THE 
TEMPERANCE (QUESTION 
FROM THE 
STAND-POINTS THE PRESENT. 
DELIVERED BY 
JOHN MORGAN M’KOWN, M. D., 
OF AIU OLA, I Lli. 
SEMI-ANNUAL ADDRESS 
Of the /Esculapian Society of the Wabash Valley, 
NT MARSHALL, ILL., MAY 27, 1874. 
CJIARLKSTON, ILL.: 
I’HI STEP VT THK COURIER HOOK AND 4OH OFFICE, 
1874. TIIE TEMPERANCE QUESTION 
FROM THE 
STAND POINT OF THE PRESENT, 
DELIVERED BY 
JOHN MORGAN McKOWN, M. I)., 
OF ARCOLA, ILL., 
AT MARSHALL, ILL., MAY 27tl), 1874. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:—The difficulty of carry- 
ing water upon both shoulders at once is so apparent, and has met 
with such general recognition, as to have passed into an adage. 
When we wish mildly to express our judgment that a particular 
person, as respects his public life, is at once a supreme fool and a 
complete failure, we say. he is trying to carry water on both shoul- 
ders. The difficulty of delivering an acceptable public address to 
an audience representing both the scientific and commercial phases 
of life, is scarcely less onerous, I imagine, though happily free from 
the odium which attaches to the doudlc-shoulder water-carrier. 
Standing before you to-night, as the representative, in some sense, 
of the yEsculapian Society, of the Wabash Valley, presumably a 
learned and scientific body, and especially so with respect to a par- 
ticular department of scientific research, about which there is a most 
lamentable ignorance, even among educated people—metaphorically 
carrying the yEsculapian Society upon one shoulder, and yet, in 
point of fact, desiring to address myself more particularly to an 
audience representing entirely different phases of thought and life, 
and who, from the very condition of their mental constitutions and 
educational training, would naturally perch upon the other shoul- 
der—you can appreciate the difficulty of so arranging the load as to 
allow a common ground upon which all may be mutually enter- 
tained and mutually benefited. I have sought to solve this problem 
by the easiest method. In attempting to adjust this load to my 
shoulders for the hour in which I shall stand before you, I have had 
very little regard for the comfort, the edification, or even the safety 
of my professional brethren. I warn them against the idleness of 
the hope that, in the effort to which their kindness has called me, I 
shall make any attempt to lead them into the green pastures or 2 
beside the still waters of professional lore or scientific discussion. 
I seek a more plainly beaten path, a commoner, if a homelier, 
ground. And if the ruggedness of the journey or the homeliness 
of the way should perchance jostle one of these learned gentlemen 
from his scientific altitude and professional serenity, even disfig- 
uring bruises may become honorable scars, if they fill his heart 
with some kindly sympathy for the broken bones and cracked 
crowns of other people. I commend to him, should he fall, the 
same physic with which, if he does not cure, heat least terrifies and 
appalls mankind. And now, having fairly warned my profession- 
al brethren of the nature of the entertainment to which I invite 
them, allowing them the fullest liberty to descend with us into the 
valley of a commonplace subject, (if I may be allowed such an ex- 
pression,) and to a practical discussion of it, or to linger behind on 
their own serene and philosophic hights, as they list, I turn my- 
self squarely face to face with you. 
And what shall 1 talk to you about? I had it in my mind to at- 
tempt the refutation of some popular fallacies which obtain against 
the healing art, and the ventilation also of some popular absurdities 
as respects the physical organism and its physiological functions, 
which people have imbibed, just as they sometimes catch the itch, 
from unfortunate associations in life. But since, 1 have been in- 
vited to deliver this address, public attention has been directed so 
prominently to a question of most vital importance, and one which 
legitimately falls within the range of a physician’s necessary inves- 
tigation, that I have concluded to run the risk of boring you by the 
introduction of what is usually regarded as a hackneyed theme. 1 
propose to call your attention to the great question of temperance 
reform which is now agitating the country ; not so much for the 
purpose of discussing any particular phase of the reform movement 
itself, but as making it the basis of what I desire to say upon the 
general question of temperance. And I claim your indulgence for 
the introduction of a subject which you may consider as having 
already been lully examined and discussed. 
Now, that the evils of intemperance have been, to a great extent, 
the stock in trade of the public lecturers of the country for the last 
thirty years ; that through all changes, through many vicissitudes, 
first to crowded houses, while the subject was new, and afterward 
to empty benches, they have sounded all the variations of the 
drunkard's woe and the drunkard’s doom, until the public had come 
to regard the remedy nearly as great a nuisance as was the disease— 
this may be undeniably true, and might reasonably deter me from 
the introduction of such a subject here ; yet it is none the less a fact 
that the great evil of intemperance still remains a terrible presence 
in our land, and that to-day it is demanding at our hands some 
practicable solution. It will not suffice that, looking with compla- 
cency upon our individual and personal rectitude of life and walk, 
we say to this evil, we are weary of you, and you have become an 
offense unto us, any more than it sufficed the unfortunate citizen of 
Shreveport, last autumn, to say to the terrible plague which was 
rioting in his city, I am weary of you, and you are an abomination 3 
unto mo. That dread plague crept on and on until its dark shadow 
fell athwart his threshold, and its gloom enveloped his home; and 
think you that its loathsome embrace was not all the more appall- 
ing on account of fancied security ? True it is that he had killed no 
cattle in all the plain or by the river’s side, and that in no official 
and legal sense was he the custodian of the city’s health ; yet “the 
pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction which 
wasteth at noonday,” came to his door and laid upon him its with- 
ering touch. It seems to be a universal law, growing out of the 
very conditions of our humanity, an outgrowth of our organization 
into communities and commonwealths, that, to some extent, public 
evils, as well as public blessings, affect every individual citizen of 
the community. It seems to be the great common law, underlying 
that still greater and higher law of our mutual need. We can not 
disregard it. I am not authorized to say that there will be any ex- 
ception whatever made in your favor. You may sit before me to- 
night in all the complacent security which the consciousness of a 
pure life may give to you, and it is a glorious thing to feel the con- 
sciousness of pure living; you may even go a step beyond this and 
thank God that you are not as other men are, and especially as is 
the poor, miserable drunkard; but remember, my dear friend, that 
a great evil—rather let me say, a great plague—oversliadowTs the 
land, and that no condition of life, either as respects the life walk 
of the individual or his surroundings, can purchase absolute immu- 
nity from the baneful effects of this dreadful scourge. It may not 
affect you in your person, it is true, for the seeds of drunkenness 
are rarely ever sown after thirty-five years of age; but perchance, 
O. perchance, in striking down your son, upon whose head had 
gathered all the hopes of your ripening years, may it not take from 
life its glory and wound more deeply than if you yourself had 
fallen? It is the fact of the presence of this terrible evil in the 
land, and utter the impossibility of our escaping individual responsi- 
bility for, and individual contact with, and individual interest in 
this evil, that must be my excuse for asking you to look at it with 
me a little while this evening. 
