CIRCULAR 
OB’ THE 
STATE BOARD OF HEALTH 
OF 
MICHIGAN. 
THE ENTAILMENTS OF ALCOHOL; 
BEING 
THE ANNUAL ADDRESS 
OF THE 
PRESIPENT, 
H. O. HITCHCOCK, M. D., 
O V 
KALAMAZOO, MICH. 
BY AUTHORITY. 
LANSING: 
W. S. GEORGE & CO., STATE PRINTERS AND BINDERS. 
1874. Compliments of 
The State Board of Health, 
Office at Lansing, .Mich CIRCULAR 
OP THB 
STATE BOARD OF HEALTH 
OP 
MICHIGAN. 
THE ENT AILMENTS OF ALCOHOL; 
BEING 
THE ANNUAL ADDRESS 
OP THB 
EHESIEEISTT, 
\y 
H. O. HITCHCOCK, M. D., 
O P 
KALAMAZOO, MICH. 
BY AUTHORITY. 
LANSING: fs 
W. 8. GEORGE & CO., STATE PRINTERS AND BINDERS. 
1874. ENTAILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
In the discharge of the annual duty which this board has devolved upon its 
President, I have thought that the effort should be not so much to produce an 
ornamental paper, a sort of “frontispiece” to the annual report, as to produce 
a paper in the very line of the legitimate work of the board ; one that should 
gather up many facts heretofore known, bearing, in some direction, upon the 
physical welfare of men, and seek to deduce from them general truths that 
6hall guide to efforts for their well being; in other words, a paper that shall 
start an amorphous field of fact and truth into a crystalization of law and 
effort. 
In casting about for such a field, the group of facts growing out of the nature 
of alcohol; its physiological action upon the tissues of the human body ; the 
vast quantities of it which are used under the various forms of alcoholic drinks; 
the pathological effects of its use upon its consumers; and, above all, its effects 
upon their posterity, were so great as at once to challenge my attention, and to 
demand, as it seems to me, the most profound and earnest consideration of 
this board. 
WHAT, THEN, IS ALCOHOL, AND WHAT IS ITS NATURE? 
In chemical language, it is a hydrated oxide of ethyle. Its composition is 
04 Hs 0 + II 0. It is nowhere to be found in any product of nature; was 
never itself created by God, but is essentially an artificial thing, prepared by 
man through the destructive process of fermentation. 
Alcohol is classed as a narcotic or narcotico-acrid poison by Profs. Orfila, 
Ghristison, Beck, Stille, and Brs. Penera and Taylor, and indeed by every 
writer on toxicology. 
It is the same identical thing wherever found ; in all intoxicating drinks in 
this country it is the thing which intoxicates, its proportions in them varying 
from 5 per cent in some forms of ale to 53 per cent in brandy, rum,and whisky. 
Alcohol is not a food. It forms no part of the fibrine, albumen, and casein 
out of which all the tissues are organized, nor of the fat, starch, and sugar 
which are chiefly used to generate heat in the body. Neither does it in any 
way aid in the digestion of the food; but on the contrary the presence of it in 
the stomach retards or impedes digestion by precipitating the active agent in 
that function, viz., the pepsine. These facts have been fully established by 
many eminent physiologists. 
“ It is a remarkable fact,” says Dr. Dundas Thompson, “that alcohol, when 
added to the digestive fluid, produces a white precipitate, so that the fluid is 
no longer capable of digesting animal or vegetable matters.” 
“The use of alcoholic stimulents,” say Drs. Todd and Bowman, “retards 
digestion by coagulating the pepsine, an essential element of the gastrio 
juice, and thereby interfering with its action.” 4 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
The truth of this position has also been demonstrated in the living human 
stomach by Dr. Beaumont, in the case of Alexis St. Martin. 
“The only influence of alcohol in the stomach,” says Dr. Henry Munroe of 
England, “is that of an irritant.” 
While the alcohol, taken with, just before, or just after the food, remains in 
the stomach, digestion is wholly arrested and cannot go on until, fortunately 
very soon, the offending article is taken up into the blood and is on its way, 
unfortunately through the whole system, to the emunctories, to be cast out 
unchanged as the offending devil alcohol. That the alcohol is cast out of the 
system unchanged by the emunctories, has been proven by the new test for 
alcohol proposed by Dr. Rudolph Musing, viz., a solution of the bichromate of 
potash and sulphuric acid. By this test, too, alcohol has been found unchanged 
in all the tissues of drunkard’s bodies. 
WHAT ARE IT8 PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTIONS UPON THE TISSUES OF THE HUMAN 
BODY? 
Taken undiluted into the stomach it would burn and destroy the tissues 
with as much certainty and almost as speedily as so much aquafortis. 
It has been demonstrated by many physiological experimenters that alcohol, 
even when largely diluted, coagulates the soluble albumen of the tissues and 
corrugates them. It changes their chemical relations and properties, so as 
greatly to disturb the normal series of changes involved in the nutritive opera- 
tions. Changes in the physical or chemical nature of the animal tissues in- 
volves also disorder in their vital properties. “Now, as it is probable that 
nearly all the organized tissues are developed at the expense of the fibrine, it is 
obvious that anything that impairs its organizabilitv must have an injurious 
influence upon the general nutritive operations, and we shall hereafter find 
confirmation of this inference in that peculiar condition of the system, which 
results from excessive habitual indulgence in alcoholic potations, and of which 
the imperfect elaboration of the fibrine is one of the special characteristics.”1 
Alcoholic liquors, applied to the skin or mucus membrane, produce various 
degrees of irritation, even to inflammation and death of the part, according to 
their strength and the length of time they are applied. “Alcohol, when applied 
to the living tissues,” says Carpenter, “in a sufficiently dilute form exalts for a 
time their vital activity, but this exaltation is temporary only, and is followed 
by a corresponding depression.” It is a stimulant and narcotic. 
Alcohol, too, has a remarkable action upon the blood, giving to arterial blood 
a venous color, causing the red corpuscles to shrink and lose their regular 
shape and to lose a part of their contents, which must seriously affect their 
two functions, aeration and nutrition. (Carpenter.) 
I have availed myself of the following facts as collected from reliable sources 
by Dr. Chas. A. Story of Chicago:* 
“There were manufactured in the United States in the year 1867,100,000,000 
gallons of distilled spirits, or about three gallons to every man, woman, and 
child in the republic.” 
“Of brewed liquors 400,000,000 gallons, or twelve gallons to each man, woman 
and child in the republic.” 
“Of wines 20,000,000 gallons, and imported liquors 20,000,000.” 
now MUCH ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLIC DRINKS ARE USED? 
* Carpenter—U*e and Abui<e of Alcoholic Liquor*. 
* Alcohol: Ita Nature and Effect*. ENTAILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
5 
The value of the sales by retail liquor dealers in the United States during 
the year 1865, according to the report of Commissioner Wells, was $1,483,491,- 
865, or just about $48 to every man, woman and child in the land. Of this 
vast sum the people of this State are said to have spent $52,874,170, or within 
a fraction of $45 for every man, woman and child in the State at the present 
time. 
As now one-fourth of the total population would more than cover all who 
drink, it follows that, at a very low estimate, there is expended on an average 
each year, for every person in this State or the United States who drinks, the 
sum of $200 in round numbers. 
THE PATHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF ITS USE UPON THE CONSUMERS. 
Now if alcohol is necessary as an article of food, bad effects ought not to flow 
from even so free use of it. But those persons who use the most of it ought to 
thrive the best; ought to live the longest, and to have the best physical, men- 
tal, and moral development. 
But if alcohol is not necessary for food,—if it is not food, but is a poison,—we 
ought to look for the most baneful effects from so free a use of it. 
Now the effect of the habitual use of alcoholic drinks, however diluted, is 
shown by many eminent physiologists, and bv the observation of many eminent 
physicians, to be similar in nature, though not identical in degree, to the effect 
of undiluted alcohol upon the tissues. 
Although it is almost entirely cast out by the emunctories. the skin, the 
lungs, the liver and the kidneys, and always as alcohol; yet, in passing through 
all parts of the system, it does, as we shall see, leave everywhere the marks of 
its burning footsteps. ‘’By experimenting on the blood with sherry wine or 
diluted alcohol, the blood disc becomes altered in shape and throws out matter 
from its interior; minute molecular particles also fringe the circumference. 
Some of these molecules separate from the blood discs and float about in the 
field; others elongate into tails, which move about with a tremulous motion. 
When the liquor sanguinis becomes surcharged with alcohol, either by imbibi- 
tion of small quantities daily or by a large quantity suddenly, the blood cor- 
puscles swimming in it not only become affected, but also the liquor sanguinis 
itself suffers deterioration.”1 
“The coloring matter,” says Prof. Shultz, “is dissolved out of the blood discs, 
and the pale discs lose all their vitality, whence less oxygen can be absorbed 
and less carbon carried out.” 
The experiments of Dr. Bocker, confirmed by Dr. Virchow, prove that “alcohol 
poisons the blood, arrests the development, as well as hastens the decay of the 
red corpuscle.” “ Dr. Bocker noticed the alterations undergone by the blood 
of habitual alcohol drinkers as yet in good health, viz., a partial loss of power 
to become red by exposure to the air, in consequence of the loss of vitality in a 
portion of the blood discs. This loss of vitality manifests itself by the forma- 
tion of black specks (oil) in the discs, (an observation confirmed by Lallemand) 
and then by their conversion into round pale globules, which in all cases of 
disease, (i. e. diminished vitality) are found in excess in the blood.”1 
“ This devitalized condition of the nutritive fluid,” says Dr. Munroe, “is 
probably the first step to the deterioration of the tissues which it feeds.” 
“ The eminent French analytical chemist, Lecanu, found as much as 117 
1 The Physiological Action of Alcohol. By Henry Munroe, M. D., F. L. 8. 6 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
parte of fat in 1.000 parts of a drunkard’s blood, the highest estimate of tho 
quantity in health being parts, while the ordinary quantity is not more than 
two or three parts, so that the blood of the drunkard contains forty times in 
excess of the ordinary quantity.” (Henry Munroe.) 
This is fatty degeneration of the blood, and lays the foundation of fatty 
degeneration of all the tissues of every organ of the body, which is the basis, 
according to Dr. T. K. Chambers, of “three-quarters of the chronic illnesses 
which the medical man has to treat.” 
Can a blood thus vitiated, and bearing in its tide the very polluting and 
destroying substance itself, minister to and build up healthy organs? Must 
not all their functions become deranged, and thus a legion of diseases be 
caused ? 
“When spirituous liquors are taken into the stomach,” says Dr. Aitken in 
bis “Practice of Medicine,” “(hey tend to coagulate in the first place all albu- 
minous articles of food or fluid with which they come in contact. As an irri- 
tant they stimulate the glandular secretions from the mucous membrane and 
ultimately lead to permanent congestion of the vessels and to thickening of the 
gastric tissues.” 
“Even diluted in the form of beer or wine,” says Dr. Lankester, F. R. S.; in 
his School Manual of Health, “it is found to act injuriously on the delicate 
membranes of the stomach and other digestive organs. When taken in larger 
quantities in any of the diluted forms, it acts most injuriously upon the stomach, 
liver, brain, heart, and other organs of the body.” 
The organs most affected by alcohol when taken into the stomach—the 
organs in which it is found most to accumulate—are, according to the eminent 
physiologists. Professors Lallemand and Perrin, the “ liver and the substance of 
the brain. If in the blood it is represented by I., in the brain it is 1.34, in the 
liver 1.48.” 
Let me call your attention to a list of diseases and degeneracies which are 
developed in and bequeathed to the individuals themselves who habitually or 
excessively use alcoholic drinks. 
