Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/377

Rh "Even the continued moderate use of alcoholic drinks is, as has been said, almost certain to lead to some of the many forms of disease which are ready to invade some portion of the body that has had its processes of nutrition for a long time thus disturbed. If we now add to this the constant imminent danger of the growth of an already abnormal appetite for such drinks until it leads to excess in their use, which is so revolting in its every aspect, is there not enough to deter one from evert a moderate cultivation of this dangerous appetite?

"—There are a number of other poisons whose use the body at first endures, though with considerable protest, but which finally have the effect to cultivate a demand for the poison that generally ends seriously or fatally.

"Among the most dangerous of these is morphia, which appears in many forms of medicine. The morphine habit is fully as dangerous as the alcohol habit.

"The tobacco habit, while it does not compare with those just discussed in the seriousness of its results, is of no benefit, is of great and useless expense, and is often the direct cause of a derangement of the healthy actions of the body. Its use has been demonstrated to be very dangerous to the young. It is a habit easily avoided, and one that no one who has formed it would advise you to form."

As soon as this book with its associate (Primary Lessons in Human Physiology) came into use, agitation was begun against it, not because of any defect in its science, not because its stand was not strongly against the use of stimulants and narcotics, not because of any lack of fitness in its methods, but because it was not a book of "scientific temperance."

At last, after some four years of agitation, an act was passed in Indiana by which "scientific temperance" must be forced into those books, or the books themselves taken out of the schools.

I have not the text of the Indiana law at hand, but I understand that it is based on a law lately enacted under like influences in the State of New York. The full text of the New York law is as follows:

"To amend the consolidated school law providing for the study of the nature and effects of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics in connection with physiology and hygiene in the public schools.

"The people of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:

" Sections 19 and 30 of Article XV of the consolidated law are amended to read as follows:

"19. The nature of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics and their effects on the human system shall be taught in connection with the various divisions of physiology and hygiene as