86 



ACCIDENTS AND DRINK. 



[^Extract from a letter). 

 A sad case of death from drunkenness occurred here on Friday, a waggoner 

 being run over and killed by his waggon, leaving a widow and six children. 

 This is, I think, the third death that has occurred in this parish from a similar 

 cause, though neither of the men were parishioners. Wishing you every 

 success in your good work, a work which God will bless, 



I remain, yours very faithfully, E.P. 



DRINK OUT-DONE IN NAVVY WORK. 



Sir Thomas BuAssi:Y, M.P., in his book on " Work and Wages," says : 

 *' The taste for drinking among a large number of working people in this 

 country has been excused on the ground that hard work renders a considerable 

 consumption cf beer almost a necessity. But some of the most powerful 

 among the navvies have been teetotallers. On the Great Northern Railway 

 there was a celebrated gang of navvies, who did more work in a day than any 

 other gang on the line, and always left off an hour earlier than any other 

 men. Every navvy in this powerful gang was a teetotaller." 



THE VERDICT OF SCIENCE. STATEMENTS OF EMINENT MEN. 



Dr. Lyon Playfair, M.P„ (Professor of Chemistry, Edingburgh), states 

 that, " 100 parts of ordinary beer or porter contains 9J parts of solid matter ; 

 and of this, only six-tenths consist of flesh-forming matter : in other words, 

 it takes 1,666 parts of ordinary beer or porter to obtain one part of nourishing 

 matter. To drink beer or porter to nourish us, is tantamount to swallowing a 

 sack of chafl" for a grain of wheat." 



' Alcohol removes the uneasy feeling, and the inability of exertion which 

 the want of sleep occasions ; but the relief is only temporary. Stimulants do 

 not create nerve power ; they merely enable you, as it were, to use up that 

 which is left, and then they leave you more in need of rest than before. It is 

 worthy of notice that opium is much less deleterious to the individual than 

 gin or brandy.' — Sir B. Brodie. 



< It would not be too much to say that there are, at this moment, half-a- 

 million of homes in the United Kingdom where home happiness is never felt, 

 owing to the cause of tippling alone, where the wives are broken-hearted and 

 the children brought up in misery.' — Mr. Charles Buxton. 31. P. 



' There is scarcely a crime before me that is not, directly or indirectly, 

 caused by strong drink.' — Judge Coleridge. 



' If you wish to keep the mind clear and the body healthy, abstain from 

 fermented drinks.' — Sydney Smith. 



' My opinion is, that neither spirit, wine, nor malt liquor is necessary for 

 health ; the healthiest army I ever served with had not a single drop of any of 

 them, exposed to all the hardships of Kaffir warfare at the Cape of Good 

 Hope, in wet and inclement weather, without tents or shelter of any kind.' — 

 Injector -General of Hospitals, Sir John Hall, K.C.B. 



* I never suffer ardent spirits in my house, thinking them evil spirits. If 

 the poor could see the white livers, and shattered nervous systems, which I 

 have seen as the consequence of drinking, they would be aware that spirits 

 and poison mean the same thing.' — Sir Asthy Cooper. 



' The death from alcoholic poisoning in Great Britain is prodigious ; it 

 may be set down at something like one-tenth of the whole death-rate of the 

 country.' — Dr. Lankester. F.R.S., Coroner for Central Middlesex. 



Professor Gairdner, of Glfisgow, proved conclusively that the rise in the 

 death-rate of typhus patients bore a definite proportion to the increase of the 

 doses of alcohol administered, and vice versa. 



• Beer, wine, spirits, &c., furnish no elements capable of entering into the 

 composition of the blood, muscular fibre, or any part which is the seat of vital 

 principle. 730 gallons of the best Bavarian beer contain exactly as much 

 nourishment as a five-pound loaf or three pounds of beef.' — Baron JAebig. 



' He had come to the conclusion, from such observations as he had been 

 able to make during many years, that a large proportion of healthy persons, 



