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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    as the mischief under consideration. Many good, honest, sober maids owed their temporal and eternal ruin to the temptation of the beer in the houses they served in. In London Dr. Kerr had known women first tempted to drink through having to seek refuge in a public-house for that accommodation which the municipality ought to provide for women. They did not like to leave the public without paying for something to re- compense the landlady for her trouble. Ignorant nurses often insisted on women drinking during confinements. This foolish and dangerous custom was often the cause of fatal complications, and was a frequent source of confirmed intoxi- cation. Careless medical prescription, and, still more fre- quently, the self-prescription of malt liquors, to nursing mothers, was even a more powerful factor. Many female dipsomaniacs had come under Dr. Kerr’s own notice, who (some of them total abstainers before) began their suicidal habits on such an occasion. Alcohol was useless here. It could supply no milk, but diluted and poisoned the previous supply. At the same time there was a substance in malt liquor which was of great value; this was diastase, by the action of which starch was converted into sugar. But this diastase could be obtained, at a much less cost, and in a better and absolutely safe form, in any of the now well-known malt extracts, a large proportion of which, as for instance Maltine, are absolutely non-alcoholic. For nervous debility, and for the high pressure of the festivities of the London season, it was a common practice for young married and un- married ladies to resort to frequent pick-me-ups in the shape of fermented wine, champagne, and even brandy. No one could exaggerate the evil that had been wrought in this manner. Then, for the assuaging of natural pain and weak- ness, girls and grown-up women were accustomed to take port wine negus among the rich and gin among the poor. All
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