For convenience I shall mainly follow Carpenter’s list, sometimes using his 
identical language. This list has been justified and confirmed by thousands 
of observers, among whom are many physicians in this and other States who 
have replied to a circular which I sent out upon this subject, and to which 
reference will be made hereafter. 
That intemperance is one of the conditions which tends to produce inflam- 
mations of'the encephalon, meningitis, and cerebritis, all writers upon the sub- 
ject agree. A frequent connection, as cause and effect, is established both by 
theory and observation with habitual intemperance and cases of apoplexy, par- 
alysis, and epilepsy. 
“ Besides these positive diseases, a premature exhaustion of nervous power, 
manifested in the decline of mental vigor and of nervo-muscular energy, are 
ranked by common consent among the consequences of habitual excess in the 
use of alcoholic liquors. That irritation and inflammation of the mucous 
membrane of the stomach, with a thickened, softened and ulcerous condition 
is thus caused, is not only attested by hundreds of medical obseivers, but in the 
case of Alexis St. Martin was clearly demonstrated in the living stomach by Dr. 
Beaumont. 
He says: “ The free use of ardent spirits, w ine, beer, or any intoxicating liquor, 
when continued for some days, has invariably produced these morbid changes.” ENT AILMENTS OP ALCOHOL. 
7 
Inflammatory gastric dyspepsia, with all its attendant cutaneous eruptions 
and persistent derangements of the liver and kidneys, and its consequent de- 
pression of spirits even to complete hypochondriasis, is often the legitimate 
result of the habitual use of intoxicants. 
Dr. Peters, as quoted by Dr. Carpenter, has pointed out the effects upon the 
livers of seventy persons dead after the habitual use of alcoholic drinks. “ In 
moderate drinkers the liver was generally found to be somewhat larger than 
usual, its texture softened and its outer surface spotted with patches of fatty 
infiltration extending two or three lines into the parenchymatous substance, 
the rest of the viscus retaining its natural color and its edges their normal 
sharpness. In those who had been more addicted to the use of spirts, the 
liver was still larger, its edges were more obtuse, and the patches of fat on its 
surface were larger and more numerous. In old drunkards the liver was very 
large, weighing at least six or eight pounds, often from ten to twelve; the 
edges were very thick and much rounded, the parenchyma almost white with 
fat, soft, fragile, and the peritoneal covering could be torn off with ease. 
“These observations indicated the various degrees of fatty degeneration, the 
result on the one hand of deficient functional activity of the gland, and on the 
other, indicative of an excess of fatty matter in the system.” To these condi- 
tions are to be added the granular liver, or the “gin liver,” as it is called. 
Quite analogous to these degenerated conditions of the liver are the various 
degenerations of the kidneys, especially Bright’s disease, or granular degenera- 
tion of the kidneys. 
Of this disease Dr. Christison states that “ from three-fourths to four-fifths 
of the cases which he met with in Edinburgh were in persons who were habit- 
ual drunkards, or were in the constant habit of using ardent spirits several 
times in the course of the day.” 
“The experience of English hospitals is precisely similar,” says Dr. Car- 
penter. 
Gout and rheumatism are often found to be directly or indirectly caused by 
the use of alcoholics. Acute and chronic inflammation of the heart and arteries 
are not infrequently traceable to alcoholic intoxication, and “it cannot there- 
fore be regarded as impossible,” says Dr. Carpenter, “that those more chronic 
disorders of their walls, which give rise to aneurism, softening, fatty degenera- 
tion, and other structural changes, should be favored if not absolutely produced 
by the habitual presence of alcohol in the circulating current.” 
Besides these positive diseases, there is developed by the habitual use of alco- 
holic stimulants a marked diminution of poiver to sustain injuries by disease 
or accident, and a remarkable liability of those who indulge to epidemic diseases. 
With the former of these positions the experience of every physician of any 
considerable practice is in harmony. How olten are physicians disappointed 
at the results of diseases in casts of adults during the age when they ought to 
be in their prime. Many cases of fever and of many forms of inflammation, 
as well as almost every grade of accident and surgical operation, prove fatal 
unaccountably unless the habit of the subject as to the use of alcoholic drinks 
be taken into the account. 
As to the liability of drinkers to disease as compared to sobers, W. Marcet, 
M. D., F. R. S., has an interesting chapter in his work on “Chronic Alcoholic 
Intoxication.” His tables are based upon 695 cases of out patients, carefully 
observed at the Westminster Hospital. Of the whole number, 695, two-thirds, 
or 463. were caused by indulgence in alcohol, and were preventable by absti- 
nence therefrom. 8 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
And it will be noticed that Marcet does not frame his tables on the distinc- 
tion of “drinkers and total abstainers,” but upon the distinction of “drinkers 
to such a degree as plainly to do them injury, or to such a degree as ought to 
do them injury,” and all others. Had his tables been calculated upon the basis 
of drinkers and total abstainers, it cannot be doubted that the liability of 
drinkers to the diseases mentioned would have been considerably increased. 
Dr. F. It. Lees, F. S. A., in his Prize Essay on the Liquor Traffic, says : “ Drink 
has the characteristic of predisposing to attacks of disease and preparing the 
wav for the winged pestilence.” 
Let an epidemic appear in our midst, drunkards are its earliest victims, and 
its ravages are most desolating in those districts where drinking prevails. 
Dr. Anderson of Glasgow states as the results of his experience in the treat- 
ment of 225 patients in the epidemic of 1848-49, “I have found the use ot 
alcoholic drinks to be the most powerful predisposing cause of malignant 
cholera with which I am acquainted. So strong is my opinion on this point, 
that were I one of the authorities and had the power, I would placard every 
spirit shop in town with large bills containing the words ‘Cholera Sold 
Here.’ The comparative mortality in that epidemic he states was 91.2 per 
cent of the drinkers to 19.2 per cent of the sobers.” 
During the epidemic of 1832. it was noticed in Montreal, where 12,000 cases 
occurred, that “not a drunkard who was attacked has recovered, and almost all 
the other victims were moderate drinkers.” 
“ In Warsaw it was found that 90 per cent of those who died of the cholera 
had been in the habit of drinking ardent spirits to excess; and at Tiflis, in 
Russia, a town ot 20,000 inhabitants, every drunkard is said to have been car- 
ried otf by the disease.” 1 
In order to ascertain as far as I could the current opinion and observation of 
various members of the medical profession who are engaged in active practice, 
I prepared in circular form the following questions and sent them to about two 
hundred physicians in our own State, and about two hundred prominent phy- 
sicians in other States: 
1st. What percentage of sickness in adults, within your observation, is 
directly due to alcohol ? 
2d. What percentage of deaths in adulta, within your observation during the 
last year, is due directly to alcohol ? 
3d. Does alcohol, in your opinion, shorten the lives of its victims, and to 
what degree ? 
4th. What percentage of inherited disease and enfeebled constitution is trace- 
able to alcoholism in parents or ancestors? 
5th. What forms of disease, in your observation, are traceable immediately or 
remotely to alcohol ? 
6th. In which parentis alcoholism most likely to transmit disease or enfeebled 
constitution ? 
7th. In your opinion, based upon your observation, are the effects of alcohol- 
ism, immediate or remote, amenable to treatment ? 
8th. Does your observation show that there is danger of producing the state 
of alcoholism by the use of medicinal tinctures or elixirs? 
To this circular I have received many replies, which may be consolidated as 
follows: 
• Bacchus Dethroned. A prize essay by Frederick Powell. ENT AILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
9 
To question No. 1 the replies varied from 1 per cent to 75 per cent, with an 
average of 11 per cent. 
To question No. 2 they varied from 1 per cent to 50 per cent, with an aver- 
age of 13£ per cent. 
To the third question the answers varied from 5 per cent to 50 per cent, 
with an average of 28 per cent. 
To No. 4 the replies varied from 5 per cent to very large and 50 per cent, 
averaging 21 per cent. 
The replies to No. 5 indicate the following as diseases actually found in 
practice and traceable to alcohol: “ Inflammatory diseases of the brain “apo- 
plexy “many forms of paralysis;” “insanity;” “imbecility;” “diseases of the 
stomach, liver, and kidneys;” “all diseases dependent upon fatty degeneration ;” 
“many skin diseases, gout, and rheumatism.” 
The replies to question No. 6 were nearly equally divided between “father” 
and “mother.” 
Nearly all thought the effects of alcoholism were in a fair measure amenable 
to treatment. 
Quite a general uniformity in the replies to No. 8 shows that the medical 
profession do not think the danger very great of producing the state of alco- 
holism by the use of medicinal tinctures and elixirs, excepting when they are 
used in considerable quantities and for a long time, as in several cases men- 
tioned by Dr. Wm. B. Eager, Jr., of Charity Hospital, New York, where the 
depraved appetite was created by the use of tinctures of cinchona and gentian. 
Quite a number of my correspondents spoke particularly, however, of the dan- 
ger of creating the depraved appetite by the use of some of the proprietary 
“bitters” now in so general use. But of this danger I shall speak farther on. 
But, it may be asked, if alcohol causes such a percentage of deaths among 
adults, why doe3 it not appear so in our vital statistics? 
The answer is that in almost all the cases of death, more or less caused by 
alcohol, there is some disease or accident intervening which is credited with 
being the real cause ; and in many other instances in which persons do actually 
die of delirium tremens, or even from the immediate effects of an overdose of 
alcohol, the physician will trump up some disease, to give to the family, of a more 
respectable sound, and this respectable lie gets into the vital statistics. 
In the vital statistics of this State for 1870, out of 10,766 deaths there are 14 
attributed to “alcoholism.” I have had the curiosity to look over the list of 
deaths of adults for that year which occurred in the township of Kalamazoo, 
and I find that out of the 64 deaths 10, or 16 percent, were more or less directly 
attributable to the use of alcoholic drinks to my personal knowledge. But in 
the report from which the vital statistics were compiled they were all said to 
have died of respectable diseases. I have no doubt that the same, or even a 
greater per cent, will obtain throughout the State. 
I have purposely passed over, until now, two or three diseases or classes of 
disease so that, being last spoken of, the mind might rest upon them the longer, 
for, although the diseases already named are exceedingly grave, yet these, affect- 
ing as they do the intellectual and the moral condition and development of 
the man, appear to me to challenge our more serious attention. 
“ There are,” says Dr. Carpenter, “some individuals in whom a fit of positive 
madness, persisting for some time after the immediate effects of the stimulus 
have subsided, is brought on by every excess in drinking.” 
This he terms “ delirium ebriosum.” It is not intoxication, but aconsequenoe 10 
CIRCULAR OF STATE HOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
of it; it is the to?iic delirious excitement resulting from intoxication, while 
delirium tremens is the atonic excitement of a nervous system exhausted by 
long continued intoxication. 
Dr. Carpenter, while discussing delirium tremens, says: “It is important to 
remark that a slighter form of this disease marked by tremors of the hands 
and feet, deficiency of nervous power, and occasional illusions, will some- 
times appear as a consequence of habitual tippling, even without intoxication 
having been once produced.” Marcet calls this a distinct disease, and gives it 
the name of “chronic alcoholism.” 
“ The symptoms of the disease depend on a functional disturbance of the 
nervous system which may last for weeks, months, or years, even after the 
habit of excessive drinking has been given up.” It is a degenerated condition 
of the man in consequence of the more or less complete saturation of the sys- 
tem with alcohol; a condition in which the will is weakened, while the baser 
appetites are strengthened; a condition of the citadel that invites the attack of 
the enemy by having exhausted the resources for defence. In insanity, on the 
other hand, we have a condition of the man still farther degenerated—a citadel 
in the very confusion of capture and pillage, while in dementia and idiotcy the 
citadel is dismantled and in ruins. 
