Teetotalism in relation to chemistry and physiology : the substance of a lecture delivered in the Music Hall, Leeds, April 9th, 1851, under the auspices of the Temperance Society / by Dr. Frederick R. Lees.

  • Frederic Richard Lees
Date:
[between 1800 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Teetotalism in relation to chemistry and physiology : the substance of a lecture delivered in the Music Hall, Leeds, April 9th, 1851, under the auspices of the Temperance Society / by Dr. Frederick R. Lees. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    once persuade himself of that, and he will soon find that they keep off the heat! That they drive out the heat is very certain ; for in the northern parts of America, where the cold is so great that people are frequently frost-bitten, and are compelled to have their feet or hands cut off, it is a caution always given to those who are likely to be exposed to the severity of the weather, not to drink any spirits before they go out. And, tho I have known many persons frozen to death, and a great many more to have their limbs cut off, I hardly recollect a single instance in which the suffering party had not taken spirituous liquors on his way, or before he went out.I have a hundred times gone out shoot¬ ing or hunting upon the snow along with others, each of whom took a canteen of rum, while I took none. I used to suck the snow, which they told me would give me the pleurisy; but I found that I never had the pleurisy, and that many of them had. And as to ability to travel and bear the cold, tho many of my companions were much stronger and more active than myself, I always found that, at the end of the day, I was the freshest, and by far the most cheerful of them all.’'’ Dr. Scoresbv, in his evidence before parliament, and he had been engaged 21 years in the whale fishery,—in reply to the question, “ Then you conceive it to be a fallacious opinion that spirits are necessary in cold climates?”—answers, “Certainly; they are decidedly injurious.” Cooper, the American writer on naval matters, speaking of the sealers beyond Cape Horn, says—“ Coffee is better, any day, than all the rum and whisky ever distilled.” Mr. Dana, the author of Two years before the mast, says:—“I never knew a sailor in my life who would not prefer a pint of hot coffee or chocolate on a cold night, to all the rum afloat. They all say that it [the rum] warms them only for a time.” You are all familiar with the important fact, that the men engaged in the reeent Arctic Expedition were ordered to abstain. Dr. Sir John Richardson, as the result of his expe¬ rience in the frigid regions of the North, says:—“-lam quite satisfied that spirituous liquors diminish the power of resisting cold. Plenty of food, and sound digestion, are the best sources of heat ?” 5. Nay, gentlemen, even the very instinct of nature—the voice of God, as it were— declares that we are right. Sailors who went out accustomed to their grog,—who, in ordinary circumstances and climates would mutiny if deprived of it,—there experienced an alteration of their tastes. “Wine, or spirits,” says Sir John Richardson, “we soon ceased* to care for, while the craving for tea increased.” Thus also, very often, consumptive patients using the Cod-liver oil, acquire a distaste for wine— the use of those substances being incom¬ patible when circulating in the blood. Nature prefers the innocent oil to the artificial spirit. 6. I am aware of an attempt to evade the force of one set of facts to wdiich I have referred you—the diminution in the quantity of carbonic acid after the use of alcohol, and its great subsequent increase, showing that the system was ridding itself, as fast as possible, of the waste matter which the use of alcohol had kept in. It is a very poor attempt, indeed, for it only meets one half the case; it consists in the allegation, that tho less gas is breathed out, more vapor is exhaled thro the skin, owing to the alcohol containing more hydrogen tho less carbon than natural food. I answer, that matters not on the whole, since it is certain that oil does give out, when burnt up, more heat than alcohol, and there¬ fore, as the given quantity of oxygen inbreathed can not use both substances at once, in the fact of uniting with the less valuable (not to say poisonous) fuel, the body must be less warm. This agrees with the test of the thermometer—and certainly the mercury will not lie for any hypothesis—whether of Lees or Lankester. Dr. Davy, P.R.S., in his experi¬ ments on the Temperature of Man, found that even three glasses of wine perceptibly lowered the heat of the body; while after four or five • glasses the reduction was most strongly marked. Gentlemen, I have now done with the fallacies of our last opponent. I should have been glad if he were present to answer for himself. We do not fear discussion, we invite it; for we feel that we are right, and that we occupy the Vantage ground of Truth. Let our opponent, then, forget his ‘tender mercies,’ for we do not need them. The Tree of Temperance, we believe, like the mystic Iydrasyll of our Scandinavian ancestors, has its roots in the Divine Life and order of the Universe, and the more fiercely the winter tem¬ pests of opposition may sweep ^against it, the more deeply will it strike its roots into the soil of the Eternal Truth, and in ‘the good time coming/ put forth a fairer and a fuller foliage, and extend a mote refreshing shade and protection to the generations that shall follow us.