The alcohol controversy. An examination, in the form of dialogues, of articles by sir J. Paget and others in The Contemporary review |
Common terms and phrases
absolute alcohol absurd advantage alcohol-users ALLISON Anstie average benefit Bernays better beverage brandied cherries calm cent certainly comfort comparison conclusion condition consume Contemporary Coomassie course daily deal Doctor dose drinkers drunkards drunkenness evidence excited experience fact fair guess feel fluid ounce gallons give Glasgow habitual immense majority India injurious effect intemperance JOHN HEYWOOD less liquor live longevity matter means moderate drinking moderation and abstinence Murchison Nervii Oddfellows Old Believers opinion Parkes passage physiological saturation pleasant poison population position practice presumption probability produce proof prove quantity of alcohol quarter ounces Radcliffe reason Rechabites Red River expedition regard sense Sir James Paget Sir James's Sir William Gull small quantities society soldiers sort speak spirits statistics stultifies suppose taken teetotalers teetotalism tell theory thing to-night total abstinence true Turk unreasonable to urge WEDDERBURN wine
Popular passages
Page 107 - My opinion is, that neither spirit, wine, nor malt liquor is necessary for health. The healthiest army I ever served with had not a single drop of any of them ; and although it was exposed to all the hardships of Kaffir warfare at the Cape of Good Hope, in wet and inclement weather, without tents or shelter of any kind, the sick-list seldom exceeded one per cent.
Page 37 - I have long had the conviction that there is no greater cause of evil, moral and physical, in this country than the use of alcoholic beverages. I do not mean by this that extreme indulgence which produces drunkenness. The habitual use of fermented liquors to an extent far short of what is necessary to...
Page 134 - This chemical substance, alcohol, an artificial product devised by man for his purposes, and in many things that lie outside his organism a useful substance, is neither a food nor a drink suitable for his natural demands.
Page 37 - ... society, injures the body and diminishes the mental power to an extent which I think few people are aware of. Such, at all events, is the result of observation during more than twenty years of professional life devoted to Hospital practice, and to private practice in every rank above it. Thus I have no hesitation in attributing a very large proportion of some of the most painful and dangerous maladies which come under my notice, as well as those which every medical man has to treat, to the ordinary...
Page 32 - Pharisees, whom he censured* on this very account, who bound heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and laid them on men's shoulders, but they themselves would not move them with one of their fingers.
Page 37 - If men took careful thought of the best use which they could make of their bodies, they would probably never take alcohol except as they would take a dose of medicine, in order to serve some special purpose. It is idle to say that there is any real necessity for persons who are in good health to indulge in any kind of alcoholic liquor. At the best it is an indulgence which is unnecessary ; at the worst, it is a vice which occasions infinite misery, sin, crime, madness, and disease.
Page 102 - ... an unlimited quantity of tea. Our old-fashioned generals accept, without any attempt to question its truth, the traditional theory of rum being essential to keep the British soldier in health and humour. Let us hope that the experience we have acquired during the Red River expedition may have buried for ever this old-fogyish superstition. Never have the soldiers of any nation been called upon to perform more unceasingly hard work ; and it may be confidently asserted without dread of contradiction,...
Page 59 - In spite of our previous experience in the use of alcohol and brandy, we were hardly prepared for the ease with which appetite may be destroyed, the heart unduly excited, and the capillary circulation improperly increased. Considering its daily and almost universal use, there is no agent which seems to us to require more caution and more skill to obtain the good and to avoid the evil which its use entails.
Page 135 - Its application as an agent that shall enter the living organisation is properly limited by the learning and skill possessed by the physician, a learning that itself admits of being recast and revised in many important details, and perhaps in principles.
Page 10 - ... and, though the central question may seem narrow, it is involved in so many more that the final general answer must be subject to exceptions for particular cases, only to be settled by many future and very careful researches. Still, on the whole, and on the question of national health and strength, I cannot doubt, with such evidence as we have, that the habitual moderate use of alcoholic drinks is generally beneficial, and that in the question raised between temperance and abstinence the verdict...