Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors.

Date:
[1874?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    SIR JAMES SULIVAN’S BPEECH. they only have a very small allowance of the very best and purest Jamaica rum, which is said to be one of the purest of spirits. There- fore it is impossible that the drinking could have been other than the most moderate, and yet what do we find 1 Some years since, when an Arctic Expedition was lost for four years, under the late Sir John Ross, they went through sufferings such as never an Arctic expedition expe- rienced before. They were reduced at last to fall back upon the pro- visions of a wrecked Arctic ship—some of the party carrying the rest on their backs, so reduced were they in health and strength. They there found ample provisions, and some of tne very best naval rum that could be found in those days, which had been weakened by lying there—for it always loses its strength by keeping—and what was the result ? In trying in boats to reach the whalers, they suffered unheard-of trials, and failed in their object. As the result they had to go back and pass another winter in those regions ; but from the fact of Sir John Ross standing the work apparently better than the others, and he being the only abstainer among them, he suggested giving up that small allowance of rum which they were accustomed to have. Their health was so benefited by abstinence that, though it lay alongside them, they didn’t take it again. At that time it seemed extraordinary how such a thing could be, because there was prevalent the old fallacy that a glass of grog warmed you; but now we know that, in those Arctic regions especially, it would be dangerous, because every drop ol alcohol lowers the temperature. Then, if we go to the Antarctic regions with Sir James Ross, who was one of those who served under his uncle in that voyage, we find this remarkable testimony. Dr. J. D. Hooker, now the President of the Royal Society, writes thus:—“Several of the men on board our ship, and amongst them some of the best, never touched grog during one or more of the Antarctic cruises.” Many had laid in for them- selves large quantities of coffee, and gladly would the others have ex- changed their grog for this beverage. In the same letter he says:—“ I do tbink that the use of spirits in cold weather is generally prejudicial. I speak from my own experience. It is very pleasant at the time, for the glass of grog warms the mouth, the throat, and the abdomen; and this, when one is wet and .cold, with no fire, and just before turning into damp blankets, is very enticing. But it never did me an atom of good; the extremities are not warmed by it; and when a continuance of exertion or endurance is called for, the spirit does harm, for then you are colder or more fatigued a quarter or half-an-hour after it, than you would have been without it.” There is a remarkable, valuable, and disinterested testimony from Dr. Hooker, which, coming from such a man as he is, must have great weight with the general public. I happen to know one remarkable case of the evil of medical men recommending moderate drinking, which I will narrate. (Cheers.) A fentleman connected with a large mercantile business, who worked his rain very much, and who had been a very moderate drinker, at fifty years of age began to show signs of an overworked brain—in fact, inci- pient tokens of paralysis. He was told by his medical man, “ It you don’t take a little more stimulant you will have a stroke of paralysis,”
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