The bases of the temperance reform: an exposition and appeal./ With replies to numerous objections. By Rev. Dawson Burns.

Ezvidcice i,,t Fazu or f.4bsthiiii6ce.
of abstainers, as compared with that of non-abstainers,
and as compared with their own state of health before
abstinence, is a further vindication of their distinctive
regimen; and it is constantly remarked that in all cases
of severe contusions, fractures, woundings, fevers, and
epidemical disorders, the restorative powers of abstainers
exceed those of other persons-the reason of which lies
in a sounder condition of the vital organs, and a greater
measure of that natural reserve-force which moderate
drinking insidiously, but surely, drains off. Where total
abstainers addict themselves to athletic and other exercises, they acquit themselves with singular credit, other
conditions being equal; as witness Mr. Angus Cameron,
who has made the highest score yet reached at WVimbledon, and has been twice winner of the National Rifle
Association's Gold Medal and Queen's Prize. The "training " for muscular feats is, in most cases, conducted either
on the abstinence plan or with a near approach to it;
and so it was in ancient times with the competitors in the
Grecian games.* Even the figment that sudden abstinence is dangerous is refuted by the daily experience of
more than twenty thousand prisoners (amounting in the
course of a year to several times that number of persons)
who are instantly deprived of alcoholic drink when committed to jail. It might be expected, apart wholly from
the question of abstinence as a general rule, that these
individuals (most of whom are free drinkers when out of
prison, and not a few of whom find their way to jail
through indulgence in drink) would suffer, temporarily at
least, by their sudden exclusion from alcoholic liquors;
the opposite, however, is the fact, and, in the Appendix to
the Convocation Report on Intemperance, eighteen pages
* In a work on "Athletic Training and Health," J. Harrison, MI.R.C.S.,
states (p. 93) that the conviction that "alcoholic drinks are not admissible
into a training dietary" "has been forced upon the writer by much observation and reflection."
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