And 1 disclaim, in the outset, any intention of discussing the 
moral aspect of the temperance question. I am willing to take for 
granted that the moral or the immoral aspect of the temperance 
question lias been definitely settled in your own minds long ago. 
It lias in mine: and while I am not here, 1 trust, to throw stones at 
anybody, or to call a man a vagabond because lie unfortunately 
chances to he a drunkard; while I abhor, as much as any one can 
abhor, that style of purification which consists in throwing mud 
on other people, and have great contempt for that religion which 
calmly appropriates the crown of an angel because it happens to be 
minus the actual hoof of the devil; yet my convictions are so 
decided, and so changeless also. I apprehend, upon' this subject, 
that I trust I shall never give forth any uncertain utterances as to 
my belief in the great evil of intemperance. But it is for each of 
you, in your individual capacity, according to the light you have, 
io judge of this question as scemeth right in your sight. It is the 4 
greatness as well as the glory of the age and of the land in which 
we live, that thought is unfettered, and that questions affecting in- 
dividual destiny are left to the free and equitable solution of indi- 
vidual action. Should a man even become so strangely infatuated 
as to put aside the grand prerogative with which God has invested 
all men—the right to walk erect in the light of heaven, with un- 
clouded faculty and undimmed vision; should he, in the madness 
of some unguarded moment, put aside all that is most glorious in 
his humanity, to lie down with the beasts that perish, I would not 
so much deny his right to do it, as T would deplore and mourn over 
his choice. It may seem that such an assertion would give license 
to unrestrained indulgence, and preclude prohibitory restrictions. 
It does not. Man sustains a dual relation. First, to himself; and 
second, to the community. Those acts of his life which affect only 
his individual and personal being are entirely beyond the jurisdic- 
tion of anybody else, and it is tor him alone to elect or to reject as 
to a particular line of conduct; but when his acts affect me as an in- 
dividual member of the community toward whom he sustains re- 
ciprocal relations, and when they affect the community at large 
toward which he also sustains reciprocal relations, it is perfectly 
competent for us to inquire whether those acts affect us injuriously 
or not, and whether, within reasonable limits, we shall not protect 
ourselves front the influence of such acts. Liberty does not mean 
license, and can not be perverted to mean it. It comprehends mu- 
tual obligations, and reciprocal forbearance and toleration. If it is 
an inalienable right which belongs to every man to get drunk, 
it is none the less an inalienable right which belongs to every other 
man to protect himself, if he can, against the annoyances of that 
debauchery. And when by universal consent, therefore, a course 
of conduct comes to be regarded as an evil and a crime, govern- 
ment throws around the innocent the safeguards of law, by attaching 
penalties to such courses of conduct. But I do not desire to pursue 
this collateral point any further at this stage of the inquiry. I may 
possibly have occasion to introduce the principle later in discussing 
the means to be employed for the suppression of this great evil. 
Let me repeat my opening declaration, that into the moral aspect 
of the temperance question I have no design of entering; you must 
decide that without argument from me. And before coming to the 
general question of intemperance, I desire to take up the temper- 
ance crusade, not simply as a movement of great public interest, 
but as one of actual fact; to discuss it as a fact, without going into 
the right or wrong, either of the movement itself, or the causes 
which produced it. These might be very interesting points of in- 
quiry, but I think it unwise to burden this address by taking them 
up. The fact which mostly interests us is the fact of the movement 
itself, as developed in the last five months, and which has assumed 
such proportions as almost to invest it with a national significance. 
And now, in directing your thought to it, I do not desire to be 
understood as introducing this wonderful crusade movement for 
the purpose of advocating it as a practicable solution for the evils 
of intemperance. I disclaim any such purpose. I believe the 5 
whole temperance crusade to be entirely insufficient in itself to 
overthrow the demon of intemperance which, like a strongman, has 
spoiled the goods and possessed the souls of so many men in this land. 
Nor, on the other hand, do I desire to be understood as introducing 
it, only that I might condemn it. I have no word of condemnation 
for those who, under the movings of a great personal injury to 
themselves, or the inspiration of a great wrong to others, throw 
their visible bodies into the breach which a hellish agent is daily 
making. He who has aught but the kindliest sympathy for these 
brave women, is himself a retainer of the Prince of the power of 
the air and a follower of that dark banner which brings only des- 
olation where it waves. Iiut it is not my habit to be carried with 
the popular current, however strong and swift that current may 
be, and however eusily 1 might ride upon its crest. It is an inhe- 
rent right which belongs to me as an individual, to question the 
efficacy of means when in my judgment they are inadequate to the 
end designed; and when those means fail, it is an imperative duty 
which rests upon me, as a physician, to investigate, and, so far as l 
may be able, to proclaim the causes of that failure, if it involves in- 
jury to my kind. If I believe the crusade temperance movement, 
so far as the immediate abolition of dram selling and dram drink- 
ing is concerned, to be substantially a failure, it would certainly be 
the part of wisdom in me, as a sincere friend to a genuine temper- 
ance reformation, to investigate the causes of that failure, rather 
than deny the fact of the failure itself. It has been said, by a dis- 
tinguished son of South Carolina, that no man ever retrieved a 
fallen fortune until he thoroughly recognized the fact that he wa> 
poor. It may be said, with equal truth, that no great reformer has 
ever revolutionized the world until lie correctly apprehended the 
causes of his first failures. The causes of the failure of the crusade 
movement are fraught with wonderful interest, since they underlie, 
as so many determining factors, the great fact of intemperance it- 
self. Put before passing to their consideration, l desire to say a 
word about the movement itself. 
