American Medicine Volume 27 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 Excerpt: ...often with deadly ingredients and generally consumed in dives and brothels in the company of the worst characters. This regime is making hypocrisy in America commonplace, and it is encouraging the worst excesses, for, to escape the vigilance of the law, many youths are drawn to secret places, where they easily acquire the habit of taking cocaine and morphine. Thus, the Puritanism of a minority is leading to a danger more serious for the race. Besides, the population in general is in revolt against the law. Forty mayors of the principal cities of New York State have issued a statement declaring that it is almost impossible to enforce the law in their cities because of its unpopularity. According to figures I have in my possession, the prohibition commissioner of Ohio admits that there are 50,000 stills in operation in that state, as against only 100 before the law came into effect. The police department of Columbus acknowledges that one family in every four in that city brews its own beer. It is said that in certain sections of Ohio ninety-nine families in one hundred have apparatus for making their own distilled or fermented drinks. In view of these astonishing facts, who will recommend a similar course for France? We Frenchmen are much too sensible to let ourselves be misguided by the narrowness of a few disappointed individuals who are condemned to nurse their stomachs on mineral water and who want to confine healthier persons to their own limitations " Monsieur Barthe concludes with the advice of an ancient scholar who records the following anecdote: "May it not displease the powers that be," says this scholar, "but I recall a great banquet after which, on account of some of the stale viands offered, all those who drank water died. Th...