392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sented and secured the adoption by the National Assembly of a 

 law against intoxication ; and about the same time, too, the Acad- 

 emy of Medicine commissioned me to prepare an Advice to the 

 People on the dangers of the abuse of alcoholic drinks ; and that 

 the lamented Lunier, seeking to carry out practically a conclu- 

 sion of my Report on Vinage, organized the French Temperance 

 Society. But the law against intoxication, executed leniently 

 from its promulgation, soon fell into desuetude ; * the Advice to 

 the People has been a dead letter ; and I am obliged to confess that 

 the Temperance Society, which decorated me after two years of 

 presidency of it with the title of honorary president, in spite of 

 the zeal and talent of its general secretary, M. Motet, drags on a 

 precarious and obscure existence, and has, I believe, accomplished 

 to the present time nothing more than to reward a few brave men 

 who have remained sober, without diminishing by a single indi- 

 vidual the number of drunken men. 



The state has attempted to intervene in the struggle against 

 the progress of the evil no further than to raise the taxes on alco- 

 hol to an amount which seems exorbitant, but is still much lower 

 than the tax the English consumer pays ; but this increase has 

 exercised no influence on the consumption, which, on the other 

 hand, has not ceased to advance, as it has also done in England 

 since the establishment of the new taxes. 



We might apparently base great hopes on the reduction of 

 the taxes on the substances entering into the preparation of hy- 

 gienic drinks, such as coffee and tea, and of the sugar tax. In- 

 deed, I think that these are excellent measures, and of advantage 

 to sober persons accustomed to these salutary drinks to the ex- 

 clusion of intoxicating liquors ; but I hardly believe that they are 

 of such a nature as to cause drinkers of alcohol to give up their 

 favorite beverage, or to secure youth, workmen, or others from 

 the attractions of the inn, where more alcohol and distilled liquors 

 are sold than wine. 



The consumer can not be induced to use coffee and tea instead 

 of alcohol, unless he can find in those hygienic drinks the excita- 

 tion which alcohol and all the mischievous preparations of which 

 it is the base will procure for him. Now, this excitation of the 

 brain is the source of all the harm. To beginners, who as yet use 

 alcoholic drinks with moderation, they give the agreeable sensa- 



* In the first years following the promulgation of the law against public intoxication, 

 there were drawn up annually from eighty thousand to ninety thousand indictments for 

 violation ; since 1885 the number of prosecutions has fallen off one half; it varies between 

 forty-five thousand and fifty thousand ; and it is to this relaxation in repression that we 

 should attribute the diminution in the number of indictments, and not to progress in tem- 

 perance, for the ravages of alcoholism keep on increasing. 