“ Lord Shaftsbury. after having acted as commissioner of lunacy in England 
for twenty years, and as chairman of the commission for sixteen years, says, hav- 
ing made inquiries into the matter, the result is that fully six-tenths of all the 
cases of insanity to be found in these realms arise from no other cause than 
from the habits of intemperance in which the people have indulged.” 
“The number of deranged people in a country corresponds very closely with 
the amount of strong drinks that are consumed. Till the introduction of fire- 
water among the American Indians, insanity was unknown. In Cairo, com- 
paratively teetotal, there is one insane person to every 30,714 of the inhabi- 
tants. In Spain, comparatively sober, the consumption of alcohol being only 
one gallon per head per annum, there is one insane {jerson in every 7,181. In 
Normandy, consuming two gallons of alcohol per head per annum, one in every 
700. In Norway, consuming two gallons, one in 551. In England, consuming 
two and a half gallons, the proportion is one in every 430 of the inhabitants.”1 
In Michigan, where, in 1865, according to Commissioner Wells’ report, 
before referred to, the sales of the retail liquor traffic amounted to a little more 
than 145 for every man, woman, and child in the State, the census of 1870 
states that there are 829 insane persons in a population of 1,184,282, or one to 
every 1,428. In the United States the census gives one insane person to every 
1,029. While in New York, where $56 per annum for each inhabitant were 
spent for alcoholic drinks, there is one insane person to a little less than 700. 
I have no doubt that many other elements than the use of alcoholic drinks 
among the people, enter into the etiology of insanity; but certainly these fig- 
ures should arrest our attention, and if possible, statistics of this kind should 
be verified with the misleading elements eliminated. 
In reply to the following questions sent in circular form to the insane asy- 
lums of this country, I have received the following statistics of 24,789 cases of 
insanity as related to intemperance: 
1st. In what percentage of the inmates of your asylum has insanity or epi- 
lepsy, in your opinion, been due to alcoholism in the individual ? 
1 Dr. Lees' Prize Essay on ibe Liquor Traffic. ENTA1LMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
11 
2d. In what percentage of cases, in your opinion, is it due to hereditary degen- 
eracy, taking its origin in alcoholism in the parents or ancestors? 
3d. Is the former percentage, in your opinion, increasing? 
4th. Is the latter percentage, in your opinion, increasing ? 
5th. From alcoholism in which parent, is hereditary degeneracy the stronger? 
6th. Does alcoholism, in your opinion, tend directly to shorten life ? 
7th. To what degree ? 
8th. Does it tend decidedly to deteriorate and exhaust the race? 
9th. What other origins of the depraved appetite for drink do you recognize 
than alcoholism in the individual, or his parents or ancestors? 
10th. Does alcoholism give origin to other forms of physical and mental 
degeneracy ? 
11th. What percentage of those persons in whom the diseased or depraved 
appetite takes its origin in alcoholism, either in the individual or his parents 
or ancestors, are, in your opinion, curable ? 
12th. Which class is the most amenable to treatment? 
To question No. 1 1 received various answers, giving the percentage of cases 
as from “6 to 20.” 
To question No. 2 I received one answer giving the percentage as “30 or 
more,” and one other giving it as “20,” while nearly all who replied at all said 
“no data.” 
To the 3d and 4'h questions most of the replies were “yes,” while some re- 
plied “don’t know,” “can’t say,” or “ no data.” 
A few replied to the 5th question “mother,” and a few “father,” while most 
said “don’t know,” or “can’t say.” 
To the 6th question all said “yes.” 
And to the 7th the answers were from “decidedly”to “25 per cent.” 
All said “yes” to the 8th, while from all the replies to the 9th question 
I gathered that “any physical degeneracy, and many unfavorable conditions, 
and many things which are assigned as causes of insanity, may develop the 
appetite for strong drink.” 
And nearly all the replies to the 10th agree in saying that “alcohol does give 
rise to various other forms of physical aud mental degeneracy, such as deaf 
mutism, blindness, idiotcy, viciousness, and low, depraved appetites. 
From the statistics of the 24,789 cases of insanity, sent me by 14 asylums, I 
have compiled the following: 
Of all the cases of both sexes, intemperance was assigned as the cause in 7 
per cent; of all the cases of both sexes, less 7,661 “unknown” or “unassigned,” 
in 10 per cent; of all the cases of both sexes, less 7.661 “unknown” and “un- 
assigned,” and 2,006 under 20 years of age, in 12 per cent; of all the males 
(13,214) 13 per cent; of all the rmtles, less 4,092 “unknown” or “unassigned,” 
18 per cent; and of all the males less 4.092 “unknown” or “unassigned,” and 
1,085 under 20 years of age, 19£ per cent, while of all the females only l£ per 
cent were attributed directly to intemperance. 
I have to remark of the superintendents of the 60 asylums for the insane to 
which I sent my circulars, that only 14 of them replied at all, indicating, I 
think, that they take very little interest in the subject, or that the records of 
their asylums were barren of statistics, or probably both. 
The replies and reports from these fourteen indicate that there is no great 
dependence to be placed upon their statistics of “alleged causes of insanity.” 
Under “intemperance” as a “cause” is included in these reports only those 12 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
cases, who by personal indulgence in intoxicating drinks and beastly intoxica- 
tion “known to all men,” have brought upon themselves a degeneracy of the 
system that has had a sudden outbreak in insanity, following, perhaps, on the 
heels of a debauch ; while there is no account taken of the degeneracy, whoso 
outbreak may be to-day insanity, but whose origin was in the secret, moderate, 
but long-continued use of alcoholic stimulants, or in the drunkenness or other 
vice of parents or ancestors. 
Of this Dr. (J. H. Hughs, superintendent of the Missouri State Lunatic Asy- 
lum, says: “Few know how many alcohol directly or indirectly sends to our 
insane asylums. The tables of causes of insanity of these institutions do not 
even fully show this, for the reasons that many friends of the insane withhold 
the truth from the asylum record books, when they know the vice of liquor- 
drinking to be the real cause. In many instances, also, where alcohol is really 
to blame, the friends are not certain that the use of liquor has been the causo 
of the “business failures,” and “perplexities,” “domestic afflictions,” “ bereave- 
ments” and “infelicities,” “ill health,” and “nervous prostration,” so often re- 
corded as the immediate or direct causes of insanity, and they give the patient, 
for the sake of his friends and his character, the “ benefit of the doubt.” Only 
diligent inquiry on the part of asylum superintendents brings out the truth 
that liquor-drinking is the root of much evil that the world in general, with all 
its knowledge upon this subject, knows not of,—that it is at the bottom of much 
of the mischief done to the human system, terminating in insanity and accred- 
ited to other causes. 
“The offspring of the inebriate,—even to the third and fourth generations, 
—suffer for the vices of their parents. They are either dipsomaniacs, epilep- 
tics, impotents, paralytics, idiots, imbeciles, possessed of inordinately vicious, 
criminal, or immoral instincts and propensities, or totally insane. 
“Brain changes begun through the instrumentality of alcohol in the parents 
are thus developed and completed in their children, conceived and born after 
the formation of the habit of drinking. The seeds of menial or moral defect, 
or of physical disease, sown in the incipient drinker, may thus remain, com- 
paratively speaking, dormant in him through his life, but find rich soil for 
rapid growth to baneful perfection in his offspring.” 
Dr. Andrew McFarland of Oak Lawn Retreat, Jacksonville, III., thus writes 
me under date of February 2d, 1874: 
“ My Dear Sir—Your favor of the 20th ult. reached me to-day. The re- 
mark appended to your former circular was prompted more from a strong con- 
viction that the line of your inquiry is a most important one, and likely, if 
followed, to educe important results to the cause of humanity, than from a 
consciousness on my part, of specific facts possessed, worth your present use. 
And I fear my present effort can aid you but little, because those of us most 
impressed with the fact that the larger portion of the ills that flesh is heir to 
are literally visible inheritances, are yet w ithout the data in figures that prove 
the conviction true. 
“My own reflections on the subject have grown from the admission of nearly 
5,000 individuals to two several State asylums for the insane,—a valuable field 
of inquiry, indeed, but almost useless because the inquiries you are pursuing 
come only incidentally into notice. 
“The question of hereditary predisposition to insanity formed, of course, a 
never-omitted part of the record ; but vices,—depraved habits of ancestors,— 
could not, for obvious reasons, come so readily within the field of inquiry. And ENT AILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
13 
I suspect all with the same kind of experience,—and even more of it,—must 
be just as barren of actual facts as I am, for the same reason. 
“ Now, as ‘art is long,’ allow me to say, in passing, that I do not think the 
mass of material our elemosyuary institutions enable us to gather will be worth 
much until records kept are in a form prescribed by legitimate enactment, and 
made full on these points. 
“ The records of insane asylums, I know, are lumbered up with facts of not 
the least scientific value, while nothing in them throws light on the philosophy 
of disease, as it affects man as a whole. It seems a science we have hardly 
begun to learn, though its materials are found, more or less, in every man’s 
history, and, as I say, there seems no way to begin till penal and sanitary insti- 
tutions can call for their facts by authority. 
“The more mental disease is observed, the more its generally-assigned causes 
gink from view, and the great all-sufficient one of inherited predisposition 
assumes prominence. And I am led to say, from full thought, that three of 
every four entering insane asylums will show a blood-taint so sufficient as to 
put out of sight all other causes.” 
“Dr. Morel of France,” says Dr. Story, “connected for several years with 
Salpetriere Hospital, where there are more than one thousand insane persons, 
and afterwards for several years superintendent of Mareville Lunatic Asylum, 
equally large, states that there is always a hopeless number of paralytic and 
other iusaue persons in our hospitals whose disease is due to no other cause 
than the abuse of alcoholic liquors. In one thousand upon whom I have made 
especial observation, not less than two hundred (20 per cent) owed their mental 
disorder to no other cause.” 
“Dr. Behics, in making a report on the physical causes of insanity in France, 
says that of eight thousand and eight hundred male lunatics, and seven thousand 
and one hundred female lunatics, thirty-four per centof the men and six per cent 
of the women were made insane by intemperance.” “And Motet reports among 
eight thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven cases of insane from physical 
causes, there were three thousand and forty-five drunkards.” 1 
Dr. Carpenter quotes the report of Dr. Hutchinson of 1,900 insane patients 
in seven years in the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum, in which within a small frac- 
tion of 20 per cent are set down as caused by intemperance. “In one asylum 
in the east of London the per cent is 41.” And Dr. McNish states that of 286 
lunatics at that time in the Richmond Hospital, Dublin, one-half owed their 
madness to drinking. 
There appears to be quite a discrepancy between the statistics, as given by 
Lord Shaftsbury, coifcerning the relation of insanity to alcohol, and those that 
we have gleaned from our own asylums, bearing upon the same subject, in this 
country. 
The discrepancy will, I think, be seen to be more apparent than real, when 
several considerations shall have been noticed. 
In the case of insane male adults no effort has been made, or at least none 
has been reported, to ascertain whether they were children begotten while 
either parent or both were the subjects of chronic alcoholism or of intoxication. 
No statistics of this kind are reported either of the insane under 20 years of 
age. The fair presumption of this class who have become insane before many 
of the causes that tend to produce insanity in older persons have come to bear 
1 Alcohol and its Effects. Dr. ChaB. A. Story. 14 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
deleteriouslv upon them, is that, many or most of them have some inherited de*- 
generacv that makes them especially susceptible to any exciting causes of 
insanity. 
