Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/266

258 erecting a large block of buildings. The laborers were much alarmed, and were on the point of abandoning the work. They were advised to stay and give up strong drink. They all remained, and all quit the use of strong drink except one, and he fell a victim to the disease.' He says also: 'I had a gang of diggers in a clay bank, to whom the same proposition was made; they all agreed to it, and not one died. On the opposite side of the same clay bank were other diggers who continued their regular rations of whisky, and one third of them died.'

"In New York City there were 204 cases in the park, only six of whom were temperate, and these recovered, while 122 of the others died. In many parts of the city the saloon keepers saw and acknowledged the terrible connection between their business and the spread of the disease, and, becoming alarmed for their own safety, shut up their saloons and fled, saying: 'The way from the saloon to hell is too short.'

"In Washington the Board of Health was so impressed with the terrible facts that they declared the grog shops nuisances, ordered them closed, and they remained closed for three months.

"A prominent physician of Glasgow reported: 'Only nineteen per cent, of the temperate perished, while ninety-one and two-tenths per cent, of the intemperate died.' One extensive liquor dealer of Glasgow, said, 'Cholera has carried off half of my customers.'

"In Warsaw ninety per cent, of those who died from cholera were wine drinkers.

"At Tifels, Prussia, a town of 20,000 inhabitants, every drunkard died of cholera.",

The St. Paul Medical Journal, of September, 1899, gives the following report of a railway surgeon, Dr. Kane:—

"From June 1 1898, to June 1, 1899, the author performed a few more than four hundred operations. Forty-nine