A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customes of ancient and modern nations in the manufacture and use of inebriating liquors : with the present practice of distillation in all its varieties: together with an extensive illustration of the consumption and effects of opium, and other stimulants used in the East, as substitutes for wine and spirits / By Samuel Morewood.

  • Morewood, Samuel.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customes of ancient and modern nations in the manufacture and use of inebriating liquors : with the present practice of distillation in all its varieties: together with an extensive illustration of the consumption and effects of opium, and other stimulants used in the East, as substitutes for wine and spirits / By Samuel Morewood. 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.

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    this reason God forbade the use of wine to his servants ever after.* The prophet seems to assign the reason oftheproliibitioninthe Koran altogether to the quarrels which wine and games of chance had caused amongst his followers ; for in the 5th chapter of that book he says, The devil desires to sow dissensions and hatred among you through wine and games of chance; be obedient to God, and the prophet, his apostle, and take heed to yourselves. The learned Mr. Sale seems to agree with the Sieur de Ryer, that it was the divisions and disturbances in company, and the neglect, or at least indecencies in the performance of religious duties, occasioned by inebriety, which induced the prophet to pass so strict a prohibition.! In this restriction, it is probable that Mahomet was guided by the Mosaic law, under which the priests were forbidden to drink wine or any intoxicating liquors, when they were about to enter on, or execute, any sacred or religious duty. Do not drink wine, says the inspired writer, nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the taber- nacle of the congregation, lest ye die ; it shall be a statute for ever ■throughout your generations.^ The Nazarites§ and Reehabites, as well as many pious persons among the Jews and primitive christians, ab- stained altogether from wine, and we find injunctions of a prohibitory nature observed among the Egyptians, Carthagenians and Greeks: so that the mandate of the prophet in this respect is not without a prece- dent.|| The Carthagenian soldiers were forbidden wine while in the field, under the severest penalty ; and their magistrates were also obliged to abstain from wine during the exercise of their power, though * Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, 8vo. p. 111. f Sale's Koran, chap. ii. p. 39 ; chap. iv. and v. J Levit. x. 9. § Doctor Lightfoot, in his work already ■quoted, thus comments on the vow of the Nazarites, as spoken of in the sixth chapter of Numbers : Whilst I a little more narrowly consider, that severe interdiction by which the Naza- rites were forbidden the total use of the vine, not only that he should not drink of the wine, but not so much as taste of the grape, nor the pulp, nor stone of the grape, no, nor the bark of the vine, I cannot but call to mind,— 1st. Whether the vine might not be the tree in paradise that had been forbidden to Adam, by the tasting of which he sinned ; the Jewish doctors positively affirm this without any scruple. 2dly—Whether that law about the Nazarites had not some reference to Adam, while he was under that prohibition, in the state of innocency. For if the bodily and legal uncleanness about which there are such strict precepts (Numb, v.) especially the leprosy, the greatest of all uncleannesses, did excellently decipher the state and nature of sin ; might not the laws about the Nazarites, which concerned the greatest parities in a most pure religion (Lain. iv. 7.) be something in comme- moration of the state of man before his fall? Jerm. xxxv. 6. 6. || iElian, b. II. Hist. \ii. Sap. Plato de Legibus.