FOOTNOTES
[1] In making this observation, I have only in view the countries north of the equator; for as we proceed to the south of that line, the vice increases precisely in the same manner as in the opposite direction. To use the words of Montesquieu; “Go from the equator to our pole, and you will find drunkenness increasing together with the degree of latitude. Go from the same equator to the opposite pole, and you will find drunkenness travelling south, as on this side it travels towards the north.”
[2] Good’s Study of Medicine, vol. i., p. 113; Second Edition.
[3] The quantity of wine raised in France alone is almost incredible. The vineyards in that country are said to occupy five millions of acres, or a twenty-sixth part of the whole territory. Paris alone consumes more than three times the quantity of wine consumed in the British Isles. It is true that much of the wine drunk in the French capital is of a weak quality, being used as a substitute for small beer. But after every allowance is made, enough remains to show clearly, if other proofs were wanting, how much the use of wine here is restricted by our exorbitant duties. It would be well for the morals of this country if the people abandoned the use of ardent spirits, and were enabled to resort to such wines as the French are in the habit of drinking.
[4] See Accum’s Treatise on the adulteration of Food; Child on Brewing Porter; and Shannon on Brewing and Distillation.
[5] See [Appendix].
[6] Liqueurs often contain narcotic principles; therefore their use is doubly improper.
[7] Thackrah on the Effects of the Principal Arts, Trades, and Professions, p. 83.
[8] Botanic Garden.
[9] Rede’s Memoir of the Right Hon. George Canning.
[10] The old gentleman who is represented as speaking, in Bunbury’s admirable caricature of the “Long Story,” furnishes one of the best illustrations I have ever seen of this variety. It is worth consulting, both on account of the story-teller, and the effect his tedious garrulity produces upon the company.
[11] Alcohol appears to exist in wines, in a very peculiar state of combination. In the Appendix, I have availed myself of Dr. Paris’s valuable remarks on this subject.
[12] There is reason to believe that the Sack of Shakspeare was Sherry.—“Falstaff. You rogue! here’s lime in this Sack too. There is nothing but roguery to be found in villanous man. Yet a coward is worse than a cup of Sack with lime in it.”—Lime, it is well known, is added to the grapes in the manufacture of Sherry. This not only gives the wine what is called its dry quality, but probably acts by neutralizing a portion of the malic or tartaric acid.
[13] “It is recorded of a Welsh squire, William Lewis, who died in 1793, that he drank eight gallons of ale per diem, and weighed forty stones.”—Wadd’s Comments on Corpulency.
[14] “The law of Mahomet, which prohibits the drinking of wine, is a law fitted to the climate of Arabia; and, indeed, before Mahomet’s time, water was the common drink of the Arabs. The law which forbade the Carthagenians to drink wine, was also a law of the climate.”—Montesquieu, Book xiv., Chap. x.
[15] The following description, by a modern traveller, of a scene witnessed by him in the East, gives a lively picture of the effects of this drug:—
“There is a decoction of the head and seeds of the poppy, which they call Coquenar, for the sale of which there are taverns in every quarter of the town, similar to our coffee-houses. It is extremely amusing to visit these houses, and to observe carefully those who resort there for the purpose of drinking it, both before they have taken the dose, before it begins to operate, and while it is operating. On entering the tavern, they are dejected and languishing: soon after they have taken two or three cups of this beverage, they are peevish, and as it were, enraged; every thing displeases them. They find fault with every thing, and quarrel with one another, but in the course of its operation they make it up again;—and, each one giving himself up to his predominant passion, the lover speaks sweet things to his idol—another, half asleep, laughs in his sleeve—a third talks big and blusters—a fourth tells ridiculous stories. In a word, a person would believe himself to be really in a mad-house. A kind of lethargy and stupidity succeed to this disorderly gaiety; but the Persians, far from treating it as it deserves, call it an ecstasy, and maintain that there is something exquisite and heavenly in this state.”—Chardin.
[16] Equal to nearly three thousand drops of laudanum.
