In any case of exposure to or contraction
of disease, the total abstainer has a proved advantage over even the
light drinker. The British life insurance companies reckon that at the
age of twenty a total abstainer has an average prospect of life of
forty-four years, a temperate regular drinker a prospect of thirty-one
years, and a heavy drinker of fifteen years. Many other factors enter
into the individual situation, of course; we know many cases where
inveterate drinkers have lived to a ripe old age; it takes a great
deal to break the iron constitutions of some men. But averages
tell the story. An authority on tuberculosis states that "if for no
other reason than the prevention of tuberculosis, state prohibition
would be justified" The use of alcohol predisposes the body to
many kinds of disease; and according to conservative figures,
approximately seventy thousand deaths yearly in the United
States are caused by alcoholism and diseases that owe their
grip to the use of alcohol. Besides this, a great deal of insanity
and chronic invalidism, and a large proportion of deaths after
operations, are due to this cause. [Footnote: See H. S. Williams,
op. cit, pp. 25- 43, 149, 150; H. S. Warner, op. cit, chap. IV, and
bibliography at end.]
(d) The chances of losing children at chances of begetting
feeble-minded or degenerate children, are markedly greater
for even moderate drinkers than for abstainers.
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