Chapter XV
Reading edition
CONSTABLE OF FRANCE.
“
Dieu de batailes! Where have they this mettle?
. . . can sodden water,
A drench for sur-rein’d jades, their barley broth,
Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?”
King Henry V.
, Act iii., Scene 5.
“If every man is to forego his freedom of action because many make a licentious use of it, I know not what is the value of any freedom.”
J. Risdon Bennett, M.D.
OLD MEDICAL WRITERS ON ALE. — ADULTERATION OF ALE. — ADVANTAGES OF MALT LIQUORS TO LABOURING CLASSES. — TEMPERANCE versus TOTAL ABSTINENCE. — ANECDOTES. — GAY’S BALLAD.
HAMPIONS of the so-called temperance cause, have gone so far towards intemperance as to say that a moderate drinker is worse than a drunkard. This absurd declaration stands self-condemned, and without labouring thrice to slay the slain by disproving an assertion which carries upon its face the unmistakable marks of a suicide’s death, we propose in this chapter to prove beyond question, from the works of ancient, mediæval, and modern writers, that sound malt liquors possess valuable medicinal and restorative qualities, and that their proper use is in nowise injurious to health.
In Anglo-Saxon times ale was considered to be possessed of the highest medicinal virtues. It is mentioned in the Saxon Leechdoms as an ingredient in many of the remedies therein prescribed, and for the most serious as well as for the most trifling complaints. In lung {409} disease a man is to “withhold himself earnestly from sweetened ale,” to drink clear ale, and in the wort of the clear ale “boil young oak-rind and drink.” Fever patients are recommended to drink during a period of thirty days an infusion of clear ale and wormwood, githrife, betony, bishop-wort, marrubium, fen mint, rosemary and other herbs. For one “fiend-sick” the receipt runs thus:—A number of herbs having been worked up in clear ale, “sing seven masses over the worts, add garlic and holy water and let him drink out of a church bell”; finally the lunatic is to give alms and pray for God’s mercies. Another remedy for lunacy is much simpler: “Take skin of a mere-swine (porpoise), work it into a whip, swinge the man therewith, soon he will be well, Amen.” Another remarkable receipt runs thus: “Take a mickle handfull of sedge and gladden, put them into a pan, pour a muckle bowlfull of ale upon them, boil, and then rub into the mixture twenty-five libcorns. This is a good drink against the devil.”
For less serious evils the receipts in these Anglo-Saxon pharmacopœias are numerous. Hiccup is cured thus: Take the root of jarrow, pound it, and put it into good beer, and give it to the patient to sup lukewarm.“ Then I ween that it may be of good benefit to him either for hiccup or for any internal difficulty.”
In Anglo-Saxon veterinary surgery beer was also used. “Take a little new ale and pour it into the mouth of each of the sheep; and make them swallow it quickly; that will do them good,” says the old Lœce-boc. (i.e., Medicine book.)
At the present day, in some country places, cows which have lost their milk soon after calving, are given warm ale in which aniseed has been boiled, and ale has often been given to horses with advantage.
Not only as an inward, but also as an outward application, was ale recommended: For pains in the knees, woodwax and hedge-rife pounded and put into ale, and used both inwardly and outwardly, was the Saxon remedy.
The foregoing receipts are sufficient to show the character of the medicine prescribed in Saxon times. At a later period ale still held its high position as a cure for most of the evils to which unfortunate humanity is subject. In the eighth Book of Notable Things, a rare work, supposed to have been written in the sixteenth century, the following curious remedies are mentioned:―
No. 45. An excellent medicine and a noble restorative for man or woman that is brought very low with sickness. Take two pounds of dates and wash them clean in Ale, then cut them and take out the {410} stones and white skins, then cut them small, and beat them in a mortar, till they begin to work like wax, and then take a quart of Clarified Honey or Sugar, and half an ounce of the Podder of Long Pepper, as much of Mace of Cloves, Nutmegs, and Cinnamon, of each one Drachm, as much of the Powder of Lignum Aloes; beat all the Spices together and Seeth the Dates with the Sugar or Honey with an easie fire, and let it seeth; cast in thereto a little Powder, by little and little, and stir it with a spatula of wood, and so do until it come to an Electuary, and then eat every morning and evening thereof, one ounce at a time, and it will renew and restore again his Complexion, be he never so low brought. This hath been proved, and it hath done good to many a Man and Woman.
No. 46. A notable Receipt for the black Jaundice. Take a Gallon of Ale, a Pint of Honey, and two Handfuls of Red Nettles, and take a penny-worth or two of Saffron, and boil it in the Ale, the Ale being first skimmed and then boil the Hony and Nettles therein all together and strain it well, and every Morning take a good Draught thereof, for the space of a fortnight. For in that space (God willing) it will clean and perfectly cure the black Jaundice.
In the Twelfth Book is a receipt which was probably far more effective than most of the ancient remedies:―
No. 49. For a cough; Take a quart of Ale and put a Handful of Red Sage into it, and boyl it half away; strain it, and put to the Liquor a Quarter of a pound of Treacle, drink it warm going to Bed.
In Ben Jonson’s Alchemist, of about the same date, is a mention of ale used as medicine:―
Yes, faith, she dwells in Sea-coal lane, did cure me With sodden ale, and pellitory of the wall, Cost me but twopence.
