An expose of the causes of intemperate drinking, and the means by which it may be obviated / by Thomas Herttell, of the city of New-York ; published by order of the New-York Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvement.

  • Herttell, Thomas, 1771-1849.
Date:
1819
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An expose of the causes of intemperate drinking, and the means by which it may be obviated / by Thomas Herttell, of the city of New-York ; published by order of the New-York Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvement. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    EXPOSE. • wowwommm « \ PROBABLY no single cause tends so much to the debasement and demoralization of the human family, as the intemperate use of ardent drink. This most prolific source of mischief and misery, (says an able pa- per*,) drags in its train almost every species of suffer- ing which afflicts th<y^fl ' In relation to poverty and vice, it may beempfcSicnlly stiled the cause of causes*. Next to intemperate eating], more mortal bodily disor- ders are derived from intemperate drinking, than from any other source. War, plague, pestilence and famine, combined, perhaps canno't number more victims, than fall by the use of this all-devouring liquid fire. No one vice is destructive of so many virtues—and, I will ven- ture to say, that it is the only vice, the extreme of which destroys in its votaries, every vestige of all the virtues which they might otherwise have possessed. Viewing, says the paper above alluded to, the enormous devastation of this evil on the minds and mo- rals of the people, we cannot but regard it as the crying and increasing sin of the nation. True it is, and it is truly mortifying that candor demands the acknowledg- ment, that our country is distinguished among the na- * The first Report of the Committee of the New-York Society foi the prevention of Pauperism. t Tho' it is an unsettled question among physicians, many are of opinion, that owing to the refinement in the art of compound Gookery, by which the taste and appetite are provoked to excess, more people die of disorders occasioned by immoderate eating, than by immoderate drinking.