CHAPTER XV.
CONSTABLE OF FRANCE.
“If every man is to forego his freedom of action because many make a licentious use of it, I know not what is the value of any freedom.”
J. Risdon Bennett, M.D.
OLD MEDICAL WRITERS ON ALE. — ADULTERATION OF ALE. — ADVANTAGES OF MALT LIQUORS TO LABOURING CLASSES. — TEMPERANCE versus TOTAL ABSTINENCE. — ANECDOTES. — GAY’S BALLAD.
HAMPIONS of the so-called temperance cause, have gone so far towards intemperance as to say that a moderate drinker is worse than a drunkard. This absurd declaration stands self-condemned, and without labouring thrice to slay the slain by disproving an assertion which carries upon its face the unmistakable marks of a suicide’s death, we propose in this chapter to prove beyond question, from the works of ancient, mediæval, and modern writers, that sound malt liquors possess valuable medicinal and restorative qualities, and that their proper use is in nowise injurious to health.
In Anglo-Saxon times ale was considered to be possessed of the highest medicinal virtues. It is mentioned in the Saxon Leechdoms as an ingredient in many of the remedies therein prescribed, and for the most serious as well as for the most trifling complaints. In lung {409} disease a man is to “withhold himself earnestly from sweetened ale,” to drink clear ale, and in the wort of the clear ale “boil young oak-rind and drink.” Fever patients are recommended to drink during a period of thirty days an infusion of clear ale and wormwood, githrife, betony, bishop-wort, marrubium, fen mint, rosemary and other herbs. For one “fiend-sick” the receipt runs thus:—A number of herbs having been worked up in clear ale, “sing seven masses over the worts, add garlic and holy water and let him drink out of a church bell”; finally the lunatic is to give alms and pray for God’s mercies. Another remedy for lunacy is much simpler: “Take skin of a mere-swine (porpoise), work it into a whip, swinge the man therewith, soon he will be well, Amen.” Another remarkable receipt runs thus: “Take a mickle handfull of sedge and gladden, put them into a pan, pour a muckle bowlfull of ale upon them, boil, and then rub into the mixture twenty-five libcorns. This is a good drink against the devil.”