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THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 17, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 51.

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THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL.

By Frederick M. Rossiter

FREDERICK M. ROSSITER, M. D.
(Battle Creek, Mich.)
From ancient Bible times to the present day drunkenness has been caused by drinking fermented liquors. That fermented fruit juices produce marked disturbances in the body was early recognized, but what new element entered into a fermented fluid to produce such marked disturbance was not discovered until a few centuries ago. In the Sacred Writings vinegar was known to have a benumbing and narcotic effect.
The first distillation of which we have any record is described by Pliny, 50 A. D. He tells us that oil of turpentine was obtained from crude pitch by boiling the pitch, and catching the vapors on fleeces, from which oil was afterward pressed.
Late in the thirteenth century the art of distillation, and the properties and uses of alcohol were described by a famous Arabian alchemist. Alcohol was first obtained from fermented wines, and it is said that because of its demon-like effect upon men, it was called Al Ghole, the Arabian word for evil spirit.
For hundreds of years, alcohol was regarded as a great boon by alchemists and physicians. They fairly went wild over it, and gave it the highest place among their drugs. They considered it a panacea for all the ills flesh is heir to. It was the most widely used remedy in their possession.
It was during this age that men were in search of the fountain of eternal youth and the elixir of life; so when this subtle fluid was discovered, it was pronounced the aqua vitae, or the water of life. It was eagerly sought, and in the course of two or three centuries its use became enormous. In those days a physician compounded his own drugs, prepared his own elixirs, cordials, infusions, and extracts. In the great majority of these compounds, alcoholic liquors supplied the principal active ingredient. Each physician claimed extraordinary, almost miraculous, powers for his nostrums.
The noted German physician, Theoricus, has the following to say about alcohol: “It sloweth age, it strengtheneth youth, it helpeth digestion, it cutteth plegme, it cureth the hydropsea, it healeth the strangurie, it pounceth the stone, it expelleth gravel; it keepeth the head from whirling, the teeth from chattering, and the throat from rattling; it keepeth the weason 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.” What more could be desired?
It was not until 1688 that people learned that alcohol was the intoxicating principle of their fermented beverages. The demand for these fiery spirits became so great that it was considered too expensive to make alcohol from wines, hence beers were produced in great quantities, and alcohol was distilled from these.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century all England and Europe was one vast distillery. Gin, beers, and wines were used by all classes. It is said that the streets of London were lined with gin-shops placarded with the following: “Drunk for a penny; dead drunk for twopence; clean straw for nothing.”
Alcoholic liquors were within the reach of the common people; and so great was the consumption of gin, and so terrible were the poverty, crime, and vice that followed, that national destruction was imminent. As a means of self-preservation, Parliament was forced to pass the noted “gin law” in 1736. A tax of twenty shillings a gallon was levied on spirits. Then, as now, liquor dealers devised every possible means to evade the law. Liquors in small quantities were sold under such names as “Colic Water,” “Make Shift,” “Ladies’ Delight,” with instructions to take two or three teaspoonfuls several times a day, or “as often as the fit takes.”
The eighteenth century was one marked with terrible extremes in intemperance. Drinking was not the exception, but the rule. Every one drank. A man who did not drink held no place in society. To get drunk was not considered a disgrace. Gout was more common than toothache is to-day, and many able statesmen in the meridian of life had to give place to others because of the torturing and atrocious pains of this malady.
Nor was this excessive indulgence in fermented liquors confined to the Eastern hemisphere. The colonists of this country early showed the pit from which they had been digged. The Puritans in 1620 complained bitterly because they had no wine nor beer, and were compelled to drink water. One of the first orders sent back to England from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629 was a request for “ministers, vyne planters, rye, barley, and hop rootes.” In two years drunkenness became so common that a law was enacted to put drunkards in the stocks. In 1650 every town and village of New England, and even many farms, had its distillery, and the seaports had many. Rum, or “kill devil,” was very cheap, and was shipped to Africa in exchange for slaves. It was impossible to “raise a meeting-house” without a free distribution of rum, beer, ale, cider and sugar.
Even George Washington, a little more than one hundred years ago, in engaging a gardener, agreed that the man should have “four dollars at Christmas with which he may be drunk for four days and four nights; two dollars at Easter to effect the same purpose; two dollars at Whitsuntide to be drunk for two days; a dram in the morning and a drink of grog at dinner and at noon.” When we consider the excessive consumption of alcoholic drinks one hundred years ago, it is not at all strange that intemperance of all forms is the ruling passion to-day. We are reaping from the sowing of one and two hundred years ago, not only in the very great number who actually drink, but in the increasing number of idiots, lunatics, imbeciles, epileptics, mental defectives of all types, deformed bodies, and many other disorders. In a large percentage of all these cases a history of alcoholism may be obtained.