Address before the Philadelphia County Medical Society : delivered January 30, 1861 / by Isaac Remington ... at the close of his official term as president ; published by order of the Society.

  • Remington, Isaac, 1804-1862.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address before the Philadelphia County Medical Society : delivered January 30, 1861 / by Isaac Remington ... at the close of his official term as president ; published by order of the Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    list of incurable penalties, we might add suicide and murder, when we should only have a tithe of the miseries and sufferings more or less directly caused by alcoholic drinks. And what is most to be deplored, the innocent must suffer for the guilty, that is, the diseases so induced do not terminate with the lives of the immediate sufferers, for most unhappily the morbid germs or materies morbi are transmitted to their offspring in all their potency and virulence. The children of inebriates are apt to be stunted in body and mind, fatuous and idiotic, and strongly inclined to drink in their turn; scrofulous, rheumatic, consumptive, anemic and squalid, inheriting all the infirmities and morbid tendencies of the parents, so that the iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation. Therefore, let men be instructed in its uses, powers, and proper- ties, let them remember that it has vast power as a poison, and that its use as a drink is to be dreaded and avoided by all who desire to live virtuously, happily, and respectably; it has great power as a medicine in small doses and skilfully employed; much power as a luxury, but of a most perilous kind; no power as food or power to sustain life under severe bodily and mental labor; no power to protect and preserve life against extremes of heat* or cold ;f great power in producing, but no power to avert disease; no power to prolong, but great power to shorten life, debase, corrupt and vitiate both mind and morals. It is estimated on good authority that the vice of intemperance has,cost the United States $1,200,000,000 in ten years, besides filling our almshouses and prisons, and destroying many thousands of lives, directly or indirectly by its agency, and now costs this State at least $40,000,000 every year. The appetite for narcotics, whether acquired or derived by inheri- tance from parents, appears to be deeply rooted in the human con- stitution, and pervades the larger portion of mankind, as if to * Dr. Livingstone informs us that consumption, scrofula and stone are quite unknown in Central Africa, attributed to the absence of alcoholics. t A truth fully confirmed by the evidence of Captain Back, of the Royal Navy, during his voyage to the Polar Seas in 1836-7, when he found those men who ab- stained from the use of spirituous liquors, possessed the greatest powers of endur- ance and suffered less injury from exhaustion, fatigue, scarcity of food and expo- sure to intense cold.