Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / With notes by R. Macnish.

  • Amariah Brigham
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / With notes by R. Macnish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    120/160 (page 102)
    to repress the habit; destroying all the vines of the country—imprisonment—whipping — cutting off the ears of those found intoxicated, were successively re- sorted to, but with little effect towards arresting the evil. The age of Louis XIV, by creating a taste for intellectual and refined pleasure, did more to arrest intemperance in France, than all the laws of former rulers. 85 It is to the influence which a taste for intellectual pursuits exerts, that we must look to effect, and per- petuate a deliverance from sensuality. It was, in fact, increased intelligence, and a growing love for intellec- tual enjoyment, that enabled the people of this country to effect the reformation which they have produced, in the use of intoxicating drink. Temperance Societies, to be sure, did much good; but they were an effect themselves of the more general diffusion and love of knowledge, and could not have been sustained thirty years ago, nor by a people less intelligent. The cultivation of a taste for intellectual amuse- liabits of the British, are owing- to climate. The climate of France was the same before the age of Louis XIV, as it is at present, and yet, how temperate are the inhabitants now, compared with what they were at the period in question. Whenever the same refined tastes for elegant amusements prevail—whenever the British peo- ple become equally civilized, they will become as sober a3 the French, but not till then.—R.M.] 85 For the evidence of the truth of these statements respecting the history of intemperance, the reader is referred to the accounts of travellers among the Indians, and in Liberia, Africa, See. To an- cient historians, as Diodorous, Caesar, Tacitus, Pliny, Plutarch, and others. See also article Ivrognerie, Dictionnaire Des Sciences Me- diealcs, from which I have selected most of the foregoing facts.