We have before us an old pamphlet bearing the title “Warme Beere, or a Treatise wherein is declared by many reasons, that Beere so qualified is farre more wholesome than that which is drunk cold. With a confutation of such objections that are made against it; published for the preservation of Health. Cambridge. Printed by R. D. for Henry Overton, and are to be sold at his shop entering into Pope’s-Head Alley out of Lumbard Street in London, 1641.” {411}
The following verses form an apt commencement to this whimsical old treatise:―
IN COMMENDATION OF WARME BEERE.
We care not what stern grandsires now can say, Since reason doth and ought to bear the sway. Vain grandames saysaws ne’er shall make me think, That rotten teeth come most by warmed drink. No, grandsire, no; if you had us’d to warm Your mornings draughts, as I do, farre less harme Your raggie lungs had felt; not half so soon, For want of teeth to chew, you’d us’d the spoon. Grandame, be silent now, if you be wise, Lest I betray your skinking niggardize: I wot well you no physick ken, nor yet The name and nature of the vitall heat. ’Twas more to save your fire, and fear that I Your pewter cups should melt or smokifie, Then skill or care of me, which made you swear, God wot, and stamp to see me warm my beer. Though grandsire growl, though grandame swear, I hold That man unwise that drinks his liquor cold.
W. B.
After giving instances of the value of warm beer as opposed to cold, the author gives the following sage account of the reasons he hath for the faith that is in him:—“When a man is thirstie, there are two master-qualities which do predominate in the stomach, namely heat and drinesse, over their contraries, cold and moisture. When a man drinketh cold beer to quench his thirst, he setteth all four qualities together by the ears in the stomach, which do with all violence oppose one another and cause a great combustion in the stomach, breeding many distempers therein. For if heat get the mastery, it causeth inflamation through the whole body, and bringeth a man into fluxes and other diseases. But hot beer prevents all these dangers, and maketh friendship between all these enemies, viz., hot and cold, wet and drie, in the stomach; because when the coldnesse of the beer is taken away by actuall heat, and made as hot as the stomach, then heat hath no opposite, his enemie cold being taken away, and there only remains these two enemies, dry and wet in the stomach: which heat laboureth to make friends. When one is exceeding thirstie, the beer being made hot and then drunk into the dry stomach, it immediately quencheth {412} the thirst, moistening and refreshing nature abundantly. Cold beer is very pleasant when extreme thirst is in the stomach; but what more dangerous to the health. Many by drinking a cup of cold beer in extreme thirst, have taken a surfet and killed themselves. Therefore we must not drink cold beer, because it is pleasant, but hot beer, because it is profitable, especially in the Citie for such as have cold stomachs, and inclining to a consumption. I have known some that have been so farre gone in a consumption, that none would think in reason they could live a week to an end: their breath was short, their stomach was gone, and their strength failed, so that they were not able to walk about the room without resting, panting and blowing: they drank many hot drinks and wines to heat their cold stomachs, and cure their diseases, especially sweet wines, but all in vain: for the more wine they drank to warm their stomachs, the more they inflamed their livers, by which means they grew worse and worse increasing their disease: But when they did leave drinking all wine and betook themselves onely to the drinking of hot beer so hot as blood, within a moneth, their breath, stomach and strength was so increased, that they could walk about their garden with ease, and within two moneths could walk four miles, and within three moneths were perfectly made well as ever they were in their lives.”
Another curious old pamphlet of about the same period, entitled Panala Alacatholica (1623) follows the text “That ale is a wholesome drinke contrary to many men’s conceits,” and after a description of the way in which ale is spoilt in the brewing and rendered injurious we are told: “But let a neat huswife, or canny Alewright have the handling of good Ingredients (sweet Maulte and wholesome water) and you shall see and will say, there is Art in brewing, (as in most actions) and that many more, even of those that ayme at brewing the Best Ale, doe yet for all their supposed dexteritie, misse the marke, than hit upon the mysterie. For you shall then have a neat cup of Nappie Ale (right Darbie, not Dagger Ale, though effectually animating) well boyled, desecated and cleared, that it shall equall the best Brewed Beere in transparence, please the most curious Pallate with milde quicknesse of relish, quench the thirst, humect the inward parts, helpe concoction and distribution of meate, and by its moderate penetration, much further the attractive power of the parts (especially being rectified with that Additament and Vehiculum which the best Alistra boyles with it; to wit, such a proportion of Hop as gives not any the least tact of bitternesse to the Pallate after it growes Drinkable) and being free from all those former foule {413} imputations, doth by its succulencie much nourish and corroborate the Corporall, and comfort the Animall powers.”
A long description here follows of the manner in which Panala, a medicated ale, is to be manufactured. Of its virtues our quaint author gives the following account:—“This Ale neither offends the Eye with the loathed object of a muddie substance, nor the smell with any ill vapour or favour, nor the tast nor stomacke with disgust or ingrate relish, but ’tis a pure, cleere, delicate, and singular Extract impregnated with the sincere spirits and vertuosities of excellent Ingredients, of a moderate temperature, indifferently accommodated to every Age, Sex, and Constitution, and so familiar and pleasing to Nature.”
