Fifteen years in hell : an autobiography / by Luther Benson.

  • Benson, Luther
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fifteen years in hell : an autobiography / by Luther Benson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    22/228 page 8
    devil's chain cutting through my quivering flesh to the shrinking bone—to feel my nerves tremble with agony, and my brain burn as if bathed in liquids of fire — too well, I say, do I know what these things are, for I have felt them intensified again and again, ten thousand times. The infinite God alone knows the deep abyss of my sorrow, and help, if help be possible, can come from him alone. I shall not attempt in these pages any learned disquisition upon the nature of alcohol — its hideous effects on the system — how it disarranges all the functions of the body —how it impairs health — blots out memory, dethrones reason, aud destroys the very soul itself—how it gives to the whole body an unnatural and unhealthy action, crucifying the flesh, blood, bones and marrow — how it paints hell in the mind and torture on the heart, and strangles hope with despair. Nor shall I discuss the terrible and overshadowing evils, financial and social, inflicted by it on every class of society. Like the trail of the serpent it is over all. Look where you will, turn where you may, you can not be blind to its evils. It despoils manhood of all that makes manhood desirable; it plucks hope from the breast of the weeping wife with a hand of ice; it robs the orphan of his bread crumb, and says to the gates of penitentiaries, Open wide and often to
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3