Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 April 1901 — Alcoholism and Microbes. [ARTICLE]

Alcoholism and Microbes.

There is nothing new in the recently vaunted animal experiments at Paris showing 'that lower grades of living creatures if alcoholized are more sensitive to disease than others of temperate habits. Alcoholized animals are unable to resist infection with the bacilli of consumption, cancer, diphtheria and kindred diseases. The progeny of alcoholized guinea pigs have proved so weak that they live but a short time or are born dead. Medical history abounds in corroborative proofs that intemperance curses not only its practitioners but their offspring, the curse moral generally accompanying the curse physical. In times of contagion persons who have lived abstemiously prove more able to withstand exposure or recover more quickly and more completely from any form of pestilence. Temperance, like virtue, is its own reward. Luckless Cassio was right—the inordinate cup is unblessed.