Had we the statistics to show in how many of these cases the inherited degener- 
acy took its origin in alcholism in the parents or ancestors, the number assigned 
to that cause would, no doubt, be largely increased. This is made probable by 
the fact that Dr. S. G. Howe, on careful inquiry into the parentage of 300 cases 
of idiocy, found that 145 of them were the children of acknowledged drunken 
parents. 
Again only per cent of the female insane are reported as owing their 
insanity to intemperance. This fact, while it goes far to establish the intimate 
relation of causation between alcohol and insanity (for but very few, compar- 
atively, of our American women drink habitually), would, no doubt, be greatly 
modified if the truth could be ascertained in respect to the hereditament of 
all these insane women, for, if it is established as a law of hereditament, as 
many writers believe, and as is very ably argued by Dr. John Stockton Hough,1 
that daughters resemble their fathers, while sons resemble their mothers, it 
follows that in a given number of insane or otherwise degenerated females, we 
ought to find the seeds of their degeneracy planted in the preceding genera- 
tion of males; while in the cases of insane or otherwise degenerate males, w© 
ought to trace the degeneracy back through their mothers to the second gen- 
eration of males; so that the present generation of insane and alcoholized 
males will have a full representation in the next generation of insane females. 
Is not the very fact that so many of the inmates of our asylums are recorded 
“unassigned” or “unknown,” of itself suggestive that there may be in all that 
number a degeneracy of stock, though difficult to trace, yet surely the growth 
of seeds sown in preceding generations ? 
If these things could be fairly traced out, and alcohol had due credit for 
causing “ business failures,” “domestic trouble,” “ bereavements,” “ill health,” 
and “nervous prostration,” which appear in the reports of asylums as the cause* 
of so many cases of insanity, who can doubt that the percentage of cases justly 
assignable to alcohol would be nearly or quite equal to that given by Lord 
Shaftsbury for England ? 
From insanity produced by intemperance in the individual the road is often 
short and quick to dementia, imbecility, idiocy; and more especially is thii 
true of insanity occurring as an outburst of a degeneracy whose origin was in 
alcoholism of parents or ancestors? 
Says Dr. Sewell, “ The inebriate first loses his vivacity and natural acuteness 
of perception. His judgment becomes clouded and impaired in its strength, 
the memory also enfeebled and sometimes quite obliterated. The mind is 
wandering and vacant, and incapable of intense or steady application to any 
one subject. In his cups the drunkard is generally a temporary madman.” 
But idiocy and insanity are not always temporary in the case of the drunk- 
ard. Both of these effects often become permanent in the future man. 
“In some cases reason seems to be blotted out and the miserable victim of 
intemperance lives and dies a literal fool. In other cases, still more numerous,” 
(and seen in almost every community) “there is a manifest approximation to 
idiocy where this deplorable consequence does not actually follow.” 
' Law* of Transmission of Resemblance from Parents to their Children. By John Stockton M. D , 
Philadelphia. A reprint from the Medical Record. ENTAILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
15 
“ Many a man,” says Dr. Story, “ has drunk himself into a fool. Many a 
bright boy and man of talent has become a fool w hile becoming a sot.” 
WHAT DOES THE DRUNKARD BEQUEATH TO HIS OFFSPRING? 
The degeneracy by no means stops with the man himself. By a law of 
nature, running through the animal as well as vegetable kingdoms, ‘-like begets 
like;” “they shall bring forth seed after their kind.” “Traits of character, 
dispositions, aspirations, talents, propensities, passions, depraved conditions and 
diseases, may be inherited as well as form, looks, and complexion.” 
In accordance with this law drunkenness in the parents has a special tend- 
ency to produce mental debility, low and depraved appetites, weakness of will, 
loss of moral sense, vice and crime, insanity and idiocy in the offspring. 
“Looking to the decided tendency to hereditary predisposition in the ordi- 
nary forms of insanity,” says Dr. Carpenter, “looking also to the fact that any 
perverted or imperfect condition of the nutritive functions established in the 
parent, are also liable to manifest themselves in the offspring (as shown in the 
transmission of the gouty and tubercular diathesis), we should expect to find 
that the offspring of habitual drunkards would share with those of lunatics in 
the predisposition to insanity, and that they would moreover be especially 
prone to intemperate habits.” 
That “one drunkard begets another,” as Plutarch says, may be proven by 
common observation and by many recorded opinions and observations. Dr. 
W. A. F. Brown, the resident physician of Crichton Lunatic Asylum at Dum- 
fries, makes the following statement: “The drunkard not only injures and 
enfeebles his own nervous system, but entails mental disease upon his family. 
His daughters are nervous and hysterical; his sons are weak, wayward, eccen- 
tric, and sink insane under the pressure of excitement of some unforeseen exi- 
gency, or of the ordinary cares of duty.” 
Dr. S. G. Howe of Boston, in a report to the Massachusetts Legislature, says: 
“ The habits of the parents of 300 idiots were learned, and 145, or nearly one- 
half, are reported as known to be habitual drunkards. Such parents, it is 
affirmed, give a weak and lax constitution to their children, who are conse- 
quently deficient in bodily and vital energy, and predisposed by their very 
organization to have cravings for alcoholic stimulants. Having a lower vitality 
they feel the need of some stimulation. If they pursue the course of their 
fathers, which they have more temptation to follow and less power to avoid 
than the children of the temperate, they add to their hereditary weakness and 
increase the tendency to idiocy in their constitution, and this they leave to 
their children after them.” Dr. Howe, in a letter dated February 20th, 1874, 
confirms his opinion above given, by his subsequent observations. 
“There is,” says Dr. Carpenter, “a prevalent impression that idiocy is par- 
ticularly liable to occur in the offspring when the conception has taken place, 
when one or both of the parents were in a state of intoxication.” He quotes a 
striking example : “ Both the parents were healthy and intelligent, and one, at 
least, habitually sober; but both were partially intoxicated at the time of the 
intercourse, and the offspring was completely idiotic.” “ There is,” he says, 
“every reason to believe that the monomania of inebriety not only acts upon 
and rendtrs more deleterious whatever latent taint may exist, but vitiates and 
impairs the sources of health for generations.” 
There has been sent me by one of my correspondents two sad illustrations of 
this terrible inheritance: “Five children were born in one family in Yates 16 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
County, Now York, all of whom were idiots, and two children idiots in Steuben 
County, New York, whose parents acknowledged that they were intoxicated 
when the conceptions took place.” 
Dr. Chas. A. Leas of Baltimore sends me the following: ‘‘A hoy in New 
York was born drunk: i. e.t from his birth he had an irregular, unsteady mus- 
cular action. The boy was in after years arrested for being drunk in the streets, 
and in the judicial examination it was proven that he had been so from his 
birth, and had inherited it from his father, who was a most terrible and habit- 
ual drunkard. In short it was shown and testified to by his mother that he 
had been born urunk and remained so.” 
I have myself frequently seen a girl upon the streets, now nearly or quite 18 
years old, whose movements are, and have been from her birth, almost pre- 
cisely those of a man so drunk that he can with difficulty reel along; and her 
countenance bears the idiotic expression of that condition. Her father, who 
has since died of delirium tremens, is believed to have been beastly drunk wheu 
she was begotten. 
Dr. Cbas. A. Storv relates a case of “the first of seven children that was a 
complete idiot. Both parents were beastly drunk at the time of this child’s 
conception. They quit drinking and the other six children have inherited 
about average intellects.”1 
He relates another case in which “the first child has average common sense; 
the second is very much demented ; and the third is a slobbering, drooling fool. 
The explanation is easy. After marriage the parents began drinking, and in 
six years had become perfect sots.” 
But it is not alone in the condition of actual intoxication that such fearful 
conditions are entailed upon the offspring. But we have, alas! too many illus- 
trative cases among the moderate but regular drinkers of the “ best liquors.” 
Sometimes children who have appeared to be lairly endowed in early child- 
hood surprise their parents and friends, at or near the age of puberty, by the 
sudden outcropping of their inherited feebleness and imbecility. 
* “A young man at the age of nineteen years was taken to the insane asylum 
at Mareville for mental derangement caused by excess in alcoholic drinking. As 
the inheritor of a good fortune, he received every attention and care in bis early 
life, but they produced no effect on a perverse and obstinate nature, whose 
instincts were of the most cruel kind. When but three years old he was the 
terror of all the children in the neighborhood, whom he subjected to incredible 
tortures in the absence of older persons who would have restrained him. His 
chief pleasures of boyhood were in destroying and torturing animals. This 
young man had for his father a person w ho moved in educated society and filled 
important otfices, but who was for a long time intemperate, concealing, how- 
ever, the fact from the public eye. He had five children, only one of whom 
survived infancy, and he was the unfortunate being now described. Edward, 
as he was called by Dr. Morel, evinced in his tender years a great fondness for 
drawing and reading, and after a time was placed at college; but his teachers 
soon perceived that all their efforts were in vain, and that this boy, both in 
body and mind, was afflicted with an arrest of growth; his head was micro- 
cephalous and his intellect limited. On his return home he went rapidly 
through successive stages of degeneration by continual debauchery, until, for- 
* Alcohol: Its Nature aDd Effects. 
* A case related by Dr. Morel as quoted by Dr. John Bell in bis report to the American Medical Associa- 
tion in lfctiy ENTAILMENT3 OF ALCOHOL. 
17 
tnnately, be was placed under restraint in an asylum. This young man 
labored under the double curse, first, of inherited predisposition, and secondly, 
of the example given to him by his father’s excesses.” 
“ Morel exhibits a picture of progressive degeneration of alcoholic origin, 
and its continuance in a family until it ended in the extinction of the latter, 
at the fourth generation. In the first generation there was immorality, excess 
in alcoholics, moral debasements. In the second, hereditary drunkenness, 
maniacal attacks, general paralysis. In the third generation, sobriety, hypo- 
chondriac tendencies, lupomania, systematic belief in persecutions, homicidal 
tendencies. In the fourth, limited intelligence, a first attack of mania at six- 
teen years of age, stupidity, transition to idiocy complete and iacurable.” 
The following cases were sent me by Dr. Wm. 13. Hazard, medical superin- 
tendent of St. Louis County Lunatic Asylum, in reply to circular: 
“Mr. N . No alcoholism in ancestors so far as known; a very hard 
drinker in his earlier manhood. His first three children, boys, were idiots,— 
idiocy almost complete. Mr. N. now reformed. His next son was bright but 
dissipated,—had to flee the country for forgery. Two daughters and one son 
followed, all of whom were excellent people.” 
“ Two gentlemen named S , now in middle life, both very hard drinkers. 
One has been in asylum many times with mania a jootu ; the other given to 
sexual excesses, adultery, etc. Their mother was a bastard and addicted to 
drink. One daughter of the first lewd, the other children not yet adult.” 
Dr. H. F. Lyster of Detroit kindly sent me the following: 
“ The father lived to be 48. He was of healthy stock and fine physique, had 
an excellent mind, was high bred, and educated to a profession. He had been 
brought up a moderate drinker, and during the last fifteen years of his life had 
been a very hard drinker, and the last seven years of his life an habitual drunk- 
ard, and mentally and physically disabled by alcoholic stimulants. It was 
during these fifteen years that most of the children were born. The mother 
lived to be 87 and has had thirteen children, and much care and work until 
within twenty years of her decease. She possessed a strong, healthy mental 
and physical constitution, much superior in both to the majority of people of 
the best class. Her mental and physical superiority existed until death. She 
was a total abstainer. 