[17] “Tobacco,” King James farther observes, “is the lively image and pattern of hell, for it hath, by allusion, in it all the parts and vices of the world, whereby hell may be gained; to wit, first, it is a smoke; so are all the vanities of this world. Secondly, it delighteth them that take it; so do all the pleasures of the world delight the men of the world. Thirdly, it maketh men drunken and light in the head; so do all the vanities of the world, men are drunken therewith. Fourthly, he that taketh tobacco cannot leave it; it doth bewitch him; even so the pleasures of the world make men loath to leave them; they are, for the most part, enchanted with them. And, farther, besides all this, it is like hell in the very substance of it, for it is a stinking loathsome thing, and so is hell.” And, moreover, his majesty declares, that “were he to invite the devil to a dinner, he should have three dishes; first, a pig; second, a poll of ling and mustard; and, third, a pipe of tobacco for digestion.”
[18] It appears from Mr. Brodie’s experiments, that the essential oil of tobacco operates very differently from the infusion. The former acts instantly on the heart, suspending its action, even while the animal continues to inspire, and destroying life by producing syncope. The latter appears to operate solely on the brain, leaving the circulation unaffected.
[19] The doses in these experiments, were from five to seven quarts.
[20] Journal Générale de Médicine, lix. xxiv. p. 224.
[21] Gazette de Santé, 11 Thermidor, an xv. p. 508.
[22] Von Hammer’s Hist. of the Assassins.
[23] Toxicologie Générale.
[24] The following are the grounds on which he supports his doctrine:—“1. In experiments where animals have been killed by the injection of spirits into the stomach, I have found this organ to bear the marks of great inflammation, but never any preternatural appearances whatever in the brain. 2. The effects of spirits taken into the stomach, in the last experiment, were so instantaneous, that it appears impossible that absorption should have taken place before they were produced. 3. A person who is intoxicated frequently becomes suddenly sober after vomiting. 4. In the experiments which I have just related, I mixed tincture of rhubarb with the spirits, knowing, from the experiments of Mr. Home and Mr. William Brande, that this (rhubarb) when absorbed into the circulation, was readily separated from the blood by the kidneys, and that very small quantities might be detected in the urine by the addition of potash; but though I never failed to find urine in the bladder, I never detected rhubarb in it.”—Phil. Trans. of the Roy. Soc. of Lond. 1811. Part I., p. 178.
[25] Essay on Drunkenness.
[26] Zoonomia.
[27] In speaking of the treatment, it is necessary to guard against confounding other affections with drunkenness:—“There is a species of delirium that often attends the accession of typhus fever, from contagion, that I have known to be mistaken for ebriety. Among seamen and soldiers, whose habits of intoxication are common, it will sometimes require nice discernment to decide; for the vacant stare in the countenance, the look of idiotism, incoherent speech, faltering voice, and tottering walk, are so alike in both cases, that the naval and military surgeon ought at all times to be very cautious how he gives up a man to punishment, under these suspicious appearances. Nay, the circumstance of his having come from a tavern, with even the effluvium of liquor about him, are signs not always to be trusted; for these haunts of seamen and soldiers are often the sources of infection.”—Trotter.
[28] “They have a custom of fostering a liver complaint in their geese, which encourages its growth to the enormous weight of some pounds; and this diseased viscus is considered a great delicacy.”—Matthew’s Diary of an Invalid.
[29] Vide [Appendix No. I.]
[30] The Portland Powder consisted of equal parts of the roots of round birthwort and gentian, of the leaves of germander and ground pine, and of the tops of the lesser centaury, all dried. Drs. Cullen, Darwin, and Murray of Göttingen, with many other eminent physicians, bear testimony to the pernicious effects of this compound.
[31] “Falstaff. Thou art our admiral: thou bearest the lanthorn in the poop; but ’tis in the nose of thee: thou art the knight of the burning lamp.
“Bardolph. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.
“Falstaff. No, I’ll be sworn! I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death’s head or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I think of hell-fire.”—“When thou rann’st up Gads-hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus, or a ball of wildfire, there’s no purchase in money. O! thou art a perpetual triumph—an everlasting bonfire light: thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with me in the night betwixt tavern and tavern; but the Sack thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap, at the dearest chandler’s in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two and thirty years—heaven reward me for it!”
[32] This circumstance has not escaped the observation of Shakspeare—“Chief Justice. Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old, with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity; and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!”
[33] “Let nobody tell me that there are numbers who, though they live most irregularly, attain, in health and spirits, those remote periods of life attained by the most sober; for this argument being grounded on a case full of uncertainty and hazard, and which, besides, so seldom occurs as to look more like a miracle than the work of nature, men should not suffer themselves to be thereby persuaded to live irregularly, nature having been too liberal to those who did so without suffering by it; a favour which very few have any right to expect.”—Carnaro on Health.
