Dr. Cheyne, of Dublin, Ireland, after thirty years’ practice and observation, gives it as his opinion, that should ten young men begin at twenty-one years of age to use but one glass of two ounces a day, and never increase the quantity, nine out of ten would shorten life more than ten years. But should moderate drinkers shorten life only five years, and drunkards only ten, and should there be but four moderate drinkers to one drunkard, it would in thirty years cut off in the United States 32,400,000 years of human life. An aged physician in Maryland states, that when the fever breaks out there, the men who do not use ardent spirit are not half as likely as other men to have it; and that if they do have it, they are ten times as likely to recover. In the island of Key West, on the coast of Florida, after a great mortality, it was found that every person who had died had been in the habit of using ardent spirit. The quantity used was afterwards diminished more than nine-tenths, and the inhabitants became remarkably healthy.
A gentleman of great respectability from the south, states, that those who fall victims to southern climes, are almost invariably addicted to the free use of ardent spirit. Dr. Mosely, after a long residence in the West Indies, declares, “that persons who drink nothing but cold water, or make it their principal drink, are but little affected by tropical climates; that they undergo the greatest fatigue without inconvenience, and are not so subject as others to dangerous diseases;” and Dr. Bell, “that rum, when used even moderately, always diminishes the strength, and renders men more susceptible of disease; and that we might as well throw oil into a house, the roof of which is on fire, in order to prevent the flames from extending to the inside, as to pour ardent spirits into the stomach to prevent the effect of a hot sun upon the skin.”
Of seventy-seven persons found dead in different regions of country, sixty-seven, according to the coroners’ inquests, were occasioned by strong drink. Nine-tenths of those who die suddenly after the drinking of cold water, have been habitually addicted to the free use of ardent spirit; and that draught of cold water, that effort, or fatigue, or exposure to the sun, or disease, which a man who uses no ardent spirit will bear without inconvenience or danger, will often kill those who use it. Their liability to sickness and to death is often increased tenfold. And to all these evils, those who continue to traffic in it, after all the light which God in his providence has thrown upon the subject, are knowingly accessory. Whether they deal in it by whole sale or retail, by the cargo or the glass, they are, in their influence, drunkard-makers. So are also those who furnish the materials; those who advertise the liquors, and thus promote their circulation; those who lease their tenements to be employed as dram-shops, or stores for the sale of ardent spirit; and those also who purchase their groceries of spirit dealers rather than of others, for the purpose of saving to the amount which the sale of ardent spirit enables such men, without loss, to undersell their neighbors. These are all accessory to the making of drunkards, and as such will be held to answer at the divine tribunal. So are those men who employ their shipping in transporting the liquors, or are in any way knowingly aiding and abetting in perpetuating their use as a drink in the community.
It is estimated that four-fifths of those who were swept away by the late direful visitation of cholera, were such as had been addicted to the use of intoxicating drink. Dr. Bronson, of Albany, who spent some time in Canada, and whose professional character and standing give great weight to his opinions, says, “Intemperance of any species, but particularly intemperance in the use of distilled liquors, has been a more productive cause of cholera than any other, and indeed than all others.” And can men, for the sake of money, make it a business knowingly and perseveringly to furnish the most productive cause of cholera, and not be guilty of blood—not manifest a recklessness of character which will brand the mark of vice and infamy on their foreheads? “Drunkards and tipplers,” he adds, “have been searched out with such unerring certainty as to show that the arrows of death have not been dealt out with indiscrimination. An indescribable terror has spread through the ranks of this class of beings. They see the bolts of destruction aimed at their heads, and every one calls himself a victim. There seems to be a natural affinity between cholera and ardent spirit.” What, then, in days of exposure to this malady, is so great a nuisance as the places which furnish this poison? Says Dr. Rhinelander, who, with Dr. De Kay, was deputed from New York to visit Canada, “We may be asked who are the victims of this disease? I answer, the intemperate it invariably cuts off.” In Montreal, after 1,200 had been attacked, a Montreal paper states, that “not a drunkard who has been attacked has recovered of the disease, and almost all the victims have been at least moderate drinkers.” In Paris, the 30,000 victims were, with few exceptions, those who freely used intoxicating liquors. Nine-tenths of those who died of the cholera in Poland were of the same class.
