Collectanea de Diversis Rebus: Addresses and Papers. Eade Peter

only a healthy mind, but a contented mind; and with recreation grounds for their use the children might be expected to grow up amenable to proper and right feelings, and in every sense better members of the community.

      Believing as he did in the doctrine of salus populi suprema lex, he earnestly recommended the Council to take some steps in the direction he had indicated.

      He concluded by moving – “That this Council, recognising the duty of providing recreation grounds for the children of Norwich, appoints a special committee to consider and report as to the best means of carrying out this resolution.”

      A Committee of the Council was then at once appointed.

      Note. – At this date there were practically no public recreation grounds. At the present time we have the following: —

      Mousehold Heath, 150 acres.

      Chapel Field Gardens.

      The Castle Gardens.

      The Gildencroft.

      Waterloo Park.

      South Heigham, 6 acres.

      The Woodlands Plantation (given by Mrs. Pym).

      Lakenham and St. Martin’s Bathing Places and Grounds.

      Eaton Park, 80 acres.

      Besides the numerous smaller spaces and churchyards which have been re-arranged and planted, and made both pleasing and (many of them) suitable for outdoor use or rest. For the promotion and carrying out of these, we are most largely indebted to Mr. Edward Wild, Mr. W. E. Hansell, and the Rev. J. Callis, with one or two others.

      This and the next following Address were the outcome of the very strong impression produced upon the Author by observing the puniness or physical inferiority of much of the poor population with whom he had to deal as Physician to the Norwich Dispensary, when first coming to Norwich, as compared with that of the neighbouring country district where he had formerly resided. It appeared to him that want of outdoor exercise and the public-house habit were the main causes of this difference. And hence these two subjects of Recreation and Temperance at once engaged his attention, as they have continued to do ever since.

      How such views have now developed, and also that of the necessity of good air and exercise for the young, in order to normal adult health and vigour, is patent to all.

      II.

      ON TEMPERANCE AND AIDS TO TEMPERANCE

      An Address given at the Parochial Hall, South Heigham, in March, 1879, at a meeting held for the purpose of forming for the parish a branch of the Church of England Temperance Society, the Rev. J. Callis, Vicar, presiding.

      Reprinted from the Norwich Mercury of March 5th, 1879.

      The evils of excessive drinking are vast and widespread. As doctors, we are constantly being brought face to face with them – in injured health, in wasted life, in ruined homes. Much has been said, and will doubtless be said again to-night, on these points; and the desirability of a Temperance Society for this, as for other parishes, will be enforced. But believing that our object is to promote temperance in every possible way, I shall to-night allude to some of those social conditions which necessarily have a great bearing upon this important question.

      Now, it is well known that much difference of opinion has existed as to the influence exerted by fermented liquors when taken in small or reasonable quantities, some thinking that in these small quantities they are pleasant and practically harmless; others holding that in no quantity are they either necessary or even free from injurious effects. Whatever may be the absolute truth of either of these opinions in reference to a limited use of these liquors, I think all are of one mind as to their pernicious effects when taken in any considerable quantity. All are agreed that drunkenness is a vice, baneful to the individual, hurtful to his friends; while doctors and physiologists are unanimous in asserting it to be positively proved that a too free use of them not only produces the outwardly injurious effects with which we are so familiar, but also gradually induces such degenerative disease of various internal organs as undermines the health and materially shortens the existence of the individual. With such a conflict of opinion still existing, our society wisely declines to decide that which science has been unable to settle, and opens wide her doors, and asks both these classes of thinkers to come in. She invites one section of her members to do no violence to their views of what constitutes temperance, or of the right way of influencing their neighbours. She merely asks them to join this society, and simply pledge themselves to practice and encourage that temperance as to which everyone may agree. But she tries to speak more mildly to those who are travelling in the well-trod road of Intemperance, which leads to mental and bodily ruin; and she entreats them to embrace the only means yet known which can save them from their destructive course. She asks them to pledge themselves to endeavour, by entire abstinence from the destroying drink, to save themselves from the miserable end to which they are hastening.

      Speaking for myself and of myself, although a very moderate and small drinker, I am not an abstainer.1 But though believing that many persons may take a small quantity of fermented liquor without being the worse for it, I also know that to many persons even a small quantity is more or less injurious; whilst as to others, I can but repeat what has been so often said before, and I do it with the greatest possible emphasis, that to many alcohol is a positive poison, unsuited to their temperaments, destructive to their health, and productive of the worst evils, both morally and physically. It is curious to notice, in passing, not only that the use of wine is alluded to through a large part of the Bible history, but also that the injurious effects of it seem always to have been precisely the same in character as those which are so much dilated on in the present day. Dr. Richardson, perhaps the greatest living exponent of the physiological properties of alcohol, and the greatest denouncer of its habitual use, speaks of its effects according to the increased quantities in which it is used. He describes its influence thus: – “In the first stage of alcoholism,” i. e., in small quantity, he says, “it tends to paralyse the minute blood vessels, producing their relaxation and distension, illustrated by the flush seen on the face of those who have (in familiar language) been drinking, by the redness of the eyes and nose,” etc., etc. This stage of excitement, he describes as being followed – if the quantity be increased – by some loss of muscular power, with disturbance of the reasoning powers and of the will; whilst again a further quantity produces a complete collapse of nervous function, when the drunken man, who previously, perhaps, had been excited, talking loud, and staggering in his walk, becomes stupid, helpless, and falls into a heavy sleep. And are we not all familiar with the quotations: – “His eyes shall be red with wine”; “Wine is a mocker; strong drink is raging”; “They are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they stumble in judgment”; “They shall drink and make a noise as through wine”; “Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine.” “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”

      Those who have taken the trouble to read Dr. Richardson’s lectures on alcohol, will see that the effects of wine, as thus described long ages ago, are identical with those which he found experimentally to result from alcohol at the present day; and the redness of the eyes, the contentions and quarrelling, the loss of judgment, and the ulterior disastrous results to the health, spoken of in the infallible Word, are only too familiarly known at the present day. Nor let it be said that wine is not the beverage of the multitude at the present time. For this point has also been experimentally investigated by Dr. Richardson, and he found that whatever the alcoholic drink, or whatever the adulterations, the effect of these variations was insignificant, and that the real evil results of drinking were always due to the alcohol contained in the fermented liquors, whether these were wine, beer, or ardent spirits. But the subject of drinking and its evil influences, both physical and moral, has now been so long and so often placed before the public, that I shall gladly employ the short time left to me in alluding to some suggestions which have been made, with a view to assist in remedying the drinking habits of the people, and to enable them to wean themselves from these where no hope of voluntary or total abstention on a large scale can reasonably be hoped for. These suggestions have been very numerous. The

1

1908. For the last five or six years I have practically been an abstainer, and my health has greatly improved in consequence. I am now eighty-three years of age.