[34] “The workmen in provision stores have large allowances of whisky bound to them in their engagements. These are served out to them daily by their employers, for the purpose of urging them, by excitement, to extraordinary exertion. And what is the effect of this murderous system? The men are ruined, scarcely one of them being capable of work beyond fifty years of age, though none but the most able-bodied men can enter such employment.”—Beecher’s Sermons on Intemperance, with an Introductory Essay by John Edgar. This is an excellent little work, which I cordially recommend to the perusal of the reader.
[35] It has been considered unnecessary to enter into any detail of the nature and treatment of the foregoing diseases, because they may originate from many other causes besides drunkenness; and when they do arise from this source, they acquire no peculiarity of character. Their treatment is also precisely the same as in ordinary cases—it being always understood, that the bad habit which brought them on must be abandoned before any good can result from medicine. The disease, however, which follows is different, and requires particular consideration.
[36] “At a period when criminals were condemned to expiate their crimes in the flames, it is well known what a large quantity of combustible materials was required for burning their bodies. A baker’s boy named Renaud being several years ago condemned to be burned at Caen, two large cartloads of fagots were required to consume the body; and at the end of more than ten hours some remains were still visible. In this country, the extreme incombustibility of the human body was exemplified in the case of Mrs. King, who, having been murdered by a foreigner, was afterwards burned by him; but in the execution of this plan he was engaged for several weeks, and, after all, did not succeed in its completion.”—Paris and Fonblanque’s Medical Jurisprudence.
[37] Beck on Medical Jurisprudence.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Collinson on Lunacy.
“The laws against intoxication are enforced with great rigour in Sweden. Whoever is seen drunk, is fined, for the first offence, three dollars; for the second, six; for the third and fourth, a still larger sum, and is also deprived of the right of voting at elections, and of being appointed a representative. He is, besides, publicly exposed in the parish church on the following Sunday. If the same individual is found committing the same offence a fifth time, he is shut up in a house of correction, and condemned to six months’ hard labour; and if he is again guilty, of a twelvemonth’s punishment of a similar description. If the offence has been committed in public, such as at a fair, an auction, &c., the fine is doubled; and if the offender has made his appearance in a church, the punishment is still more severe. Whoever is convicted of having induced another to intoxicate himself, is fined three dollars, which sum is doubled if the person is a minor. An ecclesiastic who falls into this offence loses his benefice: if it is a layman who occupies any considerable post, his functions are suspended, and perhaps he is dismissed. Drunkenness is never admitted as an excuse for any crime; and whoever dies when drunk is buried ignominiously, and deprived of the prayers of the church. It is forbidden to give, and more explicitly to sell, any spirituous liquors to students, workmen, servants, apprentices, and private soldiers. Whoever is observed drunk in the streets, or making a noise in a tavern, is sure to be taken to prison and detained till sober, without, however, being on that account exempted from the fines. Half of these fines goes to the informers, (who are generally police officers,) the other half to the poor. If the delinquent has no money, he is kept in prison until some one pays for him, or until he has worked out his enlargement. Twice a-year these ordinances are read aloud from the pulpit by the clergy; and every tavern-keeper is bound, under the penalty of a heavy fine, to have a copy of them hung up in the principal rooms of his house.”—Schubert’s Travels in Sweden.
[40] View of the Elementary Principles of Education.
[41] American Journal of the Medical Sciences, No. IV.
[42] See Transylvania Journal of Medicine and the Associate Sciences, for July, August, and September, 1832.
[43] “In warm countries, the aqueous part of the blood loses itself greatly by perspiration; it must therefore be supplied by a like liquid. Water is there of admirable use; strong liquors would coagulate the globules of blood that remain after the transuding of the aqueous humour.”—Montesquieu, Book xiv. Chap. x.
[44] Tropical Diseases.
[45] Glasgow Medical Journal, No. XV.
[46] Glasgow Medical Journal, No. XV.
