Alexyeeff's first utterances may be
assumed to have seen the light of print. At any rate, it is an admitted
fact that Dr. Alexyeeff carried to Russia and to Tolstoy from the United
States the idea and inspiration which has borne such wonderful fruit in
the abolition of the liquor traffic "forever," as the Imperial ukase
runs.
Mr. Tchelisheff is a noteworthy figure in history accordingly, but Dr.
Alexyeeff should not be forgotten. When I made his acquaintance at Count
Tolstoy's, in Moscow, he had just requested (and obtained) a detail of
service in Tchita, Trans-Baikal Province, Siberia, as physician to the
political exiles there, thinking the region would repay study from many
points of view, in his leisure hours. The preface to the first edition
of his book "Concerning Drunkenness" is dated "July, 1899, Tchita," and
from Tchita I received my copy from him. In that preface he states the
scope of his book in a way which confirms my conviction that Mr.
Tchelisheff was first stirred to interest, and in the end aroused to
action, by the United States, via Dr. Alexyeeff. He writes:
The battle which in all ages has been waged against
drunkenness has been confined hitherto almost exclusively to
the realms of medicine and ethics; the social part of the
question is only just beginning to be worked out, and has
hardly as yet won the rights of citizenship, and down to our
own day there have been no serious legal measures adopted for
the battle with drunkenness.
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