This temperance crusade is a most marvelous exhibition, whether 
we regard it as a success or a failure. It is the mo«t wonderful 
outcropping of an underlying and wide-spread public sentiment 
against the tyranny of a great curse that this age has ever witness- 
ed. Assuch.it is very significant. Robert (’Oliver says, that the 
great revivals of religion which have occurred this winter are the 
result of the panic; that when people arc shut off from the good 
things of the world which now is, they naturally seek the conso- 
lations of that one which is to come. 1 do not quote his language, 
but that is the sense. If that were true, it would seem to place the 
Almighty under the necessity of occasionally getting up an embar- 
go on legitimate prosperity, in order to till up the ranks of His 
spiritual kingdom on earth ; and such interferences in mundane 
atlhirs. so far as they availed to rope men into the kingdom, wheth- 
er billing or not, I suppose, would be accepted by Prof. Patton 
and our “true blue” Presbyterian friends as in the line of a correct 
theology, even if taught by so notorious a heretic as Robert Coll- 6 
ver. Such an assumption would relieve the Republican party of a 
fearful responsibility, though it would not be particularly compli- 
mentary to the financial policy of the great ruler of the universe. 
But in whatever light we may be disposed to regard Mr. Collyer’s 
views as to the determining cause of religious awakenings, (and 1 
leave the settlement of that question to those who are more famil- 
iar with what was projected in the counsels of eternity, than I am,) 
it could hardly be expected that we should be asked to make a gen- 
eral application of the principle. Any attempt, therefore, to ex- 
plain the great crusade movement upon any such hypothesis, I at 
once pronounce entirely heretical. And I mean by heresy, Mr. 
Collyer’s own definition of that term; that is, that he happens to 
differ from me in opinion; a definition which is enthusiastically 
endorsed by that eminent theologian, Mr. Robert G. Ingersol. 
Whence then the crusade movement? I can only repeat, that I 
regard it as an extraordinary manifestation of a wide-spread and 
thoroughly earnest public sentiment against the longer continuance 
of a great curse. And yet it was much more. In one sense it wa9 
the piteous cry of helpless women. It was the piteous cry of 
women who had long been burdened, and some of whom had long 
been sitting in the shadow of a gloom more appalling than any 
physical darkness which ever rested upon this earth; to whom 
there came no ray of light or hope, no promise of a dawn ; only 
unrest and bitterness and anguish and hopelessness, until they 
should lay them down in the sweet forgetfulness of that long, long 
sleep which comes at last, thank God, to all the weary ones of earth. 
Ami shall that cry touch no kindly chord of sympathy in your 
heart, or in mine? Shall we sit idly by? And though measurably a 
failure, so far as immediate practical results are concerned, the move- 
ment should have much of hope when rightly interpreted. It may 
not, indeed, have felled that foul and poisonous tree which grows 
so; rank and strong in this land, but it surely has severed some 
feeding roots, and lopped off some unsightly branches. And there 
must needs be failures. The histories of great reformations are not 
written in the songs of an unbroken triumph. Failure mars every 
page. The moral sentiment of mankind has to be educated and 
trained before it will embrace good and reject evil. The power 
of great systems, steadily growing for years, until they reach and 
touch every relation in life,is not to be broken in a day. We have had 
in our own history a remarkble illustration of this. John Brown’s 
raid was said, by unthinking people, to have been the cause of the 
late war. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was merely 
a surface wave, showing in what direction ocean’s vast volume of 
water was rolling* I remember that, as a stripling, with burnished 
rifle, and in brilliant uniform, I stood sentinel beside the banks of 
the silvery Potomac, ready to meet the invading hosts that never 
came. For weeks the mournful farce went on; for weeks we 
marched and counter-marched over the verdant hills of that far- 
famed and matchless valley of the Shenandoah, while the offended 
majesty of violated law was being vindicated up at Charlestown, by 
choking the breath from old Ossawattamie. At last the Southern 7 
heart was supposed to be sufficiently tired, and the melo-druma 
closed. But the soul of old John Brown went marching on, u 
voiceless, but irresistable presence among the hosts who were bat- 
tling for human freedom; and that tire, kindled there with such 
amazing patience and thoroughness, never went out until it had 
burned every manacle from the slave. So in the great temperance 
movement of to-day. The unbridled license of a drunken mob, in 
Chicago or Dayton, may triumph for the hour in crushing some 
helpless woman ; but day by day thcro is being educated in this 
country a public sentiment which shall drive these ruffians to the 
wall, and wrest from their grasp the power they only wield in 
order to curse. And as, in the one case, we waited and watched 
for the dawn of a day which should bring liberty, in its largest 
sense, to those who sat in the chains of a degrading servitude, so, 
in the other, we wait and labor for the dawn of Miat day when 
reason shall be loosed from her galling chains and men shall walk 
the earth free. 
In the meantime, let us gather, if we can, some lesson from the 
crusade movement, pick up some grain of comfort even from its 
failure. And what were the causes of its failure? Ft invoked the 
help of Almighty God in its mission, relied, in fact, upon that aid 
chiefly,and why, therefore, fail? 
It has been asserted that it was an attempt to solve an altogether 
insolvable problem. But the truth is, that it was an attempt to 
work out a problem, exceedingly difficult under the most favorable 
phase, by an altogether impracticable method If was like an at- 
tempt to stay the swift rush of an Alpine avalanche by scattering 
spruce and fern in its track. Now, the causes which led to the 
failure of the movement, are proximate and remote; they touch 
upon the immediate agencies which were invoked, and which were 
supposed would be effectual; they touch upon the evil itself as it 
exists, and they go infinitely deeper in their remoter aspect, com- 
prehending the viiul and physical conditions which determine the 
existence of intemperance itself. 
Let us examine first, for a moment, the soldiery who waged this 
aggressive war against King Alcohol, and the nature of the force 
by which they sought to overthrow his strongholds. In the first 
place, they were a band of helpless women without effective 
strength in themselves; appealing most powerfully, it is true, by 
that very weakness, to our sympathy; but utterly unable in them- 
selves to break the power of a long-established system. For un- 
fortunately debauchery is legalized in this country, and the sale of 
the most destructive of all agents is a perfectly legitimate traffic. 
