Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/199

Rh given in the reports of persons who, in the course of their vocations, are exposed to the temptation of taking small quantities of alcoholic stimulants between meal-times, with the recorded death-rates of those, at the same ages, whose trades and modes of life do not so expose them. And the results are, I think, perfectly conclusive. For they not only furnish us with a comparative absolute average death-rate in the two sets of cases, but, in no ambiguous language, point out the exact organs of the body that are most affected by nipping, and give us the relative proportions of the deleterious influence it has upon each of them.

First, then, as regards the influence of "nipping" on the liver and kidneys—the two organs of the body not only more immediately affected, but most closely corelated, from the fact that when the one is diseased the other has to perform its functions, as best it can, vicariously. Seeing that the average proportion of drunkards is about the same in all industries, when it is considered on such a vast scale as over the whole nation's strength, I scarcely think any one will doubt the trustworthiness of the results as revealed in the subjoined tables:"Supplement to the Forty-fifth Annual Report," 1885, p. 82.

The comparative death-rates of men of the same age engaged in other industries, not exposed to the temptation of "nipping," are, again, as follows:

As an addendum to these most telling statistics, I think I can not do better than quote what Baer says regarding the probabilities of life in persons exposed to the temptations of "nipping" compared with that of those not liable to be so tempted. The following is extracted from his table of Prussian statistics, and I arrange them for the sake of easy comparison in two parallel columns, showing the probable duration of life calculated at different ages: