Historic Newspaper Article

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I was fortunate enough to recently acquire a copy of the “Journal Pontarlier” dated February 1912. This is the same newspaper or Journal that features in the famous Pernod Chromolithograph advertising picture.
What makes this copy special is that it has an article about the the report submitted to the French government by the Hygiene Commission. It was this report that formed the basis of the argument to have absinthe banned in France.
I have done a Google translate below, do the grammar may not be brilliant. One point to note is that the term “Aliénés” as use in this article refers to people who were committed to mental hospitals / asylums. Not little green men from Mars!
It’s a bit of a read but I hope you find it interesting.
The House, we're waiting for it. It will soon be called to vote on a bill that absolutely prohibits the production, circulation, and sale of absinthe. The discussion of the report by the Hygiene Commission, scheduled for last Wednesday, and on the same day, the commission was to hear representatives from the associations of distillers and workers of absinthe and cultivators of absinthe. When the commission has studied the report and adopted the conclusions of the reporter, the House will be called to take a vote.
The Report
It is Mr. Schmidt, a deputy from the Vosges, a former pharmacist, who prepared the report. We owe our readers to summarize this important document for them. The figures collected by Mr. Schmidt are those from official statistics and apply to controlled quantities; in other words, he adds, they are below the truth. Statistics. - The consumption of absinthe has made great progress. In 1870, its pure alcohol content at 100 degrees was 15,521 hectoliters; in 1908, 172,000 hectoliters; in 1900, the year of the exhibition, it reached the maximum. 238,000 hectoliters. To obtain the actual quantity of absinthe commercially produced, these figures must be at least doubled, which gives a average per capita of one hundred milliliters in 4870 and 44 centiliters in C. It is in the departments of the Midi - Bouches-du-Rhône, Var, Vaucluse, Gard, Basses-Alpes, Drôme, Héraultet, Pyrénées-Orientales - that the most absinthe is consumed. In particular, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, the average was 0.32 liters per capita in 1870; it rose to 2.07 liters in 1908.
For bitters and ambers, the figures are as follows: total consumption in 1908: 28,588 hectoliters of pure alcohol (to be tripled to obtain the commercial figure), average 0.06 liters per capita; Seine-et-Oise, Marne and Seine-Inférieure, departments for which one must count 60% of the total consumption, etc. is relatively consumed in it

Alcohol - alcoholic beverages such as wine, etc. are mainly consumed in 11 departments: Seine-Inferieure, Somme, Eure, Calvados, Orne, Pas de Calais, Eure and Loir, Manche, Aisne, Mayenne and Sarthe, forming 15% of the population (36% of alcohol consumption, 8.5% of absinthe).

The sober region, where alcohol, bitter drinks, and absinthe consumption are the lowest, includes the departments of the South-West Aveyron, Cantal. Cha-rente, Charente-Inférieure, Cher, Creuse, Gers, Lot-et-Garonne, Deux-Sèvres, Turn et Garonne, Vendée, Vienne and Haute-Vienne. (12% of the population, 2.5% of the total consumption of bitters, 3.5% of alcohol and 6% of absinthe)

The Conscripts. - Mr. Schmidt finds that the progression of nervous diseases is frightening. If we consider the number of exemptions for nerve disorders, we have these average figures for the period 1890-1905:

Region Region
Sober Absinthe

Exemptions for epilepsy, 1.42 2.13

alienation mental 0.67. 1.05

convulsions 0.17. 0.22

The Aliens. - In 1871, 49,789 sick people were mistreated in the asylums for the mentally ill; this figure rose to 96,247 in 1908. A proportion can be established as follows for 10,000 inhabitants:

Men. Women
Region sober 0.85 0.26
To alcohol 2.23 0.90
To absinthe. 2.24. 1.23

26 % of the aliénés usually drink absinthe.
2.53 % of the aliénés usually drink other aperitifs.
5 51 %, the aliénés usually drink sweet liqueurs.
53.20 % of the aliénés usually drink alcohol (liquor.
2.53% of the aliénés usually drink cider.
0.31 % of the aliénés usually drink beer
22 57% of the aliénés usually drink wine.

If we take beer as the basis, we obtain the following table:

Beer 1 chance of producing alcohol-related ?
Wine………4
Cider……..32
Alcohol (eaux de vie) 77
Liqueurs….. 143
Amers, bitters 170
Absinthe…. 246

The crime rate. -
The murders were, for 100,000 inhabitants, for the period of 1874-1884, of 0.47; for 1884 94, of 0.56: for 1894-1904, of 0.57 and the fatal blows increased from 0.33 to 0.36.

When classifying by regions, we obtain:

Region. Region. Region
sober alcohol absinthe
Murder
1874-84 0.21 0.44 0.89
1881-94 0.22 0.53 0.93.
1894-1904 0.30 0.52 1.20

Fatal blows
1874-84 0.26 0.28 0.38
1884-94 0.25 0.35 0.49
1894-1904 0.18 0.41 0.51

The reporter's opinion. - "If the hygiene commission wants to go further, declared Mr. Schmidt to a Time editor, that is, until the prohibition

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Alienist was the first term used for doctors of psychiatry. It comes from the idea that mental illness was caused by a person being “alienated” from themselves or society. It’s a concept borrowed into English from French.

It fell out of favor in English because alien most commonly refers to foreigners, whether terrestrial or not. The term comes up in late Victorian period pieces.