Searchlights on Health: The Science of EugenicsJefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant)
Philosophy
Searchlights on Health: The Science of Eugenics
Jefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant)
Eugenics; Hygiene; Marriage; Medicine, Popular; Sexual ethics
7. DESTROYS THE MORAL FIBER.--"It is a habit which utterly destroys
the moral fiber of its slaves, and makes unmitigated liars and thieves
and forgers of them, and even murder might be added to the list of
crimes, were no other road left open to the gratification of its
insatiate and insane appetite. I do not know of a single case in which
it has been mastered, but I do know of many where the end has been
unspeakable misery, disgrace, suffering, insanity and death."
8. SHAMEFUL DEATH.--To particularize further would be profitless so
far as the beginners are concerned, but would to heaven that those not
within the shadow of this shameful death would take warning from those
who are. There are no social or periodical drunkards in this sort
of intoxication. The vice is not only solitary, unsocial and utterly
selfish, but incessant and increasing in its demands.
9. APPETITE STRONGER THAN FOR LIQUOR.--This appetite is far stronger
and more uncontrollable than that for liquor, and we can spot its
victim as readily as though he were an ordinary bummer. He has a
pallid complexion, a shifting, shuffling manner and can't look you
in the face. If you manage to catch his eye for an instant you will
observe that its pupil is contracted to an almost invisible point. It
is no exaggeration to say that he would barter his very soul for that
which indulgence has made him too poor to purchase, and where artifice
fails he will grovel in abject agony of supplication for a few grains.
At the same time he resorts to all kinds of miserable and transparent
shifts, to conceal his degradation. He never buys for himself, but
always for some fictitious person, and often resorts to purchasing
from distant points.
10. OPIUM SMOKING.--"Opium smoking," said another representative
druggist, "is almost entirely confined to the Chinese and they seem to
thrive on it. Very few others hit the pipe that we know of."
11. MALT AND ALCOHOLIC DRUNKENNESS.--Alcoholic stimulants have a
record of woe second to nothing. Its victims are annually marching
to drunkards' graves by the thousands. Drunkards may be divided into
three classes: First, the accidental or social drunkard; second, the
periodical or spasmodic drunkard; and third, the sot.
12. THE ACCIDENTAL OR SOCIAL DRUNKARD is yet on safe ground. He has
not acquired the dangerous craving for liquor. It is only on special
occasions that he yields to excessive indulgence; sometimes in meeting
a friend, or at some political blow-out. On extreme occasions he will
indulge until he becomes a helpless victim, and usually as he grows
older occasions will increase, and step by step he will be lead nearer
to the precipice of ruin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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