Medicated ales of this nature were held in high estimation by our ancestors. Such was the celebrated Dr. Butler’s ale, which held its sway for many generations; the following receipt for this ale is given in the Book of Notable Things: “Take Senna and Polypedium each four ounces, Sarseperilla two ounces, Agrimony and Maidenhair of each a small handful, scurvy grass a quarter of a peck, bruise them grossly in a stone mortar, put them into a thin canvass bag, and hang the bag in nine or ten gallons of ale; when it is well worked and when it is three or four days old, it is ripe enough to be drawn off and bottled, or as you see fit.” This ale was sold at houses that had Butler’s head for a sign, and we meet with further mention of it in a news-sheet of 1664:—“At Tobias’ Coffee House, in Pye Corner, is sold the right drink, called Dr. Butler’s Ale, it being the same that was sold by Mr. Lansdale in Newgate Market. It is an excellent stomach drink, it helps digestion, and dissolves congealed phlegm upon the lungs, and is therefore good gainst colds, coughs, ptisical and consumptive distempers; and being drunk in the evening, it moderately fortifies nature, causeth good rest and hugely corroborates the brain and memory.”
A few years earlier than this Thomas Cogan was advocating in The Haven of Health (1584), beer for persons inclined to “rewmes and gout.” Such persons must avoid “idleness, surfet, much wine and strong, especially fasting, and not condemn Beere as hurtful in this respect which was so profitably invented by that worthy Prince Gambrinius, anno 1786 years before the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, as Lanquette writeth in his chronicle.”
The same writer gives a curious receipt for “Buttered Beere,” which is good for a cough or shortness of wind:—Take a quart or more of Double Beere and put to it a good piece of fresh butter, sugar candie an ounce, of liquerise in powder, of ginger grated, of each a dramme, and {414} if you would have it strong, put in as much long pepper and Greynes, let it boyle in the quart in the manner as you burne wine and who so will drink it, let him drinke it as hot as hee may suffer. Some put in the yolke of an egge or two towards the latter end, and so they make it more strengthfull.“
The following year John Taylor published in Drinke and Welcome many modes of application of ale in the various ills to which the flesh is heir. He thus concludes his somewhat remarkable statements:—”Ale is universale, and for Vertue it stands allowable with the best recipes of the most antientest Physisians; and for its singular force in expulsion of poison is equall, if not exceeding that rare antidote so seriously invented by the Pontique King, which from him (till this time) carries his name of Mithridate. And lastly, not onely approved by a Nationall Assembly, but more exemplarily remonstrated by the frequent use of the most knowing Physisians, who for the wonderfull force that it hath against all diseases of the Lungs, justly allow the name of a Pulmonist to every Alebrewer.
“The further I seeke to goe the more unable I finde myselfe to expresse the wonders (for so I may very well call them) operated by Ale for that I shall abruptly conclude, in consideratione of mine owne insufficiency, with the fagge-end of an old man’s old will, who gave a good somme of mony to a Red-fac’d Ale-drinker, who plaid upon a Pipe and Tabor, which was this:―
“To make your Pipe and Tabor keepe their sound, And dye your Crimson tincture more profound, There growes no better medicine on the ground Than Aleano (if it may be found) To buy which drug I give a hundred pound.”
Prynne, the author of the famous Histrio-Mastix, seldom dined; every three or four hours he munched a manchet, and refreshed his exhausted spirits with ale brought to him by his servant; and when “he was put into this road of writing,” as Anthony Wood telleth, he fixed on “a long quilted cap, which came an inch over his eyes,” serving as a shade, “and then hunger nor thirst did he experience, save that of his voluminous pages.” Evidence of the high regard in which English ale was held among foreign doctors in the seventeenth century may be gathered from an account given in Hone’s Table Book of how, about 1620 some doctors and surgeons during their attendance on an English gentleman, who was diseased at Paris, discoursed on wines and other {415} beverages; and one physician, who had been in England, said the English had a drink which they call Ale, and which he thought the wholesomest liquor that could be drunk; for whereas the body of man is supported by natural heat and radical moisture, there is no drink conduceth more to the preservation of the one, and the increase of the other, than Ale, for, while the Englishmen drank only ale, they were strong, brawny, able men, and could draw an arrow an ell long; but, when they fell to wine and Beer, they are found to be much impaired in their strength and age.
English doctors would always, it may be supposed, give their approbation to the nut-brown ale. There must have been some who even in the good old days leaned to the doctrines of the abstainers; but such was the faith of our ancestors in the virtues of the national beverage, that we may imagine the doctor’s advice was disregarded and, indeed, was even set down to anything but an amiable motive. This we may see from a verse of the old ballad, Nottingham Ale:―
Ye doctors, who more execution have done With bolus and potion, and powder and pill, Than hangman with halter, and soldier with gun, Or miser with famine, or lawyer with quill, To dispatch us the quicker, you forbid us malt liquor, Till our bodies grow thin, and our faces look pale; Observe them who pleases, what cures all diseases, Is a comforting dose of good Nottingham Ale.
The following receipt is quite gravely given by Dr. Solas Dodd, in whose Natural History of the Herring (1753) it may be found: “Take the oil pressed out of fresh Herrings, a pint, a boar’s gall, juices of henbane, hemlock, arsel, lettuce, and wild catmint, each six ounces, mix, boil well, and put into a glass vessel, stoppered. Take three spoonfuls and put into a quart of warm ale, and let the person to undergo any operation drink of this by an ounce at a time, till he falls asleep, which sleep he will continue the space of three or four hours, and all that time he will be unsensible to anything done to him.” Whether or no we have here an account of a genuine early anæsthetic we are not prepared to say.