“Of the thirteen children, five died in infancy or early childhood of causes 
unknown to the writer, and were among the earlier children. Of those reach- 
ing adult life, one son died from accident at 22, healthy bodily and mentally, 
and not intemperate; one daughter of heart disease at 18, mentally bright; and 
one son died of softening of the brain at 45, after a three years’ illness. One 
daughter has had chorea for years of an aggravated character, wholly unfitting 
her for society and rendering connected conversation impossible. Her age is 
02. One son shows symptoms of approaching mental debility, at 59. One 
daughter nervous and near-sighted at 56. One son has had partial paralysis 
and softening of brain at 52. One son a confirmed drunkard, now 40. One 
daughter nervous, eccentric, and very near-sighted at 44. All were near- 
sighted. 
“ The men were all, with the exception of the one which died at 22 and the 
one now a confirmed drunkard, moderate drinkers. Previous to accidental death 
of one and the premature decay of the others, all were men of superior ability, 
education, and attainments, and were of excellent physique.” 
Case II. “ Mother, English, a healthy, hard-working woman of 50, of lowr 18 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
mental organization and small head ; had three sons, one, the oldest, almost 
‘non compos mentis,’ aged about 30, has epilepsy, no education ; one of medium 
intelligence but not bright, aged 28 ; and one of very low degree of intelligence, 
no education, aged 24 years. The father died from apoplexy,—a man of good 
physique, but had been a hard drinker for years.” 
On this subject Dr. Andrew McFarland writes me as follows: 
“ Some instances occurring to me are very interesting. I know one old New 
England family line in which insanity has existed now for the fifth generation, 
not less than 150 individuals having been victims of that inheritance. 
“When Dr. Bell of the McLane Asylum and myself were in charge of neigh- 
boring institutions, we could always count among our patients eight or ten 
out of this original family stock; and yet itproduced personsof eminent ability, 
from President of the United States downward. 
“In such notable instances there will be a great infusion of cases of dipso- 
maniacs, besides hard drinkers not classed as diseased. 
“I thus believe,—though I cannot show facts absolutely to prove,—that 
these predispositions often date from some vigorously constituted individual, 
who ingrafted on the stock habits of inebriety. To show how and when vicious 
infusions get into an originally pure stock; as, for instance, in the case of the 
great and good Jonathan Edwards, some of whose descendants had a distinc- 
tion in profligacy as great as his own for the opposite, would be interesting and 
profitable if we had the facts. But I believe the greatest disasters to blood 
come in on the female side; for it seems next to impossible for a dipsomaniac 
mother to have a progeny not very largely vitiated. It is only to cite common 
observation how liquor-drinking, opium-eating, and sexual excesses and loose- 
ness, cling as habits to certain families ; a fact not all explainable on a theory 
of mutual example. If we could trace back, we should, I imagine, find the 
exact generation where the ruling vice came in, as we could where the royal 
house of Austria got its distinguishing lip, or the Bourbon his nose. 
“ It is your stout old hero, who goes to bed every night with liquor enough 
underhis belt to fuddle halfadozen ordinary men, and yet lives out his three score 
years and ten, that will be found at the fountain head of the stock that pours 
into the world, generation after generation, such a crop of lunatics, epileptics, 
eccentrics, and inebriates as we often see. The impunity with which one so 
constituted will violate all physical law gets its set-off in a succeeding genera- 
tion, when the great harvest begins. 
“That ‘the iniquities of the fathers are visited upon the children, that the 
fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge,’ are 
truths that no scripture is needed to teach. In other words, he who sins 
through physical excess does not do half the harm to himself that he does to 
the inheritors of his blood. The penalty has got to he paid as sure as the obli- 
gation of Faust to the Evil One.” 
Several of the superintendents of insane asylums have stated, in answer to 
the fourth question in the circular sent them, that the proportion of insane 
persons whose insanity appears to take its origin in an hereditary degeneracy 
from alcoholism in the parents or ancestors is increasing. 
This may be only an apparent increase owing to the more careful scrutiny 
with which this very question is investigated, or it may be a real increase from 
the greater age of the nation, and the longer indulgence in alcoholic drinks by 
certain families, in whom the taint of blood becomes stronger in each succeed- 
ing generation. Indeed is not the greater proportion of insane persons in the ENTA1LMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
19 
older States, as New York and Massachusetts, mainly to be explained in this 
way ? 
As the Western States grow older, will not such examples of entailed degen- 
eracy in families or clans, as related above by Dr. McFarland, become common 
unless the very source of the degeneracy be dried up ? 
If this reasoning be true, it is not surprising that in England and Scotland, 
where for several centuries almost all the people have been habitual drinkers, 
and where the taint of blood, though very small three or four centuries ago, 
has been constantly deepening from generation to generation, there should be 
very many families giving a similar or even a darker history in respect to in- 
sanity, than the New England family above mentioned, while other families 
may have long ago, from the same cause, become extinct ? 
In this way it is easily to be believed that the proportion of insanity trace- 
able to such degeneracy might be indefinitely increased. 
Is not the very fact that after several generations such degenerate families 
do become exhausted the very salvation of the race ? 
Says Dr. S. G. Howe, in answer to a question in the circular: “ Families are 
exhausted and become extinct, but not the race.” 
Thus the fearful judgment pronounced by God, “I will visit the iniquities 
of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation,” while it 
contains a condemnation and punishment for the sins of individuals and fam- 
ilies, inherent in the very laws of physiology; contains, also, a merciful provi- 
sion for the perpetuity of the race, in that it hints that the tainted blood and 
degenerate stock shall, after so many generations, become extinct and give 
place to others, and the accompanying benediction pronounced upon the 
righteous appears to warrant this interpretation. 
DOES ALCOHOL SHORTEN THE LIVES OF THOSE WHO HABITUALLY DRINK IT ? 
From what has preceded, this question might very safely be answered in the 
affirmative. But in making up the case against alcohol, it is my purpose to 
establish every position by well authenticated facts or the conclusions of those 
whose business it has been to collect and collate such facts. 
And here we are indebted largely to insurance companies and their actuaries 
for many facts bearing upon this question. 
1 “ Thus the policies issued by four of the principle offices (in England) 
amounted to 6,153 and the number of deaths during a given period to 117, 
being an average of almost 20 deaths to 1,000 members. During the same 
period the Temperance Provident Institution issued 1,596 policies and had only 
12 deaths, or 7£ per thousand, being nearly one-half less than the deaths in 
the most healthy non-teetotal offices, as follows: 
1st office issued 838 policies; had 11 deaths; 13 to 1000. 
2d “ “ 1,901 “ “ 27 “ 14 
3d “ “ 944 “ “ 14 “ 15 “ 
4th “ « 2,470 “ “ 65 “ 26 
T. P. Inst. “ 1,596 “ “ 12 “ 7£ “ 
“In the government returns of the sickness and mortality of the European 
troops forming the Madras army for the year 1849, in which the men are 
classed as total abstainers, temperate, and intemperate, the results are highly 
favorable to the total abstaining soldiers. Of 450 total abstaining soldiers the 
rate per cent of admission into hospital for treatment of various diseases was 
130.888. The rate per cent of deaths was 1.111. Of 4,318 temperate soldiers 
1 Bacchus Dethroned. A Prize Essay. By Frederick Powell. 20 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
the rate per cent of admission into hospital for treatment of various diseases 
was 141.593. The rate per cent of deaths was 2.315. Of 942 intemperate soldiers 
the rate per cent of admission into hospital for treatment of various diseases 
was 214.861. The rate per cent of deaths was 4.458. ‘ From these it will be 
seen,’ says Dr. Carpenter, ‘that whilst the number of deaths among 450 total 
abstainers during the year was 5, or 11.1 per thousand, the number among 4,318 
temperate men was 100, or 23.1 per 1,000, being rather more than double the 
previous proportion. As to the intemperate the increase is frightful, for among 
942 such men the number of deaths was not less than 42, or in the quadruple 
ratio of 44.5 per 1,000.” 
Dr. Willard Parker of New York city, late President of the New York State 
Inebriate Asylum, in “Statistics of Inebriety,” gives the results of the distin- 
guished English actuary, Mr. Neison, who took a prominent part in investigat- 
ing the influence of inebriety upon the risks of life insurance companies, both 
in this country and abroad, as follows : 
1st. When in a given number of risks ten temperate persons die between the 
ages of fifteen and twenty inclusive, eighteen intemperate persons die. 
2d. When in a given number of risks ten temperate persons die between the 
ages of twenty-one and thirty inclusive, fifty-one intemperate persons die, or 
the risk on an inebriate is more than 500 per cent greater than on a temperate 
person. 
3d. When in a given number of risks ten temperate persons die between the 
ages of thirty-one and forty inclusive, about forty intemperate persons die, or 
the risk is increased Jf)0 per cent. 
A person’s chances of living at the various ages are given as follows : 
At 20, the expectancy of a temperate person is 44.2 years, of an intemper- 
ate person 15.6. At 30, the expectancy of a temperate person is 36.5 years, 
of an intemperate person 13.8. At 40, the expectancy of a temperate person 
is 28.8 years, of an intemperate person 11.6. 
These statistics and tables give an emphatic answer, that alcohol does shorten 
the lives of its consumers, and fully justifies the average per cent (28) given in 
the answers of physicians to the 3d question in the circular. 
On account of the great length to which this paper has already come, I shall 
pass over the relation of alcohol to accidents and the accidental destruction of 
human life with simply an appeal to the common observation of men to justify 
my charge that more than one half of all the accidents occurring in the year, 
by sea and land, are chargeable more or less directly to alcohol. 
In respect to its relation to vice,—the social vice,—and the disease that is sown 
by and feeds upon it, almost every physician can bear testimony, that, in a 
large majority of cases suffering from venereal diseases, the testimony of the 
victim is, “I drank, and when my passions were inflamed, my moral sense 
blunted, my conscience overwhelmed, and my will dethroned, I was led to the 
house if her ‘whose steps take hold on hell.’” 
For brothels to flourish, they must either keep liquors themselves or be 
located close to a drinking saloon. 
Not one in ten of these places could be kept up for a year, were it not that 
the baser passions of men are inflamed ana unbridled by alcohol in or near 
them. 
I have no heart to describe the woeful inheritance of diseases in body, mind, 
and soul, of the children of parents in whom the poison of syphilis is mingled 
with that of alcohol. ENT AILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
21 
But I cannot retain from referring to some statistics showing the relation of 
alcohol to crime. 
‘“Mr. Simmons, governor of the Canterbury prison thus writes: ‘The 
number of prisoners who have been committed to the prison with which I have 
been connected during the last fifteen years amounts to 22,000; among whom 
I have never met with one being a teetotaler. 
From the experience I have had I calculate that from 90 to 92 per cent, of 
all crimes are committed through taking intoxicating drink, in a direct or in- 
direct way.’” 
“ The Kev. W. Caine, M. A., late chaplain of the Salford Hundred Jail says 
of 296 female convicts, 165 confessed that they were drunkards ; of 704 males 
480 admitted that they were drunkards.” 
The chaplain of the Massachusetts State’s Prison testifies “that 19 out of 
every 20, confined within these prison walls were there for crimes committed 
through the agency of liquor.” 
Almost all our judges of Police Courts will coincide with the English Judge 
Coleridge, who says: “There is scarcely a crime that comes before me that 
is not, directly or indirectly caused by strong drink,” and Judge Wightman, 
when he says “I find in every calendar that comes before me one unfailing 
source, directly or indirectly, of most of the crimes that are committed—in- 
temperance" 
Abundant statistics are at hand to show that the amount of crime varies in 
close ratio with the amount of liquors drank by a people. To only two such 
facts will I now allude. 
1 “In England and Wales during the four years succeeding 1820, the con- 
sumption of spirits amounted to 27,0C0,000 gallons, and the number of crim- 
inals committed for trial was 61,262. During the eight years from 1824 to 
1832 the committals had increased 50 per cent and the consumption of spirits 
77 per cent.” 