In St. Petersburgh and Moscow, the average number of deaths in the bills of mortality, during the prevalence of the cholera, when the people ceased to drink brandy, was no greater than when they used it during the usual months of health—showing that brandy, and attendant dissipation, killed as many people in the same time as even the cholera itself, that pestilence which has spread sackcloth over the nations. And shall the men who know this, and yet continue to furnish it for all who can be induced to buy, escape the execration of being the destroyers of their race? Of more than 1,000 deaths in Montreal, it is stated that only two were members of Temperance societies. It was also stated, that as far as was known no members of Temperance societies in Ireland, Scotland, or England, had yet fallen victims to that dreadful disease.
From Montreal, Dr. Bronson writes, “Cholera has stood up here, as it has done everywhere, the advocate of Temperance. It has pleaded most eloquently, and with tremendous effect. The disease has searched out the haunt of the drunkard, and has seldom left it without bearing away its victim. Even moderate drinkers have been but little better off. Ardent spirits, in any shape, and in all quantities, have been highly detrimental. Some temperate men resorted to them during the prevalence of the malady as a preventive, or to remove the feeling of uneasiness about the stomach, or for the purpose of drowning their apprehensions, but they did it at their peril.”
Says the London Morning Herald, after stating that the cholera fastens its deadly grasp upon this class of men, “The same preference for the intemperate and uncleanly has characterized the cholera everywhere. Intemperance is a qualification which it never overlooks. Often has it passed harmless over a wide population of temperate country people, and poured down, as an overflowing scourge, upon the drunkards of some distant town.” Says another English publication, “All experience, both in Great Britain and elsewhere, has proved that those who have been addicted to drinking spirituous liquors, and indulging in irregular habits, have been the greatest sufferers from cholera. In some towns the drunkards are all dead.” Rammohun Fingee, the famous Indian doctor, says, with regard to India, that people who do not take opium, or spirits, do not take this disorder even when they are with those who have it. Monsieur Huber, who saw 2,160 persons perish in twenty-five days in one town in Russia, says, “It is a most remarkable circumstance, that persons given to drinking have been swept away like flies. In Tiflis, containing 20,000 inhabitants, every drunkard has fallen—all are dead, not one remains.”
Dr. Sewall, of Washington city, in a letter from New York, states, that of 204 cases of cholera in the Park hospital, there were only six temperate persons, and that those had recovered; while 122 of the others, when he wrote, had died; and that the facts were similar in all the other hospitals.
In Albany, a careful examination was made by respectable gentlemen into the cases of those who died of the cholera in that city in 1832, over sixteen years of age. The result was examined in detail by nine physicians, members of the medical staff attached to the board of health in that city—all who belong to it, except two, who were at that time absent—and published at their request under the signature of the Chancellor of the State, and the five distinguished gentlemen who compose the Executive Committee of the New York State Temperance Society, and is as follows: number of deaths, 366; viz. intemperate, 140; free drinkers, 55; moderate drinkers, mostly habitual, 131; strictly temperate, who drank no ardent spirits, 5; members of Temperance societies, 2; and when it is recollected that of more than 5,000 members of Temperance societies in the city of Albany, only two, not one in 2,500, fell by this disease, while it cut off more than one in fifty of the inhabitants of that city, we cannot but feel that men who furnish ardent spirit as a drink for their fellow-men, are manifestly inviting the ravages, and preparing the victims of this fatal malady, and of numerous other mortal diseases; and when inquisition is made for blood, and the effects of their employment are examined for the purpose of rendering to them according to their work, they will be found, should they continue, to be guilty of knowingly destroying their fellow-men.
What right have men, by selling ardent spirit, to increase the danger, extend the ravages, and augment and perpetuate the malignancy of the cholera, and multiply upon the community numerous other mortal diseases? Who cannot see that it is a foul, deep, and fatal injury inflicted on society? that it is in a high degree cruel and unjust? that it scatters the population of our cities, renders our business stagnant, and exposes our sons and our daughters to premature and sudden death? So manifestly is this the case, that the board of health of the city of Washington, on the approach of the cholera, declared the vending of ardent spirit, in any quantity, to be a nuisance; and, as such, ordered that it be discontinued for the space of ninety days. This was done in self-defence, to save the community from the sickness and death which the vending of spirit is adapted to occasion. Nor is this tendency to occasion disease and death confined to the time when the cholera is raging.