Instances might be recorded without number of the restorative effects of ale in sickness, and more particularly in fever cases where the patient has been brought very low, and the loss of tissue has been great. Of these space only allows us to include a very few. {416}
When Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, lay prostrate with pleuritic fever, the greatest physicians in the land found their skill avail nothing; and all the statesman’s alarmed friends got for expending seven hundred guineas in fees was the cold comfort that everything that could be done had been done, and the case was hopeless. Whilst those gathered round the bedside of the supposed dying man listened for his last sigh, he faintly murmured, “Small beer, small beer.” The doctors did not think it worth while to say nay, and a half-gallon cup of small beer was put to the lips of the sick man, who drained it to the dregs, and then demanded another draught, which he served in the same way: then turning on his side, he went off into a deep slumber, attended with profuse perspiration, and awoke a new man.74 The beneficial effects of mild ale in fever is commemorated in an old poem, Small Beer:―
Oft known the deadly fever’s flame, By the scorch’d patient crav’d, to tame.
In Sir J. Sinclair’s Statistical Account, an extraordinary case is related of a collier, named Hunter, who suffered from chronic rheumatism or gout. He had been confined to his bed for a year and a half, having almost entirely lost the use of his limbs. On Handsel Monday (the first Monday after New Year’s Day) some of his neighbours came to make merry with him. Though he could not rise, yet he always took his share of the new ale, as it passed round the company; and, in the end, became much intoxicated. The consequence was that he had the use of his limbs the next morning, and was able to walk about. He lived more than twenty years after this, and never had the smallest return of his complaint. This took place in 1758.
An account of a cure, in which, no doubt, faith helped the ale, occurs in the Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele, gentleman, sometime student at Oxford (London, 1607). “Riding on his way to Oxford, he stopped all night at Mekham—At supper, he began to talk with the hostess, who was a simple professor of Chirurgerie, and conceited therewith.—Peele observing her humour and conceit, upheld all the strange cures she talked of and praised her, with much flattery, and promised on his return to teach her something that would do her no hurt—and added he was on his way to cure a gentleman in Warwickshire, who was in a consumption. The hostess immediately {417} said there was a gentleman close by so ill with that complaint, and proposed that Peele should see him. Peele, knowing as much of doctoring as of music, declined; but after much pressure, and resisting as long as he could, was fain to comply. Putting on a bold face he went to the gentleman, his hostess praising him as a wonderful doctor. After feeling the pulse, &c., &c., he asked if they had a garden. Yes, they had. He then went there and cut from every plant, flower, herb and blossom; boiling the results in Ale, straining and boiling again. He told the patient to take some of this warm, morning, noon, and night. Whether anything effective was in this Herbal Mixture, or from the patient’s fancy—in eight days after the patient was able to walk about apparently recovered—and so delighted that he put many pounds in Peele’s pocket.”
A Brown ale called Stitch is mentioned in The London and County Brewer of 1744 as having being of the greatest benefit in incipient consumption. It was of the first running of the malt, but of a greater length than is drawn out of the stout butt beer. It had few hops in it. Instances of the advantage of good malt liquors in certain cases of consumption are very numerous. Mons. Frémy, of the Beaujon Hospital, in Paris, made a series of experiments with malt powder given in the form of a decoction, and externally by means of baths. The substance was tried on sixty-four subjects of well-marked phthisis; but the results were trifling, beyond a certain degree of temporary amelioration. It was, however, of greater service in cases of chronic bronchitis, early phthisis, and chronic pulmonary catarrh; its utility being very marked in this last affection. In some parts of England it is a common practice for persons in consumption to procure wort (that is an infusion of malt before the hops are boiled with it for making beer) from the brewers, and to drink half-a-pint of it daily; and many have received great benefit from it. The experiments of Dr. Frémy verify the utility of the English practice.
Of late years various preparations of malt have come to hold a very high place in popular estimation. A first-rate remedy for a cough is made thus: Over half a bushel of pale ground malt pour as much hot, but not boiling, water as will just cover it. In forty-eight hours drain off the liquor entirely, but without squeezing the grains: put the former into a large sweetmeat pan, or saucepan, that there may be room to boil as quick as possible, without boiling over; when it begins to thicken, stir constantly. It must be as thick as treacle. The dose is a dessert-spoonful thrice a day. This preparation has a very agreeable {418} flavour. One of the most easily digested and most nourishing of foods for those minute but assertive, atoms of humanity called babies,75 is malt finely powdered; and chemists keep many kinds of foods, syrups, lozenges, &c., too numerous to mention, all claiming their origin from Sir John Barleycorn.
Among the many virtues of good ale, that of promoting generosity should take a high place. This peculiar effect is capitally illustrated in an anecdote of the Rev. Michael Hutchinson, D.D., of Derby. “The people,” writes Hutton, “to whom he applied for subscriptions (the church was in need of repair) were not able to keep their money; it passed from their pockets to his own as if by magic. Whenever he could recollect a person likely to contribute to this desirable work he made no scruple to visit him at his own expense. If a stranger passed through Derby, the Doctor’s bow and his rhetoric were employed in the service of the church. His anxiety was urgent, and his power so prevailing, that he seldom failed of success. When the waites fiddled at his door for a Christmas box, instead of sending them away with a solitary shilling, he invited them in, treated them with a tankard of ale, and persuaded them out of a guinea.”
