Temperance and teetotalism : an inquiry into the effects of alcoholic drinks on the human system in health and disease.

  • Carpenter, William Benjamin, 1813-1885.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Temperance and teetotalism : an inquiry into the effects of alcoholic drinks on the human system in health and disease. 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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    We shall not pursue this painful inquiry any further; having said enough, we trust, to demonstrate the importance of the subject, to which we would now invite the serious and candid attention of our readers. A brief historical notice of the origin and progress of the Total Abstinence Movement may not be without its value, in showing how far experience has replied by anticipation to some of the objections which would occur to almost every one who has not given his express attention to the inquiry. It is well known that individuals have risen up from time to time, in all ages, to proclaim the virtues of aqua pura as the beverage most conducive to health of body and vigour of mind ; and our readers need scarcely be reminded of the cases of Cornaro and Benjamin Franklin, were it not for the remarkable degree in which the strong practical sense of the latter anticipated the conclusions more recently drawn from scientific investiga- tion. “On my entrance into a London printing-house,” says Franklin in his ‘ Autobiography/ “ I worked at first as a pressman, conceiving that I had need of bodily exercise to which I had been accustomed in America, where the printers work alternately as compositors and at the press. I drank nothing but water. The other workmen, to the number of about fifty, were great drinkers of beer. I carried occasionally a large form of letters in each hand up and down stairs, while the rest employed both hands to carry one. They were surprised to see, by this and many other examples, that the ‘ American aquatic/ as they used to call me, was stronger than those who drank porter. My fellow-pressman drank every day a pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, one between breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again about six o’clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finished his day’s work. This custom appeared to me abominable; but he had need, he said, of all this beer, in order to acquire strength for his work. I endeavoured to convince him that the bodily strength furnished by the beer could only be in proportion to the solid part of the barley dissolved in the water, of which the beer was composed,— that there was a larger quantity of flour in a penny loaf,—and that consequently if he ate this loaf, and drank a pint of water with it, he would derive more strength from it than from a pint of beer.” The pious and enthusiastic Wesley, and the ingenious and benevolent Dr. Beddoes, devoted no small amount of labour and reasoning to an attempt to awaken the public mind to the injurious effects of the prevalent use, moderate and immoderate, of fermented liquors; and the latter, amongst other tracts on the subject, published an excellent one in 1808, entitled ‘Good Advice for the Husbandman in Harvest/ from which we shall presently make an extract. Besides these well-known examples, there have always been many who have practised, in a quiet, unostentatious manner, an habitual abstinence from all fermented liquors ; and amongst these might be named some who have been remarkable for the amount of mental and bodily exertion which they have been able to sustain. Still it has been the current opinion, sanctioned by the general voice and the usual practice of the medical profession, that the moderate employment of fermented liquors of good quality is beneficial, or at any rate innocuous in a great majority of in- stances ; and that where the demands upon the bodily strength are peculiarly constant and severe, efficient aid in meeting them is derived