Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/44

36 are dying day by day, poisoned by alcohol, but not supposed to be poisoned by it."

Dr. Abernethy: "If people will leave off drinking alcohol, live plainly, and take very little medicine they will find that many disorders will be relieved by this treatment alone."

Dr. Forel, of the University of Zurich, Switzerland: "Life is considerably shortened by the use of alcohol in large quantities. But a moderate consumption of the same also shortens life by an average of five to six years. This is consistently and unequivocally seen in the statistics kept for thirty years by English insurance companies, with special sections for abstainers. They give a large discount, and still make more profit, as not nearly so many deaths occur as might be expected under the usual calculations. According to federal statistics in the fifteen largest towns of Switzerland, over ten per cent, of the men over twenty years of age die solely, or partly of alcoholism."

Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Battle Creek, Mich.: "Every organ feels the effect of the abuse through indulgence in alcohol, and no function is left undisturbed. By degrees, disordered function, through long continuance of the disturbance, induces tissue change. The most common form of organic or structural disease due to alcohol is fatty degeneration, which may effect almost every organ in the body. ***** No class of persons are so subject to nervous diseases due to degeneration of nerves and nerve-centres as drinkers. Partial or general paralysis, locomotor ataxia, epilepsy and a host of other nervous disorders, are directly traceable to the use of alcohol."

One of the visiting physicians of Bellevue Hospital, New York, states that at least two-thirds of all the diseases treated there originated in drink.

Dr. W. A. Hammond: "It is of all causes most prolific in exciting derangements of the brain, the spinal cord, and the nerves,"