Quarterly journal of inebriety Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ALCOHOLISM; ITS CONTROL AND CURE IN SANATORIUMS. By George H. Mcmichael, M.D., Buffalo, N. Y. Superintendent Sanatorium for Inebriates. There are probab... more »ly as many proposals for the solution of the liquor problem as there are sides to the question. As the evil is to some extent one of the people's own choosing, it has been suggested that a popularly elected body for the control of the sale of intoxicants would have the effect of doing away with as much of it as would be found to be desirable. Some people profess to believe that the poor quality of the alcoholic beverages on sale in the saloons has much to do with what we know as excessive drinking, and they assert that by the prevention of adulteration and by the enforced maturing of spirits a great amount of inebriety might be stopped. This view is not held by scientific men and is not tenable, because it is the ethyl alcohol in all intoxicants which produces drunkenness, and well-matured whisky is as powerful an intoxicant as any new liquor that can be obtained. Further, in some cases " bad " whisky and " poor " beer are comparatively harmless, as they have been largely diluted with water before being sold. A second class of reformers say that no more need be done than simply to enforce the law as it at present exists, and drinking to excess would soon be a thing of the past. This remedy, however, involves a technical definition of what constitutes " excess ", and it ignores the all-important fact that alcoholism is something more than a bad habit. A certain number of persons advocate total prohibition of the sale of liquor whether the majority of the inhabitants wish it or not, and these gentlemen are not averse to a sacrifice of the opportunities of the many in order to save a few excessive drinkers. As is now we...« less