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Show ARE AMERICAN WOMEN DRUNKARDS? According to Professor John Duncan Quacken-bos. Quacken-bos. specialist in nervous and mental diseases, a member of many American and foreign medical so cieties and formerly of Columbia University faculty, fac-ulty, the drink habit is spreading at an alarming rate among the women of Xew York. "It is-with real alarm." he says, "that I note the rapid growth of the drink habit among the women in Xew lork City. 1 have been in a position to watch that growth closely and I can say with full knowledge that ten women drink today' where one drank a dozen years ago. "The growth of the habit has been among hwomen of all classes, rich and poori young and old. Girls in their teens evidently see no impropriety impro-priety whatever in drinking publicly with men companions. com-panions. Often, indeed, I have had young girls brought to me for treatment, hysterically drunk. "I have treated within a year women whos' weekly bill for champagne alone was $100 and who filled up at intervals between their drafts of wine with highballs ad cocktails. One woman drank a quart of champagne every morning and when ready to go out her custom was to order her maid to bring her another quart. Then, before leaving the house to enter her carriage, she would empty a bottle to 'steady her nerves.' "School misses and college girls iri great number num-ber are among the. throng of women drinkers. - A case was pointed out recently of a luncheon given here in New York, at which four debutantes drank thirty-six bottles of champagne and fifteen of them smoked seven dozen cigarettes. , "As everyone knows, the nunch bowl figures largely in the growth of the drink habit among the women of Xew York. It is fount! at all functions, -and many a girl has jrot her first taste of liquor by a dip into it. The punch bowl, however, is not bi be blamed entirely. Many women dip into it. and many do it many times without acquiring the drink habit, but many get their start there. "The tendency of the American woman is to p:o to extremes, and in drinking she overdrinks. It isi dangerous former to touch liquor at all.' This is Particularly trtfe of the IWYnrw woman, Wn-ion. of the added excitement of life in Xew York. . "It is not my object to preach unless the mere statement of fact is a sermon, and the fact is Nev York women do drink, or rather, too large a per" centage of them drink, and drink to excess. If one doubts it let his go to any of our large hoMs -and, restaurants any night and look about him. "Conditions might not be so bad, however, if women or men drank pure whisky, pure wine and pure liquors of all sorts, but they don't. They think they do.'but what they are really drinking is deadly poison and one swift in its execution. , I feel safe in saying that out of 100 drinks sold in Xew York City as whisky not more than one is the real article. "It is surprising how many of pur school children chil-dren have become beer drinkers, especially. those of foreign birth, and the habit is making then; men-t;dly men-t;dly vduggish to a degree that is attracting the attention at-tention of educators and philanthropists. Dr. S. T. Armstrong, superintendent of Belle-vue Belle-vue and allied hospitals, attributes the drink habit of Xew Yorkers to their increasing excitability. Less and less restraint, he says, is exercised. The extreme tension of life here is showing on the people. peo-ple. One sees plenty of examples of this in individ-ual individ-ual life. A vast demonstration of it among the mass of the people is observed in the increasing hysteria hy-steria on such celebrations as those on the night before be-fore Xew Years. What is true of city men. is true of city women. The increase in drunkenness is a distressing fact. It is the natural outcome of restlessness rest-lessness over the striving and unrestraint of present day life in Xew York. "The records of the alcoholic and physipathic wa"ds in Bellevue hospital do not, show the facts 'of inebriety even among -the classes 'of men and women who would seek aid from this Lospital. "In 1904 there were 8,941 admissions to Bellevus for various forms of alcoholism. The number now is greatly less than that. In 1906 it had fallen to G.G52, but een with this reducttion the number of alcoholic patients was more than 25 per cent of all patients admitted to Bellevue. "What is the cure of .the evil in increasing inebriety ine-briety in Xew York ? Whatever will bring easement ease-ment to the restless life in the city will lessen all forms of dissipation." |