Malt liquor has long been regarded by eminent medical men as almost a specific against the scurvy, that dread disease which in former times wrought such havoc amongst our brave tars. Sir Gilbert Blane, M.D., records the following instance of the virtues of porter in this connection:―
“I was furnished,” he writes, in his Observations on the Diseases of Seamen, “by Dr. Clephane, physician to the fleet at New York, with the following fact as a strong proof of the excellence of this liquor: In the beginning of the war two store ships, called the Tortoise and Grampus, sailed for America under the convoy of the Dædalus frigate. The Grampus happened to be supplied with a sufficient quantity of porter to serve the whole passage, which proved very long. The other two ships were furnished with the common allowance of spirits. The weather being unfavourable, the passage drew out to fourteen weeks and, upon their arrival at New York, the Dædalus sent to the hospital a hundred and twelve men; the Tortoise sixty-two; the greater part of whom were in the last stage of the scurvy. The Grampus sent only thirteen, none of whom had the scurvy.” {419}
In the Geographical Society’s Journal (vol. ii. p. 286) it is recorded that during a severe winter on the west coast of Africa the crew of the Etna suffered so much from scurvy that the least scratch had a tendency to become a dangerous wound. Capt. Belcher states that “the only thing which appeared materially to check the disease was beer made of the essence of malt and hops; and I feel satisfied that a general issue of this on the coast of Africa would be very salutary, and have the effect especially of keeping up the constitutions of men subjected to heavy labour in boats.”
Thomas Trotter, M.D., in his Medicina Nautica, “an Essay on the Diseases of Seamen, comprehending the history of the health in His Majesty’s Fleet under the command of Richard Earl Howe, Admiral, 1797,” states that in typhus cases he found porter, where preferred by the patient, more beneficial than wine. During a low fever, he (the doctor) was entirely supported by bottled beer, of which he speaks very highly. In his practice at Haslar Hospital he found bottled porter to be one of the best ingredients in the diet of a convalescent, and never fail to strengthen them quickly for duty.
Dr. Hodgkin, writing on Health, says, “I can assert, from well-proved experience that the invalid who has been reduced almost to extremity by severe or lingering illness, finds in well-apportioned draughts of sound beer, one of the most important helps for the recovery of his health, his strength, and his spirits.” Dr. Paris, who is not a recent authority, but whose remarks on this subject are most cogent and bear the stamp of common sense, asserts that “the extractive matter furnished by the malt is highly nutritive; and we accordingly find that those persons addicted to such potations are, in general, fat. This fact is so generally admitted by all those who are skilled in the art of training, that a quantity of ale is taken at every meal by the pugilist, who is endeavouring to screw himself up to his fullest strength. Jackson, the celebrated trainer, affirms, if any person accustomed to drink wine would but try malt liquor for a month, he would find himself so much the better for it, that he would soon take to the one, and abandon the other . . . The addition of the hop increases the value of the liquor, by the grateful stimulus which it imparts, and in some measure redeems it from the vices with which it might otherwise be charged where a corresponding degree of exercise is not taken. . . I regard its dismissal (table or light beer) from the tables of the great as a matter of regret, for its slight but invigorating {420} bitter is much better adapted to promote digestion than its more costly substitutes.”
Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read before the British Medical Association in 1862, advances the proposition that nature has provided in the salivary glands, the liver, and the lungs of every mammal, an apparatus “for converting all food, especially farinaceous, into alcohol, and he gives chemical reasons for believing that some such process actually does take place. Alcohol, he says, after being taken is incorporated with the blood, and passing in some form not yet explained into the circulation, ultimately disappears; a small portion alone passing from the body, and that in the breath. He further says that when alcohol is mingled with other food, a less amount of the latter suffices for the wants of the system than if water had been used as the drink. Dr. Inman cites his own experience of an attempt to do without his ordinary allowance of ale at dinner; a large increase of food was necessited, but the demand for this diminished at once on resuming the ale. Similar facts were noted in the experience of various members of his family. No loss of health or strength was experienced, except when the ordinary amount of solids was taken without the beer.
A celebrated French medical man (Dr. Coulier) published an excellent article on beer (“Article Bière” in Vol. IX. of the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de Sciences Médicales) considered from a medical point of view. He says, in effect, that beer being less rich in alcohol than even the poorest wines, holds an intermediate place between the latter and purely watery drinks. It presents, according to its mode of preparation and composition, a continuous scale of more or less alcoholic drinks, from porter and ale down to small beer containing little more than one per cent. of alcohol. Its bitter principles render it tonic and aperient; while the somnolence and heaviness that follow an over-allowance of this fluid are due to the action of the essential oil of the hop. He holds that of all fermented drinks, beer is the one whose taste se marie le plus agréablement with the use of the pipe. Beer must be considered in the light of an alimentary drink. In every hundred parts of beer are five of extract containing a little nitrogenous assimilable matter and salts favourable to nutrition, but consisting mainly of respiratory food. “If,” he says, “fermented drinks have become one of the necessities of civilisation, a prudent regard for health should make us as far as possible reduce the excitement which the alcohol occasions. In this respect beer presents a great advantage over wine. Thus a half-bottle of wine {421} containing 12 per cent. of alcohol, which is the common allowance for an adult, contains 375 grammes of wine, and consequently 45 grammes of anhydrous alcohol. A bottle of beer containing 4 per cent, of alcohol is equally satisfying, and contains only 30 grammes of alcohol. Hence, supposing two meals are taken daily, the beer-drinker daily imbibes 30 grammes less of alcohol than the wine-drinker; and this difference amounts in the course of the year to nearly 11 kilogrammes, or 14 litres (equivalent to 24 lbs. or 3 gallons), of anhydrous alcohol.”