“ In Scotland” says Dr. Nott, “ in 1823 the whole consumption of intoxicat- 
ing liquors amounted to 2,300,000 gallons; in 1837 to 6,776,715 gallons. In 
the meantime crime increased 400 per cent, fever 1600 per cent, deaths 300 
per cent and the chances of human life diminished 44 per cent.” 
“In 1840, owing to the Great Temperance Agitation conducted by Father 
Mathew, the public houses within the police bounds of Dublin had lessened 
by 237, and the prisoners in the Kichmond Bridewell, which had numbered 136 
on the first of September 1839, were reduced to 23 on the sixth of November 
1840.” 
“Lord Morpeth, when Secretary for Ireland, gave the following statistics in 
a speech on the condition of Ireland, delivered after a public dinner in Dublin. 
Of cases of murder, assault with attempt to murder, outrageous offence against 
the person, aggravated assault, cutting and maiming, there were in 1837, 12,- 
096; 1838, 11,058; 1839, 1,097; 1840, 173. 
“ Of persons charged with murder within the police bounds of Dublin, in 
1838, 14 ; in 1839, 4; in 1840, 2 ; in 1841, 1. 
“The Temperance Agitation commenced in 1838, and by the tenth of Octo- 
ber Father Mathew had inscribed on his roll of Teetotalers 2,500,000 names, 
and the consumption of spirits had decreased for the year 1840 by 5,000,000 
gallons.” 
In the annual report of the Inspectors of the State Prison of this State, for 
1 Powell’s Prize Essay. 22 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
1873, I find that of the 655 prisoners remaining in the Prison at the close of 
the year 305 or 46.57 per cent were intemperate ; 143 or 21.83 per cent were 
moderate drinkers ; 207 or 31.60 per cent are said to be “ temperate.” 
I instituted an inquiry of the agent to learn if possible what per cent of the 
prisoners were the children of intemperate parents; but was sorry to learn 
lhat no such statistics had been attempted. If such statistics could be secured it 
would throw a flood of light upon the question as to whether the tendency to 
crime is inherited as an entailment from alcoholism in the parents or ancestors, 
and, I have no doubt, would show that, directly or indirectly, alcohol sends 90 
per cent of the inmates to the State Prison. 
Alcohol is chargeable with, by far, the greater proportion of pauperism. 
Statistics are not wanting to demonstrate this proposition, but it really seems 
needless to advance them, when we consider the vast amount of money that is 
spent for intoxicating drinks, the immense number of days that are squandered 
in its use, the sickness that it produces, the constitutions that it breaks down, the 
loss of hope, courage, self respect, as well as the respect of others, that it be- 
gets, the degeneracy of the whole man that follows its use, and above all the 
physical, mental and moral degeneracy that it entails upon the children of its 
victims. 
In reply to the question “in what percentage of cases, in your opinion, is 
the depraved appetite of the inmates of your institution, due to hereditary de- 
generacy, taking its origin in alcoholism in the parents or ancestors,” Dr. Al- 
bert Day, late Superintendent of Binghamton Inebriate Asylum, says: “ This 
class of inebriates are seldom found in our reformatory institutions. They are 
oftener found with the criminal classes and pauper establishments. They sel- 
dom seek reformatory influences. They are usually degenerate in mind and 
body—never aspire above a life of dependence and find only agreeable compan- 
ionship with the low and vicious.” 
From this class our poor houses are largely filled. 
My pen would certainly fail to pertray the suffering, want, crime, misery, and 
degradation that alcohol causes to the people of Michigan. 
I know that I have made a fearful indictment against alcohol; but, fully 
sustained by the facts, as I believe, it abundantly justifies me in bringing it, 
with some of its proofs, before you, and, through you, before the people of this 
State. Indeed, this Board would be recreant to its sacred duties if it did not 
faithfully publish these facts to the people; and will largely fail in the objects 
for which it was created, if it does not propose some means by which, if fol- 
lowed, these great and terrible burdens and curses upon a people may be es- 
caped from. 
Let me briefly summarize the indictment: Alcohol destroys a vast amount 
of the money of the people; squanders for the people of the State, in ono 
year, hundreds of years of valuable time; it vitiates the blood, diseases and 
enfeebles all the organs of the bodies of those who use it; dethrones their rea- 
son; debases many to a lower level than the brutes; from intelligent, reason- 
ing beings, it makes men drivelling idiots; makes men more susceptible to, 
with less power to resist, disease; begets in men a disease that enervates and 
destroys the will, overwhelms the conscience, and perverts the moral sense ; 
entails upon their children every form of physical, mental and moral degener- 
acy,—makes them insane; makes them eliminate; makes them idiots; exhausts 
the vitality, physical and mental, of whole families, and causes them to become 
extinct; causes more sickness and deaths in adults and children, than any 
other,—yes, than all other preventable causes of sickness and death ; it fills our ENTAILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
23 
insane asylums, our hospitals and our alms-houses ; fills the land with crime, 
onr reform schools, houses of correction, jails and State prisons with crimi- 
nals; brings a large proportion of the taxes upon the people; and gives in re- 
turn, nothing but the gratification of an animal appetite that grows more sen- 
sual every day. 
In view of these tremendous and portentous evils what ought this Board to 
do? 
Carbon oils that do not stand a fire test of 150° are condemned, and this 
Board has done its plain duty in pointing out the danger of such oils, and the 
fact that manufacturers and their self-styled inspectors have been guilty of the 
grossest frauds in sending to Michigan oils far below the standard, and that 
endanger the people of the State with a dozen or twenty explosions in a year, 
killing or horribly disfiguring as many persons, and destroying, perhaps, as 
many thousand dollars worth of property: And this is our duty; it is right, 
—the people approve. 
Wall paper with Scheie’s green upon it, endangering a few families and 
killing perhaps a half dozen or so, persons in a year, has been tabooed by this 
Board, and labeled “ poisonous”—“ dangerous to life.” Waters are ana- 
lyzed, and the air of school-rooms tested, to warn against impurities that in- 
sidiously implant the seeds of disease in old and young; filthy streets, reeking 
cesspools, and unclean slaughter-houses are declared nuisances, lest they breed 
disease and prepare the way for the winged pestilence ; and the people say it is 
well,—so let it be. 
Shall we have nothing to say upon these direful and destructive effects of 
alcohol, so wide spread among the people, and reaching onward by their bane- 
ful influence, to the third and fourth generation,—even to the extinction of 
whole families? 
“ God’s great remedy for the world’s great curse, is total and universal ab- 
stinence from making, selling and drinkinq intoxicating liquors.” 
Is a man with no vitiated tastes, and no inherited degeneracy, physical, men- 
tal or moral, perfectly safe from the horrid brood of evils of this demon ? 
Such a man does not love alcoholic drinks; he must learn to drink them. 
But his only safety is in always totally abstaining from them, for habitual in- 
dulgence in them, even slightly, vitiates his taste and begets a diseased ap- 
petite. 
Can a young man who, from some taint of blood, has inherited from his 
parents or ancestors that morbid desire for stimulants, be secured from this 
brood of evils ? Yes! if the taint of blood is not so strong as to wholly 
enervate the will; but he, only, by totally abstaining. And is it not possible, 
that, by so doing, and by intermarrying with a person in whose blood there is 
no such taint, he may do much towards eliminating that taint from his descen- 
dents ? 
But there is a large class of persons who have inherited such a taint of blood, 
and such a degree of degeneracy of stock, that their moral sense is blunted, 
and their wills overwhelmed by a depraved and demanding appetite, whenever 
they are in the the presence of alcoholic drinks. Such persons can be kept 
from drinking and still further vitiating their constitutions, and bringing still 
deeper degeneracy upon their offspring, only by removing them from the 
temptation, or the temptation from them. 
Again there are those, who, originally from undegenerate stock, have by 
former indulgences in drink generated within themselves a diseased condition, 
alcoholism, that declares itself, in one way, by an inordinate appetite for drink, 24 
CIRCULAR OK STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN 
which makes a slave of the will, and renders it morally certain that they will 
drink if the temptation is still before them. 
Now the State, as a law making power, appears at first sight to have done its 
duty by these classes of persons to protect them from the direful temptation, 
for in the Constitution the Legislature is prohibited from granting a license 
for the sale of intoxicating drinks, and the Legislature itself has repeatedly 
passed enactments prohibiting their sale under pain and penalties. But the 
fault is with communities,—w'ith society,—that the laws are mostly a dead let- 
ter, unexecuted. Can this fault be obviated, and how ? This is the inquiry of 
to-day. 
Does the State or Society owe to a certain class of its citizens Inebriate 
Asylums? 
While, by the silent approval of Society, if not by the authority of the 
State, alcoholic drinks are more freely, abundantly and conspicuously offered 
for sale than bread-stuffs, meats or groceries, there will alw’ays be a large class 
of citizens in whom the disease, alcoholism, has already developed insanity, or 
imbecility, and another large class upon whom, this disease in their parents, 
has entailed a degeneracy cropping out in all forms of defectiveness and crime. 
For these poor victims of the consequences of this disease, the State is already 
providing asylums, alms-houses, jails and prisons. But there are hundreds of 
men and women, now in this State, afflicted with this disease, alcoholism, in 
whom, as yet, insanity, as it is commonly understood, has not been developed, 
and whose degeneracy is not hopeless, but in whom, if neglected, the very 
worst consequences will follow. 
Their appetite for drink is depraved, keen and clamorous; their wills are 
enervated and powerless, yet their better natures summon them, often with 
really strong desires, to go back and escape from the toils of the destroyer; but 
alas! in the constant presence of the tempter they are powerless to retrieve 
their lost condition. 
Does the State or Society owre anything to such men ? 
I am no defender of that sickly sentimentalism and shallow ethics that would 
consider all drunkenness, all indulgence in alcoholic drinks, evidence of a dis- 
ease that makes the man or woman more to be pitied than blamed; neither 
am I a believer in that silly casuistry that would consider the fact that so many 
persons drink alcoholic stimulants evidence that there is a divinely implanted 
desire and need for such things, and that the yielding to such desire moderate- 
ly is no sin if not positively a virtue. 
That this morbid desire for stimulants comes to some men as a direct inher- 
itance from drinking parents or ancestors, who themselves had no such inher- 
itance, is true; that it is in some men, depraved in all their instincts, on account 
of some inherited degeneracy of stock is also true; while many men create 
that appetite by indulgence in drink, under the social customs of society, or on 
account of some unfavorable physical conditions. Certainly in most of the 
cases the depraved appetite may be traced back through the generations until 
it first started in unmitigated sinful indulgence. 
But the real practical question is not, “ who did sin, this man or his parents ?” 
but, being diseased, can the disease be stayed and he be restored again to society 
and to usefulness as a citizen? 
If the State or society permits the free exhibition and sale of alcoholic 
drinks to these men, there is, certainly, due to them, that Inebriate Asylums 
be at once established where they may be restrained and kept from temptation 
until nature, assisted by careful hygienic and skillful medical treatment, res- ENTAILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
25 
tores to them the equilibrium of their being, brings back their self respect, anti 
re-establishes their wills. This would seem, indeed, to be but simple justice. 
Man is his brother’s keeper. From Eden all along through the ages, has been 
ringing in the ears of society the voice of God “where is Abel thy brother? ” 
That a considerable proportion of such diseased persons, may, by restraint 
and seclusion in such an institution for a considerable length of time, be re- 
stored to themselves and to their families and society, is, I think abundantly 
proven by the reports of the Inebriate Asylums already established in this 
country. 
