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The Committee recommended the Council that the following
placard be approved and circulated.—
METROPOLITAN BOROUGH OF POPLAR.
PHYSICAL DETERIORATION AND ALCOHOLISM.
The Report of the Committee, presented to Parliament by command of His
Majesty, states that:
The abuse of alcoholic stimulants is a most potent and deadly
agent of Physical Deterioration;
Alcoholic persons are specially liable to tuberculosis and all
inflammatory disorders;
Evidence was placed before the Committee showing that in abstinence is
to be sought the source of muscular vigour and activity;
The lunacy figures show a large and increasing number of
admissions of both sexes, which are due to drink.
The following facts recognised by the Medical Profession are published in
order to bring home to men and women the fatal effects of alcohol on physical
efficiency:
(1) ALCOHOLISM IS A CHRONIC POISONING, resulting from the
habitual use of alcohol (whether as spirits, wine or beer), which may never go
as far as drunkenness.
(2) It is a mistake to say those doing hard work require stimulants. As a
fact NO ONE REQUIRES ALCOHOL AS EITHER FOOD OR TONIC.
(3) Alcohol is really a narcotic, dulling the nerves like laudanum or opium;
its first effect is to weaken a man's self-control while his passions are excited,
hence the number of CRIMES which OCCUR UNDER ITS INFLUENCE.
(4) SPIRITS, as usually taken, rapidly PRODUCE ALCOHOLISM, but
MILDER ALCOHOLIC DRINKS, as beer, and even cider, drunk repeatedly
everyday, PRODUCE, after a time, ALCOHOLIC POISONING, with equal
certainty.
(5) THE HABIT OF DRINKING leads to the RUIN OF FAMILIES,
the neglect of social duties, disgust for work, MISERY, THEST and CRIME.
It leads also to the hospital, for ALCOHOL PRODUCES the most various and
the most FATAL DISEASES, including paralysis, insanity, diseases of the
stomach and liver, and dropsy. It also paves the way to consumption, and
frequenters of public-houses furnish a large proportion of the victims of this
disease. It complicates and aggravates all acute dissases: typhoid fever,
pneumonia, and erysipelas, are much more fatal in the subject of alcoholism.
(6) THE SINS OF ALCOHOLIC PARENTS ARE VISITED ON THE
CHILDREN; if these survive infancy, they are threatened with idiocy or
epilepsy, and many are carried away by tuberculosis, meningitis, or consumption.
(7) In short, ALCOHOLISM IS THE MUST TERRIBLE ENEMY TO
PERSONAL HEALTH, TO FAMILY HAPPINESS, and TO NATIONAL
PROSPERITY.
council Officers,
High Street, Poplar,
2nd November, 1905.
By Order,
LEONARD POTTS,
Town Clerk.