Examples without number might be collected of men who habitually used alcoholic drinks sometimes in moderation, sometimes, in what we, in these latter days, should certainly consider excess, and who yet lived in health and usefulness to the extreme boundary of human life. Old Parr, if we are to believe Taylor, who sings his praises, was a drinker of the moderate kind.
Sometimes metheglin and by fortune happy, He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy, Cyder, or perry, when he did repair To Whitsun ale, wake, wedding, or fair, Else he had little leisure time to waste, Or at the ale-house huff-cup ale to taste.
Henry Jenkins, who died in 1670 at the wonderful age of 165 years, took his ale whenever he could get it. He lived very much in the open air and spent his time in thatching and salmon-fishing. At one time he was butler to Lord Conyers, of Hornby Castle, and he has left it on record that when, as often happened, his master sent him over with messages to Marmaduke Brodelay, Lord Abbot of Fountains, the abbot “always sent for him to his lodgings, and, after prayers, ordered him, besides wassel, a quarter of a yard of roast beef (for that the monasteries did deliver their meat by measure), and a great black Jack of strong ale.” Have we not, too, the evidence of epitaphs graven in stone, which are well known never to lie, all bearing out the truth of the longevity of ale drinkers? Here are two, the first being in Great Walford churchyard:―
Here John Randal lies Who counting of his tale Lived threescore years and ten, Such vertue was in ale. Ale was his meat, Ale was his drink. {422} Ale did his heart revive, And if he could have drunk his ale He still had been alive. He died January 5, 1699.
The second is in Edwalton, Notts:
Ob. 1741. Rebecca Freeland, She drank good ale, good punch and wine, And lived to the age of 99.
Macklin, the comedian, who died in 1797, for upwards of thirty years was a daily visitor at the Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden. His usual beverage was a pint of hot stout; he said it balmed his stomach and kept him from having any inward pains. Whether from the effects of this inward “balming” or not, Macklin undoubtedly lived to the age of 97 years.
In Daniell’s British Sports there is an account of Joe Mann, gamekeeper to Lord Torrington. “He was in constant morning exercise, he went to bed always betimes, but never till his skin was filled with ale. This he said, ‘would do no harm to an early riser, and to a man who pursued field sports.’ At seventy-eight years of age he began to decline, and then lingered for three years. His gun was ever upon his arm, and he still crept about, not destitute of the hope of fresh diversion.”
The next instance, to be found in Hone’s Year Book, illustrates, not so much the tendency of beer and ale, when taken in large quantities, to make men healthy, wealthy, and wise, as to make them fat. On November 30, 1793, died at Beaumaris, William Lewis, Esq., of Llandismaw, in the act of drinking a cup of Welsh ale, containing about a wine quart, called a “tumbler maur.” He made it a rule, every morning of his life, to read so many chapters in the Bible, and in the evening to drink eight gallons of ale. It is calculated that in his lifetime he must have drunk a sufficient quantity to float a seventy-four gun ship. His size was astonishing, and he weighed forty stone. Although he died in his parlour, it was found necessary to construct a machine in form of a crane, to lift his body in a carriage, and afterwards to have the machine to let him down into the grave. He went by the name of the King of Spain, and his family by the different titles of prince, infantas, &c. {423}
One of the great teetotal arguments against the use of malt liquors, one which the advocates of total abstinence generally fall back upon when beaten on every other point, is that beer is adulterated. This assertion, if it could be substantiated, would undoubtedly cut away the very foundation of our argument as to the wholesomeness of ale and beer. We must, then, shortly consider the point. Time out of mind the brewers have been accused of adulterating their ale and beer, with what truth, at any rate at the present day, we shall see anon. Opium, henbane, cocculus indicus, and we know not what noxious drugs besides, it has commonly, and we think somewhat recklessly, been asserted, find their way into the brewing vessels. Some time ago M. Payen, a French chemist of distinction, created quite a panic amongst the drinkers of pale ale by asserting, in a lecture at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, that strychnine was prepared in large quantities in Paris for exportation to England, where it was employed to give, or to aid in giving, the esteemed bitter flavour to pale ale. This statement appearing in Le Constitutional, and other French papers, soon found its way into the English journals, to the consternation of the drinkers and purveyors of this beverage.
The leading firms of Burton ale brewers at once threw open their breweries and stores in the most unreserved manner, and “The Lancet’s Analytical Sanitary Commission” undertook an inquiry on the subject. Forty samples of beer, all brewed before the promulgation of the statement, were analyzed by the commission, as well as samples taken by other analysts at the request of Messrs. Allsopp and Sons. Needless to say, not a particle of strychnine was discovered. Half a grain of strychnine will destroy life, and a grain would be required to impart to one gallon of beer its ordinary degree of bitterness. The flavour of hops and strychnine differs. To bitter the amount then brewed at Burton 16,448 ounces of strychnine would be required. Not so much as 1,000 ounces of strychnine were manufactured in the whole world yearly.
In a quaint pamphlet entitled Old London Rogueries, the following statement is made seriously:—“There ought also to be compiled a delectable and pleasant treatise by such as sell bottle-ale, who, to make it fly up to the top of the house at the first opening, do put gunpowder into the bottles while the ale is new, then by stopping it close make people believe it is the strength of the ale, when, being truly sifted, it is nothing indeed but the strength of the gunpowder that worketh the effect, to the great heart-burning of the parties who drink the same. This is a truly strange and marvellous artifice, and must be reckoned {424} among the lost inventions.” We wonder if these cunning retailers of the olden time ever used shot as well as powder with their bottled ale, which doubtless would have greatly increased the effect.
