Grappling with the Monster; Or, the Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink — John Shaqi
Grappling with the Monster; Or, the Curse and the Cure of Strong DrinkArthur, T. S. (Timothy Shay)
Religion
Grappling with the Monster; Or, the Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink
Arthur, T. S. (Timothy Shay)
Temperance
"The _destructive_ effects of alcohol on the human mind present,
finally, the saddest picture of its influence. The most æsthetic artist
can find no angel here. All is animal, and animal of the worst type.
Memory irretrievably lost, words and very elements of speech forgotten
or words displaced to have no meaning in them. Rage and anger persistent
and mischievous, or remittent and impotent. Fear at every corner of
life, distrust on every side, grief merged into blank despair,
hopelessness into permanent melancholy. Surely no Pandemonium that ever
poet dreamt of could equal that which would exist if all the drunkards
of the world were driven into one mortal sphere.
[Illustration: CRAZED BY DRINK. "God's rational offspring ... become a
brute."]
"As I have moved among those who are physically stricken with alcohol,
and have detected under the various disguises of name the fatal
diseases, the pains and penalties it imposes on the body, the picture
has been sufficiently cruel. But even that picture pales, as I conjure
up, without any stretch of imagination, the devastations which the same
agent inflicts on the mind. Forty per cent., the learned Superintendent
of Colney Hatch, Dr. Sheppard, tells us, of those who were brought into
that asylum in 1876, were so brought because of the direct or indirect
effects of alcohol. If the facts of all the asylums were collected with
equal care, the same tale would, I fear, be told. What need we further
to show the destructive action on the human mind? The Pandemonium of
drunkards; the grand transformation scene of that pantomime of drink
which commences with, moderation! Let it never more be forgotten by
those who love their fellow-men until, through their efforts, it is
closed forever."
We might go on, adding page after page of evidence, showing how alcohol
curses the souls, as well as the bodies, of men; but enough has been
educed to force conviction on the mind of every reader not already
satisfied of its poisonous and destructive quality.
How light are all evils flowing from intemperance compared with those
which it thus inflicts on man's higher nature. "What," says Dr. W.E.
Channing, "is the great essential evil of intemperance? The reply is
given, when I say, that intemperance is the
"VOLUNTARY EXTINCTION OF REASON.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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