The science temperance text-book : in relation to morals, chemistry, physiology, criticism, and history / [Frederic Richard Lees].

  • Frederic Richard Lees
Date:
1884-
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The science temperance text-book : in relation to morals, chemistry, physiology, criticism, and history / [Frederic Richard Lees]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTRODUCTION. The discussion opened in this volume is strictly limited to the question of the propriety of using intoxicating beverages. If there are, or have been, wines and beers not sensibly intoxicating,—because containing only minute and unfelt amounts of alcohol,—we have no concern with them. Our test of the Prohibited drink is a practical one—Does it create the drunkard''s appetite and grow into Social inebriety ? We care not for refinements and subtleties. The question of some small percentage of alcohol being in ginger beer, or vinegar, or in an over-ripe pear or peach, in grape juice or new cider five hours from the press, we leave to the curious or the quib¬ bling ; it has no moral interest for us. The question whether a dose of alcohol may be taken so small as to produce no sensible reaction, we leave to be determined by metaphysi¬ cally inclined pathologists. There perhaps is a point where a living organ begins to resist noxious agents—where, so to speak, it first recognizes the presence of an enemy;—but whether that, in the case of Alcohol, begins with the hundredth part of a drop, or with sixty drops, whether with a twentieth or a millionth dilution, we shall not waste our time to settle in the presence of the awful evils accruing to Society from the use of its actual beverages. When that ideal quantum is found out, we shall have then discovered the innocent