In October, 1883, a statement was loudly trumpeted forth from teetotal platforms that 245,000 cwt. of chemicals were used every year in England in brewing. After a good deal of discussion on the subject, it leaked out that the figures had been arrived at by a firm of hop dealers, anxious to run up the price of hops. By a blunder in their calculations they had come to the conclusion that there was a deficit of 245,000 cwt. of hops in this country. From this it was argued that 245,000 cwt. of chemicals were used. This house of cards fell when it was conclusively proved that there were at the time actually more hops in England than were required by the brewers.
With regard to the question of adulteration at the present day, it could be wished that those who are induced by a fanatical hatred of alcohol in any shape or form to make this alleged adulteration a reason for further restrictive legislation on the brewing trade, would take the trouble to look at the reports annually published by the Inland Revenue Commissioners in which this point is dealt with. Here are a few extracts from their report for the year 1881, soon after the repeal of the Malt-tax. “Brewers have no doubt been experimenting with other descriptions of grain, as might have been expected, but we believe that barley, from its peculiar fitness for malting, will in the end maintain its superiority; and we are informed that a new method of preparing inferior barley for brewing purposes promises to be highly successful.” “So far as we are aware, no attempts have been made to use materials in brewing at all detrimental to the public health; and the presence of the Revenue officers in breweries affords fresh security to the public—if indeed any such were needed—against all such practices.”
In the same report Professor Bell, the Principal of the Inland Revenue Laboratory, goes into detail and gives very valuable statistics, showing the way in which the opinion given by the Commissioners was arrived at. In 1881, 8,626 samples of beer were tested, of which 4,666 were analyzed to see if any foreign body had been added, as well as to check the original gravity. Of this large number the whole were nearly correct, but actually 17 per cent, were found not alone to be up to the standard test, but above it; and out of nearly 20,000 brewers, which, in round numbers, was then the extent of the trade in the United Kingdom, only some 300 were even suspected of having used illegal materials. Of the ninety samples of beer submitted for analysis as being suspected {425} to have been tampered with, sixty-three were found to have been “sugared,” but in every instance this occurred at the public-house or beerhouse, a matter which was beyond the control of the brewer, and was as much a fraud on him as on the Revenue and the public. Mr. Bell goes on to state that whatever adulteration prevails is wholly confined to the publican and the beer retailer, and even where it does prevail, at the most the practice means nothing worse than diluting the beer with water and afterwards adding sugar; still, as Mr. Bell remarks, “Reprehensible as the practice is, as being a fraud on the public as well as the Revenue, yet it is satisfactory to know that no adulterant of a poisonous or hurtful character has been detected.”
Dr. Thudichum, in a work Alcoholic Drinks, published by the Executive Council of the late Health Exhibition, speaking of the supposition that hops are sometimes supplanted, entirely or in part, in the manufacture of beer by absynth, menyanthes, quassia, gentian, and other matters, regards such adulteration as rare and such as “if practised persistently would no doubt be discovered, and the liquids produced by their aid would be declined by the public.”
An Irish brewer told us of a rather comic incident connected with hop substitutes. A traveller in these commodities was in the habit of pestering our friend, who informed the man that he believed his wares were poisonous, and that he ought to eat some to prove the contrary. With a wry face the traveller swallowed a portion of his sample and shortly afterwards left. Coming again in a week’s time the same performance was gone through. The traveller made yet another visit, when the brewer said the experiment had not satisfied him, as so small a quantity of the hop had been eaten. This time the traveller outdid himself, and when and before leaving the brewery promised to write and inform the brewer if the bitter meal had any evil effects. Whether the traveller died, or whether he discovered that he had been befooled, we do not know, but nothing more was heard of him.
We believe that the importance of a supply of good, pure beer to the labouring classes of this country can hardly be over-estimated, particularly having regard to the fact—as we shall show with greater particularity, when we come to discuss the question of total abstinence as opposed to temperance, that malt liquors undoubtedly assist in the support of the body, and are in practical effect equivalent to so much easily digested food.
“Thou clears the head o’ doited lear, Thou cheers the heart o’ drooping care; {426} And strings the nerves o’ labour fair, At’s weary toil. Thou even brightens dark despair, Wi’ gloomy smile.”
Dr. Paris, from whose works we have already quoted, explains that it is the stimulus of the beer that proves so serviceable to the poor man, enabling his stomach to extract more aliment from his innutritive diet. “Happy is that country,” he writes, “whose labouring classes prefer such a beverage to the mischievous potations of ardent spirit.”
Barley wine is without doubt the wine of this country, and where shall we find, all the world over, a more stalwart, muscular, able-bodied race of labouring men than we find at home? The mighty thews of the English navigator are renowned, and not at home only, for it is well known that while the French railways were making, the contractors actually imported English “navvies” to do the heavy work, paying them higher wages than their French competitors.
We would commend to the attention of those who, as the phrase goes, would rob a poor man of his beer, the certainty that, though the evils of intoxication can hardly be exaggerated, yet in counselling the labouring classes everywhere, and under all circumstances, to abstain from all kinds of liquor, they are taking upon themselves a very grave responsibility.