In reply to a circular which I sent to these institutions, I received the follow- 
ing answers to this question : “ What percentage of those persons, in whom 
the disease or depraved appetite takes its origin in alcholism, either in the in- 
dividual, or his parentsor ancestors, are, in your opinion, curable ? ” From one, 
—“at least three-fourths;”from another,—“every man in whom the depraved 
appetite has resulted in alcoholism, who will use his will power, and has proper 
influences around him which he will accept, can be cured;” and from a third,— 
“ very small indeed ;” and from a fourth,—“ thirty per cent, if time is given and 
all appliances continued.” 
And in reply to the question “ which class is the most amenable to treat- 
ment ?” the replies indicated that “ more success was attained in the restoration 
of those who had contracted the disease from the indulgences in social life, in 
distinction from those who habitually drank alone,” and in the “habitual” as 
distinguished from the “ periodical ” drunkards. 
I was surprised at the small percentage of cases in these institutions, in 
whom the depraved appetite is due to hereditary degeneracy, taking its origin 
in alcoholism in the parents or ancestors, “ five” or “ ten” per cent. But Dr. 
Albert Day’s note upon this point, before quoted, appears satisfactorily to 
explain it. 
But as is manifest from the reports of these gentlemen, and also from the 
nature of the case, Inebriate Asylums can reach but a very small proportion of 
the victims of alcohol, and can fully antidote none of its baneful efforts. I 
do not believe the depraved appetite can ever be wholly eradicated, and no 
sooner does the reformed and restored inebriate leave the asylum than all the 
temptations that formerly surrounded him, are again weaving their, almost 
necessarily, fatal spells around him till he again falls and is a hopeless, help- 
less, ruined man. 
Contemplate this fearful and absurd circle; society permits, and by its silence, 
upholds, the means that make Inebriate Asylums a part of her duty to citizens, 
and when she has done this duty she sends the restored man back to the same 
means, that by them “the second state of that man may be made worse than 
the first.” 
Although society may have attempted to pay some of its obligations to these 
unfortunate citizens, has she by that means discharged her duties to herself? 
Does she intelligently obey the first law of nature? 
A few of the diseased ones are cared for, it is true, but the fountain from 
which flows the ever widening stream of disease and death is not stopped, nor 
has there been any attempt to cleanse its stygian waters, or set bounds to its 
demon-inhabited waves, or limit its horrid brood of evils. 
I am sure that the moral sense of the people of Michigan will not be satis- 
fied, nor will the evils of intemperance be considerably stayed until society 
shall every where throughout the State, rise up in its might and smite king 26 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
alcohol; utterly dethroning him ; driving him, where he always should have 
been, to the place of a drug; a medicine or an adjuvant to the arts. 
That so desirable, salutary, and just a condition of affairs can be brought 
about at once, I am not sanguine enough, for one moment, to expect. For its 
accomplishment there needs the united, continuous, and prolonged effort of 
all who see and deprecate these evils, and who study the well-being of society 
and the nobility and perpetuity of the State. 
Let us look for a moment at the strength of the enemy with which we have 
to deal, and count some of his resources. • 
The amount of the retail sales in alcoholic drinks in this State for the year 
18G5 are given by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue for that year as 
$52,874,170, and this vast sum was distributed among, say, 10,000 dealers. 
Now nearly or quite one-half this sum was profit, i. e., over and above the cost 
of the liquors,—$26,000,000 per annum profit upon this single business 1 
One-half of this vast sum would at any time be used as a corruption fund, 
if necessary, to defend and protect the other half; this sum, used by intelli- 
gent, determined men, makes an enemy of no small power or despicable 
resources. The influence of thi3 money arrays for the defense of this traffic, 
not the dealers in intoxicating drinks and their immediate dependents alone, 
but many, very many, others, who with Pharisaical pride “thank God that 
they are not so depraved and unmindful of the interests of society as these 
publicans,” and yet, seeing some personal interest in this vast sum of gain 
from this business, are unwilling to say or do ought against it. The bankers 
receive the deposits of these dealers and dare not be known as opposers of the 
liquor traffic; the lawyer and the doctor count many of their clients or patients 
among the dealers or their victims; the merchant, tradesman, the mechanic 
and the daily workman, all fear to plant themselves in open declared opposi- 
tion to the dram-selling business, lest their own revenues be curtailed. The 
great and prevailing cry is, especially in large villages and cities, “put down 
the traffic in alcoholic drinks, and you destroy a large portion of the industry 
of the people, and blot out at once, even for the State of Michigan, a businees 
that brings to the people of the State a profit of $26,000,000 per annum. 
As in an ancient city, when the apostles of a pure and elevating Christianity 
proclaimed its life-giving principles to the people, men who had their wealth 
by a certain occupation were able to induce a whole city to cry out “great is 
Diana of the Ephesians,” so, to-day, for precisely similar reasons are many 
found to join in the cry “great is King Alcohol, and the business that it gives 
to a community.” The cry of to-day is just as base and specious as that in 
Ephesus 1800 years ago. And yet this very cry is the reason why in our large 
villages and cities the prohibitory law of the State is not executed. Its 
speciousness will be seen from the fact that not one-fourth of the intelligent 
men who join in it but will confess that if alcoholic drinks could in one month 
be driven from the community, society would move on far more prosperously, 
and all that money and industry be employed in occupations that would vastly 
increase the business of the place and bring far more real profit to the people. 
Money, then,—the $26,000,000 per annum,—with all its varied and wide 
spread influence, constitutes the enemy’s means of defense. 
As men are constituted, those who have waged war against alcohol and its 
traffic, must bring the same weapons to bear against it that are used in iti 
defense. 
As the “almighty dollar” is the only argument that can reach many men 
upon this question, this argument must be theoretically and practically urged ENTAILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
27 
until it is demonstrated, and men are made to feel that to sell rum is not only 
disgraceful and outrageously sinful, but is, actually, a pecuniary loss to indi- 
viduals and to communities. 
"While society permits this business to be carried on in spite of the position 
of the State, as shown by her constitution and her prohibitory enactments, its 
evil effects can, and ought to be limited and mitigated in various ways, some 
of which I shall endeavor to point out. 
The baneful influence which so-called, “patent medicines,” and especially 
those bearing the name “ bitters,” have in securing recruits to the great army 
of inebriates, is a matter of common observation, and has been mentioned in 
numerous answers to the circular to physicians. 
Some men drink these vile compounds, it is true, intelligently, thinking it 
a concealed, or an excused way of taking whiskey,—but many others, some- 
what ailing, and for whom a neighbor, or, perhaps a lazy or ignorant doctor 
has recommended some “ bitters,” take them in ignorance and continue to do 
so until the depraved appetite has been generated and fixed, and the way down 
to confirmed inebriety is straight and swift. 
That I might speak intelligently upon this point, I have requested Prof. R_ 
0. Kedzie to make an analysis of two specimens of these “ bitters.” I give hi* 
analysis below: 
Lansing-, Feb. 4,1874. 
H. 0. Hitelicock, M. 1)., President of State Board of Health : 
Dear Doctor:—I have examined a bottle of “Drake’s Plantation Bitters 
and find it contains per cent of alcohol. 
I have also examined a bottle of “ Hostetters’ Stomach Bitters,” and find it 
contains 40£ per cent of alcohol.” 
Very respectfully, R. C. KEDZIE, 
Member of State Board of Health. 
The Doctor adds, “It is horrible to think that the sick and feeble should be 
beguiled by the promise and hope of health to resort to the use of these 
“ bitters”—persons, too, who would recoil from the habitual use of whiskey and 
rum. Yet if they use these bitters according to directions and follow this 
course for any long period of time, they are unwittingly on the road to drunk- 
enness. Any one would recognize this danger if advised to take “a wineglass- 
ful” of whiskey or rum before each meal, but when they do the same thing 
umcarned, they still run the same perilous course so far as the establishment 
of the alcoholic appetite is concerned. 
Drake’s Plantation Bitters purports to be St. Croix Rum, with “ Calasaya 
bark and other roots and herbs.” It contains per cent of alcohol, or a pint 
of poor rum, and four ounces of other material for flavoring, etc. Its use as a 
morning appetizer old soakers will fully appreciate. 
Hostetter’s Bitters is worse than Drake’s, as it contains more alcohol and 
that more nicely disguised with sugar and aromatics. Twenty ounces (a bottle) 
of Ilostetter contains the alcohol of one pint of whiskey.” 
Is it not the duty of this Board to recommend to the Legislature to pass a 
law requiring that the manufacturers of all such “ bitters,” if they are to be 
sold at all in this State, should put conspicuously upon their label of each 
and every bottle the exact per cent of alcohol in its contents ? This would 
compel these vile compounds at least to take their places with alcoholic drinks 
where they belong. Let the failure to so label each and every bottle of such 28 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
medicines sold within the State be visited with condign punishment, both 
upon the manufacturer and upon the seller. 
The Legislature has wisely passed an act to prevent the advertisement and 
sale of drugs and medicines designed to produce criminal abortion ; but shall 
the State put such obstacles in the way of a woman who would prevent herself 
from becoming the mother of a child by a debased and drunken husband with 
all the possibilities attaching to that child of being idiotic, insane, a criminal 
from inherited predisposition, or a worse drunkard than him w'ho begat him ; 
and shall it not put any obstacle in the way of a father or a mother becoming 
unwittingly possessed of the drunkard’s appetite, and unwittingly made to 
bequeath to their offspring the drunkard’s entailments ? 
In view of the alleged, and apparent failure of prohibition, as it has assumed 
shape in our State constitution, and the former enactments of the Legislature, 
many persons, who sincerely deplore the great and increasing evils of intem- 
perance, are most strenuously urging that the State should recede from its 
prohibition grounds and enact a stringent license law. 
Indeed such a change in the State constitution has been proposed by 
the recent Constitutional Commission, and has just been discussed by the 
Legislature. 
Whether it would be submitted again to the people to choose between license 
and prohibition in the organic law of the State was, for a time, uncertain. 
That many who strenuously advocate this measure are honest in their effort to 
inaugurate it, and sincere in their belief that, when inaugurated, it will largely 
diminish the evils of the whiskey traffic, I have no doubt. 
The shrewd and cunning liquor dealers have played their game very deftly 
until they supposed the question was fairly before the people for approval or 
rejection. Then they have at once come out with a “ Confidential Circular” 
to the “ Liquor Trade,” in which all the “ 40,000 voters in the State who are 
directly interested in the license question,” are urged to come up unitedly to the 
support of the measure. “The Leader” has been established in the interests 
of license, and all liquor men are invited to become agents for its circulation. 
Subscriptions to the “Leader” can be sent to any of the 130 subscribers to 
the “ Confidential Circular.” 
Does this movement on the part of liquor men look as if “ license ” was 
expected to decrease the sale of their wares ? Does it look as though “ license ” 
was expected to decrease and “hedge in” the evils growing out of the liquor 
traffic, or to “hedge in” the liquor dealers, by the protecting arms of the 
State ? 
It may be urged, with truth, perhaps, that a high rate of license will shut up 
many of the small retail establishments, which by the moro pretentious saloons 
and bar-rooms are called “ low doggeries but will it decrease the amount or 
improve the quality of the liquor drank ? Where do our young men start to 
become drunkards ?—at the “ low doggeries” or at the more pretentious saloons 
and in the bar-rooms of our first-class hotels ? 
If the starting places for drunkards are not diminished, but on the contrary 
are amplified by means of license, and made more respectable by the sanc- 
tion and protection of the State, will such a system reduce the number of 
drunkards or mitigate the evils of drunkenness? Would not these very 
saloons, compelled to pay largely for the protection of the State, seek to whelm 
a greater number of victims into their hellish vortex than if they should 
remain as to-day, outlawed by the State ? ENTAILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
29 
Can a State which has stood up so nobly against this diabolic trade for 
eighteen years now be persuaded to trail her flag to sucli an enemy ? 
