Inebriety / by J. Johnston.

  • Johnston, J.
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Inebriety / by J. Johnston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INEBRIETY civilisations, the Drink Question, as we know it, was not so much the outcome of that as of Modern Industrialism. During the eighteenth century the amount of drunken¬ ness in this country among the upper classes—royalty, aristocracy, clergy—was appalling ; and we read with amazement of the drinking capabilities of the great people of those days, among whom it was regarded rather as an accomplishment. But it was not till the decline of feudahsm and the coming of the Industrial Revolution at the end of the century, that drink among the masses assumed its im¬ portance as a factor in national life. Then were the entire working and social conditions changed—the great factories established, the home industries destroyed, following upon which came the employment of women and children in mills and coal-pits, and the general social and industrial chaos—^and then was it that the people turned to drink as a surcease from their misery. iNDUSTRbiJLISM AND ITS SHADOW That this connection between chronic alcoholism and industrialism is a real one is shown by Dr. Sullivan— In time and place (he says) it has ever followed industrialism as a shadow .... And just as in its historic evolution it thus follows and is dependent on the growth of industrialism, so in like manner do we find that at the present day its gravity in the different civilised countries varies in close correspondence with the degree of their in¬ dustrial activity. The states of Southern Europe which have been least affected by the industrial movement of the last century have also for that reason suffered least from alcoholism. And that this is the true explanation of their relative immunity is clearly evident from the fact that wherever in these countries there has been, within recent years, a beginning of industrialism, it has invariably brought in its train all the evils of intemperance. Those parts of Spain, for in¬ stance, and of Northern Italy, which have latterly become fields of industrial enterprise have also become centres of alcoholism ; instead of the traditional sobriety of the nations of the Latin culture, these already show a development of alcoholic insanity and alcoholic crime, and a frequency of drunkenness that may compare with the intem¬ perate countries of the North ; here, again, it is the factory that has created the Drink Question.