Against, this most iniquitious, yet most tremendous system, they 
went forth, not with carnal weapons, but with the voice of suppli- 
cation, hoping to make saints out of men who heretofore had not 
even been decent sinners. I have a profound and an abiding faith 
in the power of prayer when rightly used. I believe it to be. in a 
very important sense, the most effective weapon with which we 
may combat evil; but I am an utter disbeliever in its efficiency per- 
manently to close dram shops, or to make genuine Good Templars 8 
out of saloon keepers, when the intercession goes up from outside 
parties. The notorious Van Pelt was exhibited to admiring crowds 
as a thoroughly revolutionized individual, a little more “simon-pure” 
even than the good, old fashioned teetotaler who had never drank 
anything stronger than water from his youth up ; but it seems the bot- 
tom has fallen out of Van, and, like the sow which was washed, he 
has returned to his wallowing. If these men whose coffers repre- 
sent the groans of unhappy women and the rags of squalid child- 
ren, would make restitution, free and ample, then fall on their inar- 
row bones and cry aloud to God in their own behalf, I should be 
prepared to witness a happier result. But you might as well sing 
psalms to Balaam's ass, as to pray for a man who ordinarily makes 
thirteen cents out of a glass of whisky. The day of visible 
miracles, in my apprehension, has passed. Whether we pray on the 
house tops or in the closet, God will hardly revolutionize the whole 
stratum of society in a single night, I take it, in order that we 
may twit our neighbors with superior piety and intercessory power 
at a Throne of Grace. He does not work in that way. To teach 
some needed lesson of humility to the stiff-necked Israelites, as well 
as to strike terror to the hearts of unbelievers, it may have been 
necessary that the walls of Jericho should fall down at the blowing 
of horns and the swinging of lamps ; but we live neither at Jericho, 
nor yet at Jerusalem, and the average saloon keeper of the present 
day would stand a pretty stiff blast of chin music, even if Gabriel 
himself should lead the band. 
And then some of these women who went forth to lift up holy 
hands, I am afraid, had not the devout habit of praying at home. 
I have no word of censure, understand me, for the sincere, earnest 
woman who, under in the conviction of duty, went out to plead with 
God that erring men might be brought to the power of a better life. 
It is the miserable sham I detest. It was only the other day that a 
distinguished member of this society wrote me that some of the 
prominent crusade women of his city employed intemperate physi- 
cians, and that, in bad cases even, they would wait a day or two 
for them to sober up. Imagine, if you can, what a tremendous stir 
an appeal for sobriety, coming from such a quarter, would create 
in the court of heaven, and how business would come to a stand- 
still, while innumerable messengers were being dispatched to at- 
tend to the request of the pious sister! Verily, had the redoubtable 
band of priests who went forth at break of day to encompass the 
walls of Jericho, numbered in their train one of these sisters, it is my 
honest belief those walls would have stood until this day, and pos- 
sibly for all time, unless blown down by a western hurricane. 
Why, had every woman in the crusade army, been possessed of 
that faith which removes mountains, the annihilation of the liquor 
traffic of this country, by such means, would have been the most 
wonderful miracle ever performed on the face of the earth. Just 
think of it. Here is a traffic involving tremendous monetary in- 
terests ; absolutely working more actual capital than is invested in 
all the bread-stuffs, boots and shoes, the clothing, and the books 
and periodicals of the country, realizing enormous profits; con- 9 
trolled by formidable and thoroughly unscrupulous organizations; 
wielding the brute force of the largest and most reckless army of 
bummers that ever cursed God’s footstool, and dragging in its 
lurid wake its tens of thousands of human victims—to expect this 
monstrous organization quietly to give up place and power, and 
become decent and reputable, is to expect an impossibility. It will 
never do it so long as malice can invent a defense or malignity 
strike a blow. 
Is there, then, no escape? Must this terrible power forever sit 
like a fearful incubus upon this fair land? Must we forever be 
saddened by the sight and awed by the power and tormented by 
the flames of this veritable hell, into which our friends are con- 
stantly falling? Is there never to come a day when this awful pit 
shall be closed? * 
My friends, hese are grave and serious problems. They are 
pressing themselves home upon our notice in this land to-dav in 
such a way that we can not evade their significance. If we do not 
master this great evil, it threatens to master us. We can no more 
fly from it than could Christian, in Bunyan’s immortal allegory, 
fly from Apollyon whom he met in the valley of humiliation, it 
would be the sheerest presumption in me to intimate that I had found 
the key which shall lock up this horrible monster. Nothing less 
than that far-seeing vision which shall comprehend this great 
question in all its relations—which shall solve, in fact, the problem 
why man alone, of all the created orders, is an intemperate animal— 
shall be able so much as even to give us the clew which shall lead 
us from this gloomy labyrinth in which for nearly six thousand 
years the human race has wandered. Hut surely I may stand mod- 
estly on the bank and drop my humble offering into that endless 
stream of human wisdom and human folly which we call practical 
discussion and ‘‘looking at things” in this country. 
Now, 1 have already intimated that the principal cause of the 
failure of the crusade, in its remoter aspect, I may say, indeed, in 
its essential nature, touches the very bottom of intemperance itself, 
abstractly considered. That is, that an evil which has been gather- 
ing strength and volume for centuries, whose influence reaches out 
until it embraces, either directly or indirectly, nearly the entire 
mass of mankind, can only be successfully combatted by those 
means which, while comprehending its entire nature, shall be com- 
mensurate with the resistance to be overcome. Will any one have 
the hardihood to believe that isolated bands of helpless women, by 
the mere singing of psalms and the praying of prayers, could, in a 
day, violently up-root and tear out what is almost an ineradicable 
propensity in human nature ? The largest stretches of faith could 
scarcely compass such a belief. 
