
were advised to stay and give up strong drink. They all
remained, and all quit the use of strong drink except one, and
he fell a victim to the disease.' He says also: 'I had a gang of
diggers in a clay bank, to whom the same proposition was made;
they all agreed to it, and not one died. On the opposite side of
the same clay bank were other diggers who continued their
regular rations of whisky, and one third of them died.'
"In New York City there were 204 cases in the park, only six of
whom were temperate, and these recovered, while 122 of the
others died. In many parts of the city the saloon keepers saw
and acknowledged the terrible connection between their business
and the spread of the disease, and, becoming alarmed for their
own safety, shut up their saloons and fled, saying: 'The way
from the saloon to hell is too short.'
"In Washington the Board of Health was so impressed with the
terrible facts that they declared the grog shops nuisances,
ordered them closed, and they remained closed for three months.
"A prominent physician of Glasgow reported: 'Only nineteen per
cent. of the temperate perished, while ninety-one and two-tenths
per cent. of the intemperate died.' One extensive liquor dealer
of Glasgow, said, 'Cholera has carried off half of my
customers.'
"In Warsaw ninety per cent. of those who died from cholera were
wine drinkers.
"At Tifels, Prussia, a town of 20,000 inhabitants, every
drunkard died of cholera."
The _St. Paul Medical Journal_, of September, 1899, gives the following
report of a railway surgeon, Dr. Kane:--
"From June 1, 1898, to June 1, 1899, the author performed a few
more than four hundred operations. Forty-nine abdominal
sections, fifty odd more operations of a graver sort, one
hundred miscellaneous of less gravity than above, over one
hundred operations upon female perineum and uterus. Of the four
hundred, more than three hundred demanded anaesthesia. There were
but three deaths, making the mortality a little less than one
per cent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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