Far better let the wretched work go on under protest and in spite of prohi- 
bition, than to be a yielding and a willing agent to carry it on ! 
But I am sure that the question is not to-day between “free rum, ” under 
the prohibition of the State and “protected rum ” under the license of the 
State. I am confident that the time i3 not very distant when the moral sense 
of the people upon this question, educated and awakened, shall create such a 
public opinion in every community that the prohibitory enactments shall no 
longer remain a dead letter; but the people shall arise in their majesty, and the 
bodies and the souls of the citizens of the State shall be protected and defended, 
instead of the “ hell-fire ” that now burns and destroys them. 
The woman’s movement in this cause is the outgrowth of an enlightened 
and an awakened conscience that pervades the whole people. It recognizes the 
power of the enemy; knowing that “ this kind goeth not out but by prayer and 
fasting,” it takes hold of an arm stronger than man’s and above the State. 
Every one who loves his fellow men, and rejoices in the downfall of evil, 
though he might not have inaugurated such a movement, yet, with all his 
heart, wishes it a God-speed ! 
Would to God, that, as John the Baptist was a precurser of one that was 
greater than he, even so this movement may be the precurser of a movement 
that shall wholly overthrow the demon alcohol, and shall usher in the kingdom 
of temperance and good will to men ! 
But this woman’s movement must be supplemented by an earnest aggressive 
movement of society under the prohibitory laws of the State. 
What shall that movement be? Given, the following elements of the ques- 
tion, how shall the question be solved ? License is prohibited by the State 
Constitution; the sale of liquor is prohibited by the laws of the State; the 
sale of intoxicants is carried on to an enormous extent by many hundred 
citizens; this sale makes inebriates; makes insane; makes paupers; makes 
idiots; projects these entailments into future generations; makes more crimi- 
nals than all other causes; levies a vast burden of taxes; brings more want, 
suffering, and misery upon the people than all other causes. 
A question with such pressing and fearful elements must have an answer. 
If it is decided that the few who sell liquor, and fatten upon the woe, the pov- 
erty, and the miseries of others, cannot effectually be hindered from doing it, 
is it not at least fair that they be required to bear the burdens which they 
create? It would certainly seem but simple justice that a special tax be 
placed upon every liquor dealer in the State, of a certain per cent upon the 
amount of the sales ; for example, 5 per cent on the wholesale sales, and 10 per 
cent on the retail sales, the amount of sales to be given under oath. This tax 
should, upon the tax books, as well as upon the tax receipts, be thus divided 
and named; one portion (to be fixed by law) for the cure and restoration of 
inebriates; one portion for the cure or care of those made insane, directly, 
indirectly, or hereditarily, by alcohol; one portion for the care and maintenance 
of idiots and paupers, made so directly, indirectly, or hereditarily, by alcohol; 
and one portion for the punishment and cure of criminals, made such, directly, 
indirectly, or hereditarily, by alcohol. 
Such a tax would be based upon a principle that would seem to be eminently 
fitting and just. Indeed, the State has already recognized the principle in the 
enactment of the receut dog-law, in accordance with which every keeper of a 30 
CIRCULAIt OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
dog has to pay a tax that goes to pay for sheep that may be killed by dogs 
throughout the State. 
But the keepers of some of the more “ respectable ” saloons and “ bar-rooms 
of first-class hotels,” say, “ the whiskey sold by us makes no man an inebriate, 
insane, idiotic, or a criminal, and we ought not to be taxed as the keepers of 
these Mow doggeries’ are.” But the ‘Mow doggeries” would answer, “ we are 
the same breed of dogs as you, only that you are better fed than we.” “ You 
wound and demoralize the fair and sound sheep, and we feed upon the sheep 
that you have ruined.” 
But however just and righteous such a tux law would be, would it meet the 
whole case? Would it abolish the sale of intoxicants? I think not. For 
although the sale should be branded and constantly and publicly advertised as 
a drunkard-insane-idiot-pauper-criminal-producing business, and should thus 
become vastly unpopular, and none but the abandoned would engage in it 
still there would be found plenty of men base enough even then, for filthy 
lucre’s sake, to carry it on, and under such a stigma would try to drag as many 
to destruction as possible. Chains are the only means that will keep some 
dogs from killing sheep. But there is one other element to be added to the 
case, viz.: the fact that communities or society does note uphold the sale of 
liquor by its silent acquiescence and its neglect to execute the prohibitory laws. 
This element added to those already named, the complete and perfect cure for 
these dreadful evils seems most naturally to be indicated. 
Let the Constitution of the State be changed if necessary, so that the Legis- 
lature may pass a law requiring that any township, village, or city, that shall 
neglect to execute the present prohibitory liquor law, and shall permit the sale 
of intoxicating drinks within its boundaries, except as may be specified, shall 
levy upon all its tax-paying inhabitants a tax of a certain per cent of the 
amount of all the sales of intoxicating drinks within its boundaries, which tax 
shall be collected as other taxes are, and shall be paid into the treasury of the 
county, and shall be held sacred, in all its parts, for the purposes specified upon 
the tax roll and the tax receipts, which purposes shall be as follows, viz.: one 
portion (to be fixed by law) for the cure and restoration of inebriates; one 
portion for the cure and care of those made insane, directly, indirectly, or her- 
editarily, by alcohol; one portion for the care and maintenance of idiots and 
paupers, made so, directly, indirectly, or hereditarily, by alcohol; and one por- 
tion for the punishment and reformation of criminals, made such directly, 
indirectly, or hereditarily, by alcohol. 
Is it not quite time for the State to put upon its statute book the fact, by 
inference, at least, that intoxicating drinks are chargeable with the great 
crimes alleged against them ? 
Such a law would be based upon the principles of justice and equity. Openly 
charging the great evils that now are pressing down upon society like an 
incubus, directly to their source, it would do much towards alleviating those 
evils by providing means for the cure and restoration, or the care and main- 
tenance of their victims. It would lay the cure or care of the victims upon the 
very people who are responsible for their being victims. It would be like the 
voice of God telling men that they are their brother's keepers. 
But, says one, “only those who actually engage in selling intoxicating drinks 
are responsible for the evils which they do, and they only ought to be taxed 
for the damage which they cause.” The State, conscious of the righteousness 
of her former laws on this subject, sitting with even balance, answers. “ Ilere- ENTAILMENTS OF ALCOHOL. 
31 
tofore I have forbidden the sale of alcoholic drinks among my citizens, because 
I knew and deprecated the fearful consequences of such sale, and would have 
shielded all my citizens from them; and yet the sale has been continued, 
because in many towns, villages, and cities my citizens have not had the moral 
courage to say the law shall be executed. Besides many citizens, who know full 
well the effects of whiskey-drinking, because they think that some part of the 
proceeds of its sale may come to their pockets, have utterly refused to aid or 
abet the execution of my salutary laws, but have lent the whole moral power 
of their silence to those who willfully disobey my laws; while others have 
thought to court political favor and secure some office under my government 
by giving the whole force of their silent acquiescence to the free sale of whiskey. 
“In some places, it is true, my citizens have faithfully executed the laws and 
and the terrible effects of whiskey-drinking have been largely avoided. 
“ And yet, heretofore the taxes that have been incurred in consequence of this 
traffic have been spread upon all my citizens alike, both upon those who 
spurned my commands, and by their disobedience created those taxes, and those 
who obeyed my laws; both on those who lent their moral influence to the 
execution of my laws, and on those who gave the moral power of their silent 
acquiescence to the breaking of my laws. 
“Hereafter, it is my purpose that the consequences of evil doing shall be 
visited upon those only who disobey, or by the moral power of their silence 
encourage disobedience, and protect the disobedient. 
“It is my purpose also to take those burdens from those who obey and 
encourage obedience to my laws. 
“I can assure all my citizens that in the same degree in which they obey and 
secure obedience to my laws, will they be relieved of the burdens of these 
taxes. 
“I have taken this way to educate my citizens concerning the great and terri- 
ble evils of intemperance, and also concerning the crime of silently acquiescing 
in the disobedience of others. I want to teach them, too, that although ‘ millions ’ 
are now held out to tempt them on the side of whiskey and disobedience in its 
sale, yet the gains of obedience to my salutary laws are not to be computed by 
even ‘ millions/ 
“ Do the citizens of any town, village or city shrink from bearing the burden 
of the taxes I have named? They have only to compel obedience to my laws, 
and the taxes are not levied, for the necessity for those taxes does not exist. 
There is, also, no township, village or city, within my boundaries, where the 
intelligent, moral, and Christian citizens could not within three months, if 
their whole moral power was exerted, compel complete obedience to my laws 
of prohibition.” 
Gentlemen, for the education of the people of this State upon all matters 
touching this subject, so that the enactment and execution of such a law may 
be possible, carrying with it the execution of the present prohibitory laws of 
the State, and thus saving the State, both in the present and future generations, 
from the terrible entailments of alcohol, it must be ours to labor. 
We need more exact and complete statistics on all branches of this subject. 
What percentage of the people of the State do actually drink alcoholic 
liquors ? 
How many persons in the State do actually die annually, directly or indi- 
rectly, from the effects of alcoholic drinks ? 
Our present system of collecting the vital statistics is but the sheerest 32 
CIRCULAR OF STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MICHIGAN. 
mockery as it regards this matter, when every sort of disease is given to cover 
up deaths from alcoholism. 
We greatly need reliable statistics concerning the hereditament of physical 
and mental degeneracy from the effects of alcohol, and concerning the heredi- 
tary predisposition to crime and vice from the same cause. These can be 
secured only, or at least the best, in onr insane asylums and asylums for other 
defectives, our alms-houses, reform schools, jails, houses of correction and State 
prison. 
Would it not be well if this Board were placed in charge of these statistics, 
and authorized to design blank tables for each of the above named institutions, 
whereby their officers might further our efforts to secure such statistics? 
We need, too, to secure the exact or approximately exact figures as to the 
percentage of crime fairly attributable to alcohol, and the cost to the State of 
its detection and punishment. These statistics might be gathered by all 
criminal courts upon blanks to be designed by this Board, and would be of the 
utmost importance in the education of the people upon this subject. The 
statistics gathered annually by this Board, or by the officer who shall have 
them in charge, should be published and thoroughly circulated so as to reach 
every citizen of the State. 
But so much cannot be hoped of the present generation of adults as of those 
who are now children in our public schools. 
As the children are the great hope of the State, one of the greatest desiderata 
of our times is a manual of health for our public schools that shall not only 
embrace all the general principles of hygiene, but shall be especially full, clear, 
and distinct in its teachings, enforced by reliable statistics in respect to the 
influence upon the body and mind of the habitual or free use of the narcotic 
or narcotico-acrid stimulants. 
It would give me great pleasure if such a book were now at hand which this 
Board might recommend for adoption into our public schools. 
Should some philanthropist awake to the welfare of the coming generations 
or should the Legislature, at the suggestion of the Governor, offer a worthy 
prize for the production of the best work of this sort, covering the grounds I 
have named, I have no doubt that we should very soon be able to recommend 
for adoption into our public schools, a book every way in advance of any school 
physiology now extant, and a book that would accomplish very great good in 
staying the terrible evils of intemperance. 
I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness for very many of the facts and sta- 
tistics in this paper to the following authors, viz: Dr. Wm. B. Carpenter, F. 
R. S.; Dr. Henry Munroe, F. L. S.; Dr. W. Marcet, F.R. S.; Dr. F. R. Lees, 
F. S. A.; Frederick Powell, Dr. John Bell, and Dr. Clias. A. Story.