Let us look at the facts.- Man is an intemperate animal. He i9 
much more—he is a drunken animal. lie has been guzzling for 
nearly six thousand years. The pages of all history, sacred and 
profane, bring to our eyes only the sad vision of human weakness 
and human folly. Noah got on a famous or an infamous debauch 
in his garden, so that his own sons whom he had saved from the 10 
great flood of waters were heartily ashamed of him ; and there were 
not wanting other ancient worthies to whom a second glass had an 
irresistible attraction. Even Solomon, who compares very favor- 
ably with any philosopher the world has ever produced, doubtless 
spoke from the depths of his own painful experience when he warn- 
ed against the wine when it is red. From the time the Hebrews pass- 
ed from under the rule of the judges, it was nip and tug whether 
the licentiousness or the drunkenness of that nation should reach 
the goal. And they were perfectly abstemious in comparison with 
their neighbors. And then coming to profane history, we find 
that Alexander’s stupid performance has been a perfect godsend to 
temperance lecturers ever since the dark ages. IVfen have stood up 
and hopefully told that yarn to old soaks who could have drank 
enough benzine to float the entire Alexander family and then 
would only have been comfortably drunk. And after the 
story had been told in the most pathetic manner, with all the dra- 
matic effect with which John B. Gough could invest such a story, 
and I am told that his coat tail is moi’e eloquent than the mouths 
of a great many men, how refreshing to the moral sense to see one 
old soak leer over to his neighbor soak, and chuckle out— “I say, 
Bill, do you know anything of this ’ere cove Alexander? he must 
have been a great flat.” It is, to my apprehension, one of the 
grandest mistakes of the temperance efforts of this age, that they 
have expended their strength on men to whom intemperance has 
become an incux*able disease. You could with one of Dr. Prince’s 
batteries galvanize corpses into clog dancers as easily as you could 
reconstruct men who are candidates for spontaneous combustion, 
and who, if they escape such a fate, will be debtors to the fact that 
the whisky with which they are soaked is so very mean that it 
won’t burn. And I may notice, in passing, that the legislature 
which framed the license law of this state, going into operation in 
July, has made the same blunder. It forbids the sale of liquor to 
men who are in the habit of getting drunk, while it throws wide 
the doors of intemperance to the great mass of young men with 
whom the habit is not yet formed. There is something radically 
defective in such legislation, for, instead of abridging, it only per- 
petuates, the evil whose power it is designed to render nugatory. 
We find, then, that intemperance is a general vice, world-wide, 
peculiar to no nationality, and sparing no age, sex, or condition of 
life. Nine-tenths of the human family use stimulants in some 
shape or form. They do not all drink whisky fortunately. The 
Turk takes his opium while surrounded by the houries of an en- 
chanted seraglio ; the Egyptian, his lotus as he dreams of the depart- 
ed glory of his fatherland ; the German, his beer while puzzling his 
brain over the metaphysical problems of Strauss ; the Frenchman, 
his wine or absinthe while lie intrigues for new dynasties; the 
Englishman, his ale while he wonders if Princes Royal are always 
to be cockneys; the Irishman, his poteen while he makes merry at 
his grand mother’s wake; the Scotch presbyterian, his whisky 
straight while he is hunting down heretics; and the average 
American, while expounding the constitution and turning up his 11 
republican nose at the effete monarchies of Europe, recklessly 
drinks down a villainous compound which defies all classification, 
which, while having none of the virtues, manages to unite the de- 
structive animus of all the rest. In a word, we find that there are 
the fewest number of strictly temperate people. Some of the most 
ardent temperance women in the country, I venture to assert, are 
perfect prodigies at tea drinking, while a fair sprinkling of the 
eminent divines who pray with *uch unction for the cessation of 
intemperance use enough tobacco in a month to kill an army of 
rats. Why is this? Why this extraordinary consumption of stim- 
ulants by that extraordinary biped, man ? 
This is a very important psychological question aside from the 
general interest which attaches to it as determining in some sense 
man’s moral and physical status. It uncovers, however, to our 
vision so vast a field of inquiry that I can hardly hope to do more 
than reach through the fence after some fragments of truth as we 
pass along. I know you will he relieved to learn that I have no 
intention of climbing over. We might wander in it for a life-time 
and yet leave many recesses unexplored. 
Why, then, do men drink ? The excuses which they parade are 
of the most extraordinary character, and the subterfuges by which 
they seek to reconcile ‘‘hitters” with the laws of health are perfect 
models of ingenuity, and would have gained them distinction a« 
special pleaders in any court of justice in the land. If you were 
to ask your right-hand neighbor why he indulges in a little ‘‘bour- 
bon,” lie would probably tell you that it is in obedience to St. 
Paul’s admonition to Timothy to take a little wine for the stom- 
ach’s sake, as if that severe old ascetic, the flesh-mortifiying 
Paul, would have given his official endorsement to the modern 
tangle-foot, a barrel of which contains a-very fair-sized lead mine, 
with a pretty abundant outcropping of strychnia, strontia, potash, 
logwood, and red pepper. And as an open confession is said to be 
good for the soul, he who speaks to you to-night feels constrained to 
state that, acting under the advice of a distinguished member of 
this society, ana very agreeably to himself, he tried to get a corner 
on chills by biking two drinks of whisky a day—one at 9 a. m., 
and the other at 4 i\ m. Sure enough the corner was turned after 
awhile, but unfortunately he was the individual cornered, though he 
trusts not “corned.” He became completely disgusted, abandoned 
such practice as entirely irrational, if not empirical, and fell back 
on those mild and pleasant agents, quinine and arsenic, the eflect9 of 
which you who look upon him to-night arc to be the judges. We find 
that there is no conceivable subterfuge to which men have not resort- 
ed and which they will not practice in order to cover a little quiet 
drinking with the garb of expediency or decency. They will 
swallow a mixture revolting enough to vomit a skunk, if the basis 
of it be alcohol. They pour it down red-hot, and flavored with 
ginger, to warm up their frozen bodies, and the next hour take it 
diluted, with lemon farewell, to cool them off. They bike a pretty 
stiff glass before breakfast to give them an appetite, and immedi- 
ately afterward one to bind down what they have eaten and to cook 12 
any raw victuals which Bridget may have found too tough for the tire. 
I have known rugged men in locust year-* to get beastly drunk on 
hot summer afternoons in order, as they innocently told their 
wives, to steal a march on those interesting little insects which 
orthodox people would have us believe are one of the legacies of 
Pharaoh to an admiring posterity. But you know how it i9 yourself. 
