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15. The following articles of food should either be altogether
avoided or used with caution, especially for children:—
Shell fish, which is often grown on sewage.
Pork sausages, pork pies.
Tinned meats and fish.
Alcohol in all its forms.
Tinned meats should not be kept long after being opened.
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 Syphilis, 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, and
placarded all over France by order of the Government, are published
in order to carry out the recommendation of the Committee, and 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 that 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 ; but is more dangerous than either,
in that often its first effect is to weaken a man's self-control
whilst 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 every day, 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, theft 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