A discourse on intemperance : delivered at Cincinnati, March 1, 1828, before the Agricultural society of Hamilton county, and subsequently pronounced, by request, to a popular audience / By Daniel Drake.

  • Drake, Daniel, 1785-1852.
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A discourse on intemperance : delivered at Cincinnati, March 1, 1828, before the Agricultural society of Hamilton county, and subsequently pronounced, by request, to a popular audience / By Daniel Drake. 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.

    99/106 (page 93)
    the drunkard, and leaving it to be discovered by himself. The disgust thus excited has occasionally worked out a cure; but it is far from infallible. I recollect a fact, men- Idned, I think, by Span-man, a Swedish traveller in the Cape of Good Hope, which shows the difficulty of exciting this disgust. He was a naturalist, and took with him a barrel of brandy, into which he plunged specimens of every kind of snake, lizard, toad, and other small reptile, which he could mid. At length, perceiving the vessel to emit a putrid stench, lie examined into its condition, and found that the Hottentots, who were his collectors, had, notwith- standing the daily addition to it of all sorts of creeping things, drunk up the whole of the spirits in which they were Isteeped. These were Hottentots, to be sure; but Hotten- tots are men,—and men of considerable decency, compared iwith the majority of habitual drunkards both in Europe land the United State,?. In regard to specifics for drunkenness, there are several [drawbacks: 1. The propensity for drink is, in many cases, as may be I inferred from what has just been said, so strong, that nothing ;can disgust the individual with his glass. 2. There is so much variety in temperaments and consti- tutions, that the agent which might cure one person will Ifail to cure another. 3. Several of the medicines which have been proposed, | are so energetic in their effects, that, in broken down consti- tutions, they may do injury to health, and even destroy life. 4. It is, and always must be, extremely difficult to in- duce the majority of drunkards to take them. 5. Their effects, in many cases, are exceedingly transient. On the whole, therefore, I think but little reliance should be placed upon physical means for the cure of drunkenness.