Why, then, this universal demand for stimulants? 
As I have already observed, this is a broad field of inquiry, 
without limits scarcely, and can only of course receive a passing 
notice. 
I may make one general statement as covering the entire 
ground of my belief as respects 'this question ; a belief to which I 
have insensibly come by observation and reflection; and that is, 
that man lias become an intemperate animal in virtue of the force 
of education, through the power of temptation, and by direct 
transmission, rather than in obedience to any natural bias which 
resided in him originally. I am willing to concede, and do con- 
cede, that man has within him enough of innate, undiluted, natural 
depravity, inherited probably from Adam, but any way existing 
as a fact, to make him take very kindly to a little of the Oh-be-joy- 
ful, especially if offered in the shape of mint juleps. But in the 
beginning God made men pure and upright without this thirst. 
Men are educated to drink just as they are educated to read. One- 
half of the children in the country are nursed on Mrs. “Winslow’s 
Soothing Syrup” and “Bateman’s Drops,” which are smiply a vil- 
lainous compound of poppy leaves, opium, and inferior alcohol. 
Swarms of the human race first see the light of day in the filth of 
reeking courts and purlieus ; their young cheeks are scorched by 
the hot breath of drunkards, and their first playmates are the 
gamins and canaille of great cities. Is it wonderful that, passing 
the boundaries of childhood in spite of such untoward surround- 
ings, they themselves grow up rank and noxious weeds, intensify- 
ing the poisonous atmosphere in which they grow ? A drunken 
father usually begets a drunken son. A very considerable portion 
of the race are born into the world with a constitutional bias for 
strong drink which they can no more shake off than they can shake 
off a syphilitic taint. If there is one man, who above all other men 
perhaps on this broad earth, deserves our sympathy, it is the con- 
stitutional drunkard. A man like the brilliant Yates, for example, 
who could no more resist the power of this terrible appetite than 
he could suspend the action of his heart. 
It was only a few weeks ago that I grasped the hand of a man 
probably known to you all; a successful journalist; a man once of 
brilliant promise; and he told me with deep feeling that he thought 
he had conquered the arch-enemy of his life. In less than sixty 
hours that arch-enemy had conquered him, and his spirit was free 
from the curse which laid his body in a suicide’s grave. And in 
every way, by the force of education, through the power of tempt- 
ation and by hereditary transmission, men are thronging into that 
broad road whose end lies amidst the dark shadows of the charnel- 
house. They imbibe the taste in their very with the 13 
sugar they suck from a father’s occasional glass of toddy, only to 
drink at last its terrible dregs in a drunkard's grave. Liquors are 
so manipulated in fancy drinks that they tempt the palate as the 
first step, and men drink them for the same reason that they eat 
strawberries and cream. An illustration of this, and I pass from 
the general consideration of this part of the subject. 
A traveler from Virginia, passing through the valleys of Arkan- 
sas, stopped at a tavern to rest and refresh himself. He found that 
the landlord, a good, jolly fellow, was in the habit of taking his 
whisky straight. The Virginian proposed a mint julep, and forth- 
with proceeded to induct the benighted back-woodsman into the 
mysteries of that Virginia staple. They drank. They enjoyed 
much. The traveler held his course. Time passed on. The lights 
and shadows of another year had added its measure to the joy or 
gloom of that secluded valley, when, in the gloaming of a summer 
twilight, the Virginian again drew rein before that tavern door. 
“Halloo, Pompey, where is your master?” “He’s done dead, sail, 
last week, sarvent, sah ? “Dead! Is it possible? What was the 
trouble with him?” “Sarvent, sah ? A man from old Virginny 
came along here about a year ago and learned Massa how to drink 
grass in he whisky, and he jist clean gone and busted himself, 
sah ; and dis nigger’s free, hi! hi!” 
Passing on we And that there are not wanting a vast number ol 
secondary causes which conspire to perpetuate the vice of in- 
temperance by giving to the use of alcohol the sanction of recog - 
nized authority. I have only time to notice one of these. I ap- 
proach it, I trust, in the spirit of true inquiry, and not with re- 
proach upon my lips. I would willingly remain silent upon it, if 
my sense of duty did not compel me to speak. It is a painful con- 
fession to me when I declare my conviction that the teaching of 
the medical profession of this country upon the use of stimulants 
is pernicious in its tendency. I do not assert, and I would not pre- 
tend to assert, that the medicinal administration of alcohol is hurt- 
ful in itself, that it may not even, in certain cases, be indispensable ; 
but I do concoive that its general and indiscriminate use by the 
profession and the laudations which are being constantly bestowed 
upon it are most hurtful and pernicious in their tendencies. And 
now, if you will bear with me a few moments, I would like to speak 
more particularly to my professional brethren on this subject. 
They doubtless have grown pretty restive under all this talk about 
matters to whose level it is not probable they often descend ; and a 
“sop to Cerberus” may prove not to be without its mollifying in- 
fluence here as well as among the ancients. 
It was only the other day that an article reached my table from 
the pen of an eminent neurologist who, in the opinion of his 
friends, has satisfactorily concluded the investigation of nervous 
phenomena. I refer to Prof. Wm. A. Hammond, once Surgeon 
General of the U. S Army, and who, while filling that high posi- 
tion, happily succeeded in throwing around his memory a fragrance 
which still floats in undiminished essence over this Mississippi 
valley. I refer to that master stroke of therapeutic tactics, the cut- 14 
ting off of Calomel and Tartar-emetic from the supply table ; by 
which brilliant Coup d’ etat he virtually retired seven-eigths of 
the army surgeons from the active practice of their profession. I 
have here fortunately no private ax to grind, since I studied medi- 
cine long after the war had closed, and only refer to the circum- 
stance in this connection that the brethren may have no misappre- 
hension as to whom I shall quote presently. 
Prof. Hammond, it seems, has recently instituted a series of ex- 
periments, the results of which he has submitted to the New York 
Neurological Society, with the view to determine the“ value of alco- 
hol as an aliment, or as a substitute for aliment.” The experiments 
were performed on himself and on dogs. The limits of this address 
wrill not allow me to give them entire. I do not know that I could 
bring them before you better than to quote from the address itself. 
