The history of the first inebriate asylum in the world / by its founder [Jonathan Edward Turner]. An account of his indictment, also a sketch of the Woman's national hospital, by its founder.

  • Turner, J. Edward, 1822-1889.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of the first inebriate asylum in the world / by its founder [Jonathan Edward Turner]. An account of his indictment, also a sketch of the Woman's national hospital, by its founder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    far distant wlien enforced justice would declare that every death caused from inel)riety, and every case of in- sanity developed from dipsomania, would he pronounced by the courts to he accidents of the rum traffic, entitling the widow and the or})hans of the deceased drunkard to ($5,000) five thousand dollars; and to the permanently injured, (such as the insane), from this malady, ($10,- 000) ten thousand dollars. These are the sums which Justice has provided to he paid in all railroad accidents —five thousand dollars for a death, ten thousand or more for a permanently injured person. In forcing the Government hy law to pay out of its revenue of the licpior business—which amounts to sixty million dollars annually—it is simply doing a little Justice to the family of the victims who have paid these millions of revenue. I would suggest, said the Chancelloi-, that the United States Government appropriate out of its excise moneys twenty-five millions of dollars to build twenty-five ine- briate asylums, with a capacity for twenty-five thousand patients, and endofi^ twenty-five thousand free beds, with five thousand dollars each ; that the said asylums shall be provided with workshops, where the ])atient shall be emjfioyed with work, so that his earnings be exclusively appropriated for the support of his family, while he is under medical treatment of the hos[)ital. This plan that I have suggested, continued the Chancellor, is eminently Just and humane, and one which our country sooner or later must accept. To illustrate the exact position and the relation which the United States Gov- ernment sustains to the licpior business, and the relation it holds to its diseased victim, it can be stated thus : If a corporation could have existed in this country which had received one thousand million of dollars from a traffic which, by accidents incident to its business, had