[47] The following account of Temperance Societies is by Professor Edgar, one of their most enthusiastic advocates:—
“Temperance Societies direct their chief exertions against the use of distilled spirits, conceiving them to be the great bane of the community; but they do not exclude these to introduce other intoxicating liquors in their room. Their object is to disabuse the public mind respecting the erroneous opinions and evil practices which produce and perpetuate intemperance; and though they do not hold it to be sinful to drink wine, yet they are cheerfully willing to accord with the sentiment of inspiration—‘It is good neither to drink wine nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.’ Were the wine spoken of in Scripture alone used in these countries, they do not believe that there would be a necessity for Temperance Societies; yet even from such wine, so different from that commonly in use, the Scriptures gave them the fullest liberty to refrain. Avoiding, however, all appearance of rigorous abstinence, they leave to every man’s judgment and conscience, how far he shall feel himself warranted in the use of fermented liquors, and only insist, as their fundamental principle, on an abstinence from distilled spirits, and a discountenancing of the causes and practices of intemperance. Their regulations respect persons in health alone; with the prescriptions of physicians they do not interfere. Even the moderate use of distilled spirits they consider to be injurious; and they call upon their brethren, for their own sake, to renounce it. The great mass of excellences attributed to intoxicating liquors, they believe to be fictitious; and though all the virtues attributed to them were real, they are cheerfully willing to sacrifice them, while they have the remotest hope of thus cutting off even one of the sources of drunkenness, or arresting one friend or neighbour on the road to ruin. They do not look on the use of intoxicating liquors as necessary either to their health or happiness; they do not love them, and therefore, they do not wish to represent an abstinence from them as, on their part, a great sacrifice; and they trust that they only require to be convinced that the good of their brother demands it, to induce them to do much more than they have yet done. They know that the only prospect of reformation for the intemperate is immediate and complete abstinence, and they joyfully contribute their influence and example to save him. They know that the present customs and practices of the temperate, are now preparing a generation for occupying the room of those who shall soon sleep in drunkards’ graves, and it is their earnest wish to exercise such a redeeming influence on the public mind, that, should the present race of drunkards refuse to be saved, there may be none to fill their place when they are no more. The abstinence of the temperate, they are convinced, will accomplish this, and that abstinence it is their business to promote by those means with which the God of truth has furnished them. They believe that such abstinence, instead of being productive of any injury to the community will greatly benefit it; and already there are the fairest prospects of the great objects of such voluntary abstinence being effected, by associations sustaining one another in new habits, to make them reputable and common. They require no oaths, no vows; their bond of obligation is a sense of duty, and subscription to their fundamental principle, is merely an expression of present conviction and determination. The law of Temperance Societies, like the Gospel, is the law of liberty—the law which binds to do that which is considered a delight and a privilege. They look forward to the time as not far distant, when the temperate having withdrawn their support from the trade in ardent spirits, it shall be deserted by all respectable men, and shall gradually die away, as premature death thins the ranks of drunkards: they trust that the falsehoods by which temperate men have been cheated into the ordinary use of ardent spirits, will soon be completely exposed; and that full information and proper feeling being extended, respecting the nature and effects of intoxicating liquors, they will occupy their proper place, and the unnumbered blessings of temperance on individuals and families, and the whole community, will universally prevail. Not only will Temperance Societies cut off the resources of drunkenness, but to the reformed drunkard, they will open a refuge from the tyranny of evil customs, and they will support and encourage him in his new habits. To promote these invaluable objects, they call for the united efforts of all temperate men; they earnestly solicit the assistance of physicians, of clergymen, of the conductors of public journals, of all men possessing authority and influence; and by every thing sacred and good, they beseech drunkards to turn from the wickedness of their ways and live.”
[48] The origin of the term “grog” is curious. Before the time of Admiral Vernon, rum was given in its raw state to the seamen; but he ordered it to be diluted, previous to delivery, with a certain quantity of water. So incensed were the tars at this watering of their favourite liquor, that they nicknamed the Admiral Old Grog, in allusion to a grogram coat which he was in the habit of wearing: hence the name.
[49] Catharine I. of Russia was intemperately addicted to the use of Tokay. She died of dropsy, which complaint was probably brought on by such indulgence.
[50] Practical Observations on the Convulsions of Infants.
[51] “At day-break,” says Captain Bligh, “I served to every person a tea-spoonful of rum, our limbs being so much cramped that we could scarcely move them.”
“Being unusually wet and cold, I served to the people a tea-spoonful of rum each, to enable them to bear with their distressing situation.”
“Our situation was miserable: always wet, and suffering extreme cold in the night, without the least shelter from the weather. The little rum we had was of the greatest service; when our nights were particularly distressing, I generally served a tea-spoonful or two to each person, and it was always joyful tidings when they heard of my intention.”—Family Library, vol. xxv. Mutiny of the Bounty.