Prof. Hammond says they consist of three series : 
“First. The influence of alcohol wrhen the food was just sutficient 
for the wants of the organism. 
Second. When it was not sufficient. 
Third When it was more than sufficient. 
Four drachms of alcohol diluted with an equal quantity of water 
were taken at each meal. During the first series, when the food 
was of such a character and quantity as to maintain the weight of 
the body at its normal standard, I found, as the result of experi- 
ments continued for five days, during which time sixty drachms of 
alcohol had been taken, that the weight of the body had increased 
from 226.40 lbs. to 226.85 lbs., a differance of .45 lbs. In the same 
period the amount of carbonic acid and aqueous vapour exhaled 
from the lungs, had undergone diminution, as had likewise the 
quantity of urine and its solid constituents. 
While these experiments lasted my general health was somewhat 
disturbed, my pulse was increased to an average of 90 per minute, 
and was fuller and stronger than usual, and there was an indispo- 
sition to exertion of any kind. 
The inference to be drawn from those experiments certainly is, 
that when the system is supplied with an abundance of food, and 
when there are no special circumstances existing which render the 
use of alcohol advisable, its employment as a beverage is not to be 
commended. But there are two facts which can not be set aside, 
and these are the body gained in weight and the excretions were 
diminished. These phenomena were doubtless owing to the fol- 
lowing causes : First, the retardation of the decay of the tissues. 
Second, the diminution in the consumption of the fat of the body. 
And third, the increase of the assimilative powers of the system by 
which the food was more completely appropriated and applied to 
the formation of tissue.” 
So much for experiments, omitting the second and third series. 
His conclusion as to the physiological action is contained in the 
following words: 
“Alcohol retards the destruction of the tissues. By this destruc- 
tion force is generated, muscles contracted, thoughts are developed, 
organs secrete and excrete. Food supplies the material for new 15 
tissue. Now, as alcohol stops the full tide of this decay, it is very 
evident that it must furnish the force which is developed under its 
use. How it does this is not clear. Rut it is not clear how a piece 
of iron deflects a magnetic needle when held on the opposite side 
of a stone wall or feather bed. Roth circumstances are ultimate facts, 
which for the present at least must satisfy us." 
Rut it seems they did not satisfy him, for in a few sentences 
further on he gives what he regards as the physiological explana- 
tion of this force. 
“It is not at all improbable,” says Prof. Hammond, “that alcohol 
itself furnishes the force directly, by entering into combination 
with the first products of tissue decay, w’hereby they are again as- 
similated without being execrated as urea, uric acid, &c. Upon 
this hypothesis, and upon this alone, so far as I can perceive, can 
be reconciled the fact that an incx-ease of force and a diminution 
of the products of decay of tissue attend upon the ingestion of 
alcohol.” 
So much for experiments, and the explanation which Prof. Ham- 
mond offers as the physiological action of alcohol. We now' come 
to his therapeutics. He discusses incidentally in connection with 
this part of the subject the question of excess in the use of stimu- 
lants, and holds that every man in that respect is a lawr unto him- 
self ; that a glass of wine may he excess in some persons. He then 
says : “That alcohol even in large quantities is beneficial to some 
persons, is a point in regard to which I have no doubt; but those 
persons arc not in a normal condition, and when they are restored 
to health their potations should cease. I have seen many a weak, 
hysterical woman drink a pint of whisky or brandy a day with- 
out experiencing the least intoxicating effects, or even feeling ex- 
cited by it. The exhausted tissue has seemed to absorb it as though 
it were the one thing craved, and recovery has been rapid under 
the use when all other means have failed. I have seen strong men 
struck down with pneumonia and fever, andappai-ently saved from 
the grave by brandy or other alcoholic liquors. I have prevented 
epileptic seizures by its moderate use. Neui’algic attacks are often 
cut short by it, and sometimes entirely prevented. It has been ef- 
ficacious in catalepsy, and in tetanus; it is one of the best antidotes 
to the bites of poisonous sei'pents, as I have repeatedly witnessed ; 
in the convulsions of teething childi’en and other sources of reflux 
irritation it is invaluable; in the spinal irritation to which women, 
and especially American women, are so subject, nothing takes its 
place, and in certain forms of gastric dyspepsia it must be given 
if w'e wish to cure our patients.” 
I have tried not to garble this lecture of Prof. Hammond’s. My 
time will not allow' me, it is true, to give as full extracts from it as 
I should wish; but I have tried to quote at sufficient length to 
make his meaning apparent. I am not disposed to quarrel with 
Prof. Hammond’s physiology, but I regard his thei’apeutics as 
wretchedly bad. I am willing to grant all he says about the per- 
turbing influence of alcohol on the human system in conditions of 
health; but whether it will cure hysterical women or sub-ncute 16 
gastritis 1 very much doubt. It may be remembered that I read a 
paper before this society a year or two ago in which I sought to 
explain the physiological action of alcohol in retarding waste of 
tissue and diminishing the excretion of nitrogenous compounds, 
as urea, uric acid, &c. The secretary of this society, in a recent 
letter received from him, was of the opinion that I would have to 
revise that article before I made a temperance address. Nothing 
of the kind is at all necessary. I wrote that article as an attempted 
explanation of a recognized fact; and that fact was the same one 
precisely that Prof. Hammond brings out in the lecture from which 
I have quoted—namely, that alcohol has the power of taking the 
place of food, or at least of so influencing the oxygenating process- 
es going forward in the tissues as to supplement it. 
I attempted to explain this action upon the following proposi- 
tion .* 
“Alcohol possesses, in a remarkable degree, the property of pre- 
serving animal tissues when such tissues are immersed in it. We 
call this known property of alcohol into requisition in every 
pathological or anatomical preparation which we make for our 
museums. Might not this same property of alcohol be invoked in 
explanation of its action in the living organism, in preserving the 
tissues, that we concede it exerts mechanically over tissues with 
which it is brought iuto contact without the body; that it pre- 
vents waste in the living organism by restraining oxygenation ; and 
that this result is affected, not so much in virtue of any absolute re- 
straining power of which it is possessed, per se, but rather by an 
immediate impression which it exercises over the tissues in the 
organism with which it is brought into contact—by its antiseptic, 
or, more properly, its preservative properties. In a word, that its 
action within the organism is identical, in nature at least, to what 
it is without.’’ 
