Temperance and teetotalism : an enquiry into the effects of alcoholic drinks on the human system in health and disease.

William Benjamin Carpenter

Date:: 1850

Credit: Temperance and teetotalism : an enquiry into the effects of alcoholic drinks on the human system in health and disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$exhortations; and the miserable failure of all the advocates who cannot employ this argument should lead all those whose position calls upon them to exert their influence (and who are there who do not possess some means of thus doing good?) to a serious consideration of the claims which their duty to society should set up in opposition to their individual feelings of taste or comfort. Without setting ourselves up as apolo- gists for the managers of total abstinence societies, we may remark that this, like other great movements, has been mainly brought about by the agency of indivi- duals, whose very enthusiasm necessarily renders them somewhat one-sided in their views. It is for the cool-judging philo- sopher to place these views in their true light, and thus to guide mankind in form- ing a just appreciation of them; but such a movement might be retarded for cen- turies, or might never take place at all, if there vvere no one-sided enthusiasts in the world, and it were left to the philoso- phers to set it going. Now the leaders of the total abstinence movement have con- scientiously felt that a charge has been laid, as it were, upon their shoulders, to rid the country of intemperance; and they can fairly plead the enormity of the disease, and the difficulty of completely eradicating it, as an apology for the seve- rity of their cure. There are so many apertures, they affirm (and with justice), by which men contrive to escape from the abstinence principle—creeping out like cunning foxes, in search of the object of their craving—that every hole must be stopped up, every apology for a recourse to alcoholic liquors cut off. We admit the danger, and the necessity for the utmost caution in the avoidance of it. But still we do not think that those of the j)rofessed advocates of total abstinence, who deny the possibility of any benefit from the use of alcohol, have taken up a defensible ground; and the argument for the stringency of the pledge should rather be based, in our estimation, upon the risk of abuse which the slightest violation of it has been found by e.xperience to in- volve, than upon those asserted ‘ poison- ous’ properties, which it assuredly does not possess in a degree nearly so strong as many of our most valued medicines. Dissenting as we thus do from much that has been uttered from the teetotal press and platform during the last ten or twelve chiefly of verr in flla J years, we yet must in justice admit, that Ja when so large a number of parties are concerned (and these limited education), as in the present case, it is somewhat unreasonable to'ex. pcct perfect wisdom in every mouth oi that zeal in so good a cause should ’not sometimes get the better of discretion. And the leaders of the movement nin» fearlessly ask, what association of such 4 size—political, ecclesiastical, or philan- thropic—could bear to be tried by 4 severe test on this point ? In the exercise of our own duty ai cool-judging critics, we now propose to inquire m the first ]dace into the present state of our knowledge as to the physiolo. gical action of alcohol on the human body; next, to consider how far the results o( the comparative e.xperience of those who make h.abitual but moderate use of fe^ mcntod liquors, and of those who entire^ abstain from them, under a variety o( circumstances, warrants the assertion th* total abstinence is invariably (or nearly so) compatible with perfect health, or Ij oven more favourable to health tlr habitual but moderate indulgence; .ani finally, to endeavour to deduce from the# . data such conclusions with regard to the. therapeutic use of alcohol, as may cau|5 j: its employment by medical men to be a^! ^ tended with the greatest possible amoui# of good and the least admixture of evil. Our knowledge of the physiologioj action of alcohol, though far from being . sufficiently complete to afford a specifit determination of its hygienic or therapef' tic value, is yet quite sufficient to guide us in the inquiry; aud we shall accordini” ly state briefly the points which may regarded as in our apprehension most sati factorily made out. We believe that ni physiologist of repute would now be fou: to maintain any other doctrine in regal to the materials of the albuminous tissui A tl of the animal body, than that propounded fj a few years since by Mulder and Liebig;; namely, that they are derived exclusively fe from those alimentary substances whosij' constitution is similar to their own; sol that the non-azotised compounds cannot: enter into the composition of more th^ a very small part of the animal fabric.- This doctrine, when first put forth, wait! received with a degree of hesitation and distrust proportioned to its novel and startling character; but the testimony ini its favour has been gradually thougkl quietly accumulating, so that it no\* ’ commands very general if not universaL' assent. By the term ‘albuminous,’ wi mean to designate all those tissues whicB$

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