The physiology of temperance & total abstinence : being an examination of the effects of the excessive, moderate, and occasional use of alcoholic liquors on the healthy human system / by William B. Carpenter.

  • Carpenter, William Benjamin, 1813-1885.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physiology of temperance & total abstinence : being an examination of the effects of the excessive, moderate, and occasional use of alcoholic liquors on the healthy human system / by William B. Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    PREFACE. Tuts little volume may be considered, in some degree, as a new edition of the Essay “On the Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors in Health and Disease,” to which was awarded, in 1 > 49, the prize of one hundred guineas, liberally offered by Mr. Joseph Eaton. Two large editions of that Essay, in its original form (which was especially ad- dressed to the Medical Profession), having been disposed of. the Author has remodelled it with a view to its more extensive diffusion among the general Public; substituting a large amount of matter of more general interest, in the place of purely professional details; and so changing the arrangement of the whole, as to make the sequence of sub- jects more natural, and the line of argument more obvious. He has also added a short Glossary of those scientific terms, which he could scarcely avoid occasionally employing. It is his object, in the first place (Prop. 1.), to determine, by an examination of the mode in which Alcohol acts upon the healthy human body, when taken in a poiaonou* dose, or in such a quantity as to cause intoxication, what are the changes which it tend* to produce in the regular course of vital action; next (Prop. 11.), to show that the direct conse- quences of the habitual exce**ice use of Alcoholic liquors, as demonstrated by medical experience, are just such as might be predicted on these data; and thence (Prop. 111.), to establish the Btrong probability, that a remote liability to many forms of disease is engendered by the habitual mode- rate use of these beverages. This conclusion is shown to be