I pass by entirely my argument upon this proposition. Now 
what were my therapeutics ? Let me quote from the paper itself. 
“I will say, in brief, that there are three principal indications for 
its employment. 
First. When supporting measures are urgently demanded. 
Second. When food can not be appropriated. 
Third. In severe nervous prostration or collapse.’’ 
It will be observed that there is a considerable discrepancy be- 
tween this’ summary and the therapeutic indications adduced by 
Prof. ITammond. Prof. Hammond says that food supplies the ma- 
terial for new tissue. No one will question that fact. But the re- 
sult of such supply to the organism is a process resembling com- 
bustion, a process, at least, of oxygenation, in which there is a 
disintegration of tissue, and consequent elimination, by the various 
emunctories of the body, of deleterious products. It will be grant- 
ed at once that food is an essential need of the organism, and that 
those processes which follow its introduction into the body are 
altogether physiological processes, and just as essential in char- 
acter a6 the want of food itself. But, that alcohol suspends the 
process of oxygenation, is abundantly proven by the diminished 17 
excretions which follow its use, and so far as that act of suspen- 
sion extends, it is certainly an abnormal departure from a physio- 
logical state. What is the legitimate inference? Why, that alco- 
hol is ouly indicated under those circumstances in which there is 
an actual failure of food, or when food can not be assimilated. 
Any other therapeutic indication for its employment, to my ap- 
prehension, is altogether irrational, except in those ca-es in which 
we design merely to produce a nervous impression. 1 cun easily 
conceive how hysteric women, to whom drain drinking may possibly 
be no novelty, and in whom certainly there is an undue disturbance 
of vital action, and especially of nervous function, may take alco- 
hol in large quantities, and, as Prof. Hammond says, “crave it as 
the one thing needful.” I can, by parity of reasoning, fully un- 
derstand also why the drunkard greedily takes his morning dram, 
craving it as the one thing altogether needful. Hut is it ?o? Would 
it not be better to revolutionize the drunkard, to reform him, so 
that there should be no undue depression to create an artificial 
demand? Let us see to it. my brethren, that our teachings on the 
subject of the medicinal employment of alcohol shall be upon the 
side of safety. The power of intemperance is formidable enough 
without being made respectable by the bad therapeutics, and worse 
practice, of the medical profession. 
I come now, in conclusion, to notice the remedy for this great 
evil. 1 have attempted to make out a diagnosis of the case; have 
given you. as fully as my time would allow, its clinical history ; it 
only remains to prescribe. 
My treatment would be largly prophylactic. Hut different doc- 
tors have different methods ot treatment. The gifted Mrs. Jane 
Grey Swisshelm strongly pleads in a late article for the political 
enfranchisement of her sex; offering that as a specific. She says 
that women, by a tremendous ground swell, by tens of thousands, 
as a matter of absolute fact, have been squarely landed in the 
“stygian pool” of politics very much to their astonishment, and, as 
Horace Maun said, “are hobbling about like drowned chickens in 
the dead sen. unable either to sink or swim out.” She says that 
the men having kindly invited them to the front can not face on 
their own act. Hut she can speak for herself better than 1 can 
speak for her. She says : 
“Those men who have sanctioned her determination to take the 
front rank in the army of reformation can not well refuse to fur- 
nish her with weapons as good as those with which they hold their 
places in the war. It is bad generalship to send the advance guard 
of an attacking force armed with quill pop-guns and potato bullets 
against an enemy on the alert and well supplied with Minnie rifle 
and ball ” 
Now it may be that the crusade women, to apply Emerson's apt 
expression, “have builded better than they knew ;” that the solu- 
tion of this great problem really does rest with them ; that the 
ballot is the efficient supplement of the prayer book. We have 
subjected the elective franchise to some wonderful experiments to 
test its stretching capacities in the last decade, and, like a lawyer's 18 
conscience, it seems to be pretty elastic. Having accommodated 
nearly four million of negroes, it would likely hold all the women 
of the country without breaking. But leaving the solution of that 
problem to Mrs. Swisshelm, the inquiry occurs what are we to do 
individually ? 
I have already intimated that my practice would be prophylac- 
tic. The great want in respect to this question is the education of 
a correct public sentiment against it. We should refrain from the 
use of alcohol ourselves and refuse to sanction its use in others. 
We should teach our children to look upon its abuse as the great 
evil of all the years. And whenever we do that; whenever 
there can be three generations reared that shall absolutely be free 
from its use; whenever, in a word, we shall succeed so to educate 
mankind that they shall entirely forego the use of alcohol as a 
beverage, this whole question will settle itself to the entire satis- 
faction of every temperance person in the world. 
Mr. Wendell Philipps says that the American people, from their 
peculiar admixture, springing as they do from so many nationali- 
ties, are of all people the most liable to fall victims to the 
vice of intemperance. If we are victims, let us also be heroes. If 
to the reproach of America, it may be said that her people are 
intemperate beyond those of any other nation almost, let it also be 
said to her glory, that among all the nations of the earth she is the 
only one that is steadfastly setting her face against this great curse, 
determined to trample it under foot. 
And now, my friends, my hour has passed. I have detained you 
perhaps to little purpose. I am conscious that I have been able to 
give this great question only an imperfect consideration. If I shall 
have succeeded to stimulate thought; to induce you to look at this 
question as it confronts us to-day in this land in all its dreadful 
scope and power, I feel that I shall not have spoken in vain. Let us 
gird on our armor. The battle has already been joined. There can 
be no neutrals in this war. If we do not gather, we must scatter. 
The enemy is abroad. He has allies in our very camp. He shows 
no quarter. He strikes down with as relentless a blow as death 
itself. Our nearest friend may be his next victim. Eternal vigi- 
lance is alone the price of safety. For, before the grass shall grow 
or the flowers shall bloom again on these swelling prairies, it may 
be our sad lot to stand beside some grave, to which there shall 
come no illumining ray, and repeat those mournful words of 
Bryant: 
“O glory of our race that so suddenly decays ! 
O crimson flush of morning that darkens'as we gaze! 
O breath of summer blossoms that on the restless air 
Scatters a moment’s sweetness, and flies we know not where!”