THE TEMPERANCE DEPARTMENT

The Cortland News, Friday, August 28, 1885.

TEMPERANCE DEPARTMENT.

Conducted by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

 

   The Danes are conducting a vigorous war against drunkenness in their capital, Copenhagen. The number of public houses is to be reduced from, 1,350 to 200. No showily dressed girl is to be allowed to stand behind a bar to serve liquor. Landlords are forbidden to give drink to any person under eighteen years of age, male or female, or to any one already under the influence of drink. A drunken person is to be conveyed to his own dwelling in a cab or other covered carriage, at the expense of the landlord in whose house he took the last drink.

   A patient was arguing with his doctor the necessity of his taking a stimulant. He argued that he was weak and needed it. Said he:

   "But, doctor, I must have some kind of a stimulant. I am cold and it warms me."

   "Precisely," came the doctor's crusty answer. "See here, this stick is cold," taking up a stick of wood from the box beside the hearth and tossing it into the fire; now it is warm; but is the stick benefited?"

   The sick man watched the wood first send out little puffs of smoke, and then burst into flame, and replied: "Of course not; it is burning itself!"

   "And so are you when you warm yourself with alcohol; you are literally burning up the delicate tissues of your stomach and brain."

   Oh, yes! Alcohol will warm you up, but who finds the fuel? When you take food, that is fuel, and as it burns out you keep warm. But when you take alcohol to warm you, you're like a man who sets his house on fire and warms his fingers by it as it burns.

 

   Rev. Joseph Cook, in his first Monday lecture of this season, sums up the situation of a part of the western States in these words: "Constitutional prohibition is a rising tide, and has already submerged Kansas and Iowa, and very nearly Ohio." As emancipation was the only effectual remedy for slavery, so prohibition is the only cure tor intemperance.

   Every patriotic voter ought to be as true to his convictions on the temperance question as the saloon keepers are to their business. Then the saloons would go.

 

IS IT INJUSTICE?

   A gentleman said to us, "I do not favor prohibition. It would be an injustice to the men who have put their money in the business, besides it would throw thousands out of employment." We replied, "you do not look at the issue from the right side. You take a contractor's view. Just before the war closed a government contractor said in a car, 'I do not hope the war will close under two years. I will lose thousands of dollars, besides many men will be turned out of employment from the government works.' A lady passenger, clad in weeds of mourning, rose to her feet and with tearful voice said: 'Sir, I have a brave boy and a husband sleeping the sleep of death in a soldier's cemetery. I have only one boy left and he is in front of the foe. Oh! God, I wish the cruel war would close now.' He saw the point. Do you? Then stop the rum traffic."

 

GIN AND WHISKEY SLINGS.

   The giving of gin sling or whisky sling to infants for colic is very common. The immediate effect may be to dislodge a portion of the wind from the stomach, but at the same time it provokes inflammation and indigestion and creates flatulency. Instead of administering alcoholic remedies, the child should be relieved by rubbing, or by a careful use of mild, warm tea of sage, mint or other herb. A infant who is dosed with alcohol soon shows a decided taste for that stimulant, relishes it, cries after it, is restless when deprived of its dram. Thus in children, a fatal thirst for strong drink may be early developed. But not only may the alcohol mania be induced in our baby by feeding it with alcoholic potions, and by using alcohols for baths or compresses, but even much more dangerously by the medium of the mother or wet nurse.

 

A MOST ERRONEOUS SUPPOSITION.

   Many women who are nursing an infant imagine that they must keep up their strength and increase the flow of lacteal fluid by frequent use of beer, porter, ale, wine or toddy. Statistics of reformatories and homes for dipsomaniacs show that as high as half the cases of drunkenness among woman arise from this baneful practice of nursing mothers. It is well known that the food and drink of the nurse pass quickly into drink, so that medicines or unhealthy articles of diet have an effect on the nursling, even before the nurse is affected. When nurses use malt, alcoholic or fermental liquors, these enter very quickly into the system of the child. The babe, partaking of alcoholized milk, falls heavily asleep—in other words, is drunk and its health, its perspiration, its symptoms, indicate drunkenness.

   From the constant presence of this destructive, unnatural element in its food, the child of the drinking mother has not over three or four chances out of ten for its life. There is an enormous percentage of infant mortality among babes nursed by persons who use alcohol or malted liquors. Not only this, but, as has been amply proved, the vitiated milk awakes an abnormal craving in the infant. It shows a horrible preference for the alcoholic sustenance, receives it with avidity, and rejects with cries unadulterated natural food. Shocking as it appears it is a plain statement of facts.