An argument for the legislative prohibition of the liquor traffic / by Frederic Richard Lees.

  • Lees, Frederic Richard, 1815-1897.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An argument for the legislative prohibition of the liquor traffic / by Frederic Richard Lees. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    142/326 (page 138)
    Settlers in that province, therefore, interdicted, by an express Act the introduction of any kind of strong waters. They who should deny the wisdom of such a measure, would be about as mad as the Mohawks themselves. And have we not amongst ourselves at all times—more in number than many nations of Mohawks, and constituting our ‘ dangerous classes persons who are literally rendered criminal or mad with strong drinks ? It is, therefore, not a violation of right, but a call of duty, to do all we can to put strong liquors out of their reach. This, at least, we have the right to do; unless they have the right to make themselves mad and mischievous, and to claim our help in the process. _ § 81. Let us take a necessity of another kind ; not involving violence to the body, but danger to its health, and risk of life. Some epidemic is in the city ; and we have it, upon the evidence of our own observation, or the authority of a medical board, made probable that a certain kind of food, or certain shops and trades, constitute the nidus of the pestilence, and give a fearfully increased potency to its ravages ? What is to be done ? Is the municipal safety to wait upon the period when, by education or otherwise, you shall have produced a unanimous conviction upon the people con- cerned in these habits and trades,—a thing not very likely to be done, or at all events, not to be readily achieved ? Is the disease, in the meanwhile, to go on affecting the general tone of health, and striking down our sons and daughters—the innocent with the guilty 1 But such is the Traffic precisely—such the drinking of alcoholic drinks anywhere—such its fatal power in aggravating disease and disposing to infection. Half our typhoid fevers are owing to this agency, and three-fourths of our cholera cases. In Washington, in 1832, the cholera was raging. The doctors declared the nun-shops to be its feeders ; their customers the media of disseminating the infection, as well as the earliest victims. Whereupon the following was passed and published :— ‘ Resolved—That the vending of Ardent Spirits, in whatever ‘ quantity, be considered a nuisance—and, as such, is hereby ‘ directed to be discontinued for the space of 90 days from this date. 1 By order of the Board of Health. James Lajrnard, Sec.’ Was the board wrong in thus protecting the public health from the contagion of the Traffic 1 If the law had the right to close the traffic for 90 days, or 90 seconds, it had, if necessary to the end, the right to extinguish it for ever—i.e. to keep it closed. We can no more have pestilence in the city without being injured by it, than we can have chemical works near our homes without suffering from the fumes ; and if we are entitled to protection in the latter case, we are, a fortiori, still more entitled to it in the former. Hr A. M. Adams, Professor of the Institutes of Medicine in the Andersonian University of Glasgow, says, under date of November 29th, 1848 * I have found the use of alcoholic drinks to be the most powerful ‘ predisposing cause of malignant cholera ivith which 1 amacquainted. ‘ Were I one of the authorities, I would placard every spirit-shop