At the opening hearing before the Senate Committee, Tuesday, November 19, the secretary of the United States Brewers’ Association, after admitting that brewers’ propaganda had been published in the International Monthly, edited by Viereck (of the Fatherland), also declared that the Publication Committee of the brewers’ association employed writers to “write up certain subjects” relating to the brewers’ trade. One of the writers mentioned in this connection was, according to the newspaper reports, “Dr. Edward H. Williams, author of articles published in medical and other journals.”
With this fact before us, it seemed worth while to go through the book that had been distributed so lavishly to physicians with the compliments of the Goodhue Company and Dr. Edward Huntington Williams, in the exploitation of “Autolysin,” and Henry Smith Williams’ book on the subject.
The first chapter of “Alcohol, Hygiene and Legislation” consists of a reprint of an article from the New York Medical Journal of May 8, 1915. The article is a skilful presentation of the case for the defenders of the lighter alcoholic beverages, especially beer. This chapter and all succeeding chapters of the book attempt to discredit prohibitory legislation, and argue that prohibition drives the public to the use of the more ardent alcoholic beverages, while preventing the use of the milder beverages, such as beer, which one is led to infer is not particularly harmful. Throughout the book, also, the state of Kansas is held up as an example of the harm done by prohibition, and the theme is developed that insanity and the use of cocain and other habit-forming drugs follows in the wake of prohibition. The following extracts are from Chapter I:
The evil effects of beer and wine, for example, are greatly less than those produced by spirituous liquors.... [Italics ours.—Ed.]
If our theory of immunity is correct we should expect to find that the older beverages, such as beer and wine, which have been used for thousands of years, are less productive of alcoholic insanity, for example, than the spirituous liquors which are recent innovations. In point of fact we find this to be the case: the spirituous liquors are almost wholly responsible for all forms of alcoholic insanity. [Italics ours.—Ed.]
Chapter II is a reprint of an article that appeared in Everybody’s Magazine, August 1914, and deals with “Legislation from a Medical Viewpoint.” It is to the effect that drug addiction and insanity, together with special forms of mental disease directly attributable to alcoholism, seem to flourish best in prohibition territory.
Chapter III deals with “The Peace and War Footing of Alcohol,” and is a reprint from the Medical Record, Aug. 7, 1915. It, too, sings the praises of the “lighter beverages,” while deprecating the use of “ardent spirits.” For instance:
An overwhelmingly large proportion of persons who develop alcoholic psychoses in America are drinkers of whisky, or some corresponding ardent spirit, whereas this condition is seldom seen in beer and wine drinkers. [Italics ours.—Ed.]
Thus we find the highest percentage of alcohol psychoses among the whisky drinkers who come from western Europe, while the wine and beer drinking races of central and southern Europe show a distinctly lower percentage, in some instances only about one-fourth as many per thousand. [Italics ours.—Ed.]