In the Geographical Society’s Journal (vol. ii. p. 286) it is recorded that during a severe winter on the west coast of Africa the crew of the Etna suffered so much from scurvy that the least scratch had a tendency to become a dangerous wound. Capt. Belcher states that “the only thing which appeared materially to check the disease was beer made of the essence of malt and hops; and I feel satisfied that a general issue of this on the coast of Africa would be very salutary, and have the effect especially of keeping up the constitutions of men subjected to heavy labour in boats.”
Thomas Trotter, M.D., in his Medicina Nautica, “an Essay on the Diseases of Seamen, comprehending the history of the health in His Majesty’s Fleet under the command of Richard Earl Howe, Admiral, 1797,” states that in typhus cases he found porter, where preferred by the patient, more beneficial than wine. During a low fever, he (the doctor) was entirely supported by bottled beer, of which he speaks very highly. In his practice at Haslar Hospital he found bottled porter to be one of the best ingredients in the diet of a convalescent, and never fail to strengthen them quickly for duty.
Dr. Hodgkin, writing on Health, says, “I can assert, from well-proved experience that the invalid who has been reduced almost to extremity by severe or lingering illness, finds in well-apportioned draughts of sound beer, one of the most important helps for the recovery of his health, his strength, and his spirits.” Dr. Paris, who is not a recent authority, but whose remarks on this subject are most cogent and bear the stamp of common sense, asserts that “the extractive matter furnished by the malt is highly nutritive; and we accordingly find that those persons addicted to such potations are, in general, fat. This fact is so generally admitted by all those who are skilled in the art of training, that a quantity of ale is taken at every meal by the pugilist, who is endeavouring to screw himself up to his fullest strength. Jackson, the celebrated trainer, affirms, if any person accustomed to drink wine would but try malt liquor for a month, he would find himself so much the better for it, that he would soon take to the one, and abandon the other . . . The addition of the hop increases the value of the liquor, by the grateful stimulus which it imparts, and in some measure redeems it from the vices with which it might otherwise be charged where a corresponding degree of exercise is not taken. . . I regard its dismissal (table or light beer) from the tables of the great as a matter of regret, for its slight but invigorating {420} bitter is much better adapted to promote digestion than its more costly substitutes.”
Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read before the British Medical Association in 1862, advances the proposition that nature has provided in the salivary glands, the liver, and the lungs of every mammal, an apparatus “for converting all food, especially farinaceous, into alcohol, and he gives chemical reasons for believing that some such process actually does take place. Alcohol, he says, after being taken is incorporated with the blood, and passing in some form not yet explained into the circulation, ultimately disappears; a small portion alone passing from the body, and that in the breath. He further says that when alcohol is mingled with other food, a less amount of the latter suffices for the wants of the system than if water had been used as the drink. Dr. Inman cites his own experience of an attempt to do without his ordinary allowance of ale at dinner; a large increase of food was necessited, but the demand for this diminished at once on resuming the ale. Similar facts were noted in the experience of various members of his family. No loss of health or strength was experienced, except when the ordinary amount of solids was taken without the beer.
A celebrated French medical man (Dr. Coulier) published an excellent article on beer (“Article Bière” in Vol. IX. of the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de Sciences Médicales) considered from a medical point of view. He says, in effect, that beer being less rich in alcohol than even the poorest wines, holds an intermediate place between the latter and purely watery drinks. It presents, according to its mode of preparation and composition, a continuous scale of more or less alcoholic drinks, from porter and ale down to small beer containing little more than one per cent. of alcohol. Its bitter principles render it tonic and aperient; while the somnolence and heaviness that follow an over-allowance of this fluid are due to the action of the essential oil of the hop. He holds that of all fermented drinks, beer is the one whose taste se marie le plus agréablement with the use of the pipe. Beer must be considered in the light of an alimentary drink. In every hundred parts of beer are five of extract containing a little nitrogenous assimilable matter and salts favourable to nutrition, but consisting mainly of respiratory food. “If,” he says, “fermented drinks have become one of the necessities of civilisation, a prudent regard for health should make us as far as possible reduce the excitement which the alcohol occasions. In this respect beer presents a great advantage over wine. Thus a half-bottle of wine {421} containing 12 per cent. of alcohol, which is the common allowance for an adult, contains 375 grammes of wine, and consequently 45 grammes of anhydrous alcohol. A bottle of beer containing 4 per cent, of alcohol is equally satisfying, and contains only 30 grammes of alcohol. Hence, supposing two meals are taken daily, the beer-drinker daily imbibes 30 grammes less of alcohol than the wine-drinker; and this difference amounts in the course of the year to nearly 11 kilogrammes, or 14 litres (equivalent to 24 lbs. or 3 gallons), of anhydrous alcohol.”
Examples without number might be collected of men who habitually used alcoholic drinks sometimes in moderation, sometimes, in what we, in these latter days, should certainly consider excess, and who yet lived in health and usefulness to the extreme boundary of human life. Old Parr, if we are to believe Taylor, who sings his praises, was a drinker of the moderate kind.
Sometimes metheglin and by fortune happy, He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy, Cyder, or perry, when he did repair To Whitsun ale, wake, wedding, or fair, Else he had little leisure time to waste, Or at the ale-house huff-cup ale to taste.
Henry Jenkins, who died in 1670 at the wonderful age of 165 years, took his ale whenever he could get it. He lived very much in the open air and spent his time in thatching and salmon-fishing. At one time he was butler to Lord Conyers, of Hornby Castle, and he has left it on record that when, as often happened, his master sent him over with messages to Marmaduke Brodelay, Lord Abbot of Fountains, the abbot “always sent for him to his lodgings, and, after prayers, ordered him, besides wassel, a quarter of a yard of roast beef (for that the monasteries did deliver their meat by measure), and a great black Jack of strong ale.” Have we not, too, the evidence of epitaphs graven in stone, which are well known never to lie, all bearing out the truth of the longevity of ale drinkers? Here are two, the first being in Great Walford churchyard:—
Here John Randal lies Who counting of his tale Lived threescore years and ten, Such vertue was in ale. Ale was his meat, Ale was his drink. {422} Ale did his heart revive, And if he could have drunk his ale He still had been alive. He died January 5, 1699.
The second is in Edwalton, Notts: