Temperance | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 27, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 13.

Temperance.

The Supposed Utility of Alcohol.

THERE has been a great advance in public sentiment in regard to the supposed utility of alcohol.

Sixty years ago the use of alcoholic liquors was supposed to be a necessity, in order to health. One of the first questions raised, when the reform began, was whether it would be possible for men to maintain good health if they desisted from their use entirely. It was supposed to be necessary often to resort to them. They held complete sway in all fields of labor, and no man was supposed to be of much value in the field or shop, as a laborer, without them; and it was held to be impossible to withstand severe heat or cold without their aid. They filled a large place in materia medica, and were freely resorted to for every kind of illness, as a sovereign remedy.

The quaint superstitions of Theoricus, in the ancient Hollingshed chronicles, over-lapped the first quarter of the present century, ascribing to alcoholic drinks the following remarkable virtues: "It sloweth age; it strengtheneth youth; it helpeth digestion; it cutteth phlegm; it abandoneth melancholy; it relisheth the heart; it lighteneth the mind; it quickeneth the spirits; it cureth the hydropsia; it healeth the strangurie; it pounceth the stone; it expelleth the gravel; it puffeth away ventosity; it keepeth and preserveth the head from whirling, the tongue from lisping, the mouth from snaffling, the teeth from chattering, and the throat from rattling; it keepeth the weazen from stifling, the stomach from wambling; and the heart from swelling; it keepeth the hands from shivering, the sinews from shrinking, the veins from crumbling, the bones from aching, and the marrow from soaking."

Sixty to eighty years ago public sentiment had advanced a little, and but little, beyond these superstitions of the olden times, in regard to the virtues of alcohol. Thirty years ago an old man approaching his ninetieth birthday said: "A kind Providence and good New England rum have spared my life so long." "Black strap," made of rum and molasses, or a rum sweat, were indispensable remedies for a cold. "Rum, seasoned with cherries, protected against cold." "Rum, made nutritious with milk, prepared for the maternal office; and under the Greek name of paregoric, rum, doubly poisoned with opium, quieted the infant's cries." "Females, or valetudinarians, courted an appetite with medicated rum, disguised under the chaste name of 'Hexham's Tincture,' or 'Stoughton's Elixir.'" In some sections of the country, it was customary to take whisky flavored with mint soon after waking in the morning; and so essential was it regarded to health that scarcely any person of any age or sex was exempt from it.

Can alcoholic drinks be safely dispensed with? was a question seriously and conscientiously pondered when this reform was in its incipient stages. Even Dr. Benj. Rush was some time in settling this point; others were longer still in reaching a conclusion. To dispense with them altogether, it was felt, would make men weak and puny, the sure victims of exhaustion and disease. These ideas were current. These mischievous delusions, relics of darker ages, have now been dispelled from multitudes of intelligent minds. How great the change! How seldom we meet such notions now, only among backward looking people, who are unpardonably loitering behind the march of mind, held back by the subtle delusion of appetite.

As early as 1850 the use of alcoholic beverages had been condemned by the best medical authorities in Great Britain and the United States, as not only needless, but positively injurious. Prior to that time alcohol had been demonstrated to be a poison in a healthy body. Two thousand of the best medical and surgical gentlemen in Great Britain declared, over their signatures, that "the most perfect health is compatible with total abstinence from all intoxicating beverages," and that "total and universal abstinence from such beverages would greatly contribute to the health, prosperity, and happiness of the human race." One hundred and twenty-five of the first physicians in New York City united in declaring that "alcohol should be classed with other powerful drugs, and when prescribed medicinally, it should be with conscientious caution and a grave sense of responsibility." Soon after the publication of these views, an article appeared in the Westminster Review advocating alcohol as food. Some French investigators, however, of a high rank, quickly exploded this pernicious theory, and the Westminster Review magnanimously retracted it. Ex-Governor Andrew, before a Legislative Committee of Massachusetts, with a great array of learning, reasserted the theory that alcohol is food, or at least an assimilator of food, and the effect of it has been a reaction of sentiment in some circles of society. But the battle has been fought over again, and the demonstrations of the ripest science are against alcohol at all as a beverage, and also as a medicine, except in exceedingly rare cases. In the language of the "Sanitary" editor of The Independent, "Every gain in sanitary knowledge and in the study of the conditions of perfect health, tends to drive alcohol from use."

The employment of alcohol in medicine is immeasurably reduced in the practice of the most scientific physicians; and, in the London Temperance Hospital, after eight years of thorough trial, it has been fully demonstrated that it can be dispensed with altogether in the treatment of all diseases.

—D. Dorchester, D. D., in N. Y. Independent.