The following old Somersetshire song has, we believe, at any rate in this form, never before appeared in print. It was taken down verbatim from the lips of the singer at a harvest-home. The verses no doubt lack the elegance of the productions of our greater English poets, but the composer, whoever he may have been, treated his subject with commendable vigour of expression, and “Robin Rough, the Plowboy,” illustrates in a remarkable manner the love of the agricultural labourer for his beer, and his belief in its health-giving qualities; a belief, by-the-bye, founded on many centuries of experience:―
I’ze Robin Rough, the plowboy, A plowman’s son am I, And like my thirsty feyther, My trottle is always a-dry, The world goes round, to me it’s reet, Why need I interfere? For I whistles and sings from morn till neet, And I smokes and I drinks my beer. {427} For I likes a drop of good beer, I does; I’ze fond of a drop of good beer, I is. Let gentlemen fine Sit down to their wine, But I will stick to my beer.
There’s Sally—that’s my wife, zurs— Likes beer as well as me, She’s the happiest woman in life, zurs, As happy as woman can be. She minds her work, Takes care of bairns, No gossiping neighbours near; When every Saturday neet returns, Like me she drinks her beer. For Sally likes her beer, she does, She’s fond of a drop of good beer, she is, Let gentlemen fine Sit down to their wine, But my Sally will stick to her beer.
Now there’s my dad, God bless him, He’s now turned eighty-five, Hard work does ne’er distress him, He’s the happiest man alive. Though old in age He’s young in health, His head and his heart both clear, Possessing these and blest with peace, He smokes and he drinks his beer— For he’s fond of a drop of good beer, he is, He very much likes his beer, he does, Let gentlemen fine Sit down to their wine, But my feyther will stick to his beer.
Now, lads, need no persuasion, But send your glasses round, There’s no fear of an invasion While barley grows in ground; {428} May trade increase And discord cease In every coming year. Possessed of these and blest with peace, Why, we’ll smoke and we’ll drink our beer. For I likes a drop of good beer, I does, I’ze fond of a drop of good beer, I is. Let gentlemen fine Sit down to their wine But we’ll all of us stick to our beer.
The poet Bloomfield, in the Farmer’s Boy, may possibly better please our more critical readers. In describing the harvest-homing, he says:―
Now noon gone by, and four declining hours, The weary limbs relax their boasted pow’rs; Thirst rages strong, the fainting spirits fail, And ask the sov’reign cordial, home-brew’d ale:
A wider circle spreads, and smiles abound, As quick the frothing horn performs its round, Care’s mortal foe, that sprightly joys imparts To cheer the frame and elevate their hearts.
Shakespere has been called by the teetotallers as a witness in favour of abstinence from intoxicating liquors. Does he not make Adam, in As You Like It, say―
Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood, Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo The means of weakness and debility; Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty, but kindly?
Hot and rebellious liquors! yes; but would Shakespere have classed ale amongst them? It seems far more probable that the reference is to the strong wines of which the topers of his time drank deeply, the “malmsey and malvoisie,” the “neat wine of Orleance, the Gascony, the Bordeaux, the sherry sack, the liquorish Ipocras, brown beloved Bastard, or fat {429} Aligant,” or to the “aqua vitæ,” the manufacture of which in the reign of Mary was the subject of restrictive legislation.
Our consideration of the arguments put forward by the teetotal theorists has so far been slightly delayed by the few pages we have thought it well to devote to the accusations made against brewers of adulteration, and of the evident advantages of malt liquor to the labouring classes—proved beyond doubt without any necessity for learned disquisitions on chemistry or physiology. In turning now to a more particular consideration of the much-vexed question of temperance v. total abstinence, we do not propose to attempt the advancement of any novel or startling theories, but merely to give publicity to the arguments in favour of the temperate use of alcoholic drinks, as opposed to the total abstinence therefrom, supporting our arguments, as it will be found we shall be able to do, by the opinions of some of the best-known medical and scientific writers of the present day.
One of the first things that strikes an observer who considers, as impartially as he can, the case put forward by the extreme advocates of abstinence, is that the controversy itself is a very modern one, and that, with the tendency to run into opposite extremes which is a characteristic of human opinion, we pass suddenly from the centuries in which it was held no shame for a man to be drunk, into these present years, when there exists a considerable, and in some sense, an influential body of persons, who not only will not touch alcoholic drink themselves upon any terms, but who think it their duty to press for such legislation as would deprive all men, be they temperate or otherwise, of the power of buying, selling, or drinking any liquor of which alcohol is a constituent. “Poison!” “Touch not the accursed thing!” “Away with it!” and so on—very voluble, occasionally eloquent, sometimes plausible. But will the fierce denunciations of these apostles of a new religion—a religion not of temperance, but, as it has been well called, of “intemperate abstinence,” bear the searching light of calm and quiet argument? We had once a friend who, while fond of his pipe, was always interested in reading about the terrible evils which the weed would, according to the infallible dicta of the anti-tobacco lecturers, be sure in time to bring upon his unfortunate constitution. Before sitting down to read one of these lectures, he used always to light a large and favourite briar; he said it enabled him to follow the lecturer’s points so much better. Now we do not ask our readers to follow the example of our friend mutatis mutandis. We do not say that such a proceeding would of necessity assist him in following our arguments. All we claim {430} is a patient hearing, for there never has been a time in which an unprejudiced discussion of the subject would be of greater advantage than at present.
Human habit of centuries, of thousands of years, of such time that the memory and record of the human race, to use a legal phrase, runneth not to the contrary, is evidence in our favour. Whenever he has had the requisite skill, man has produced, enjoyed, and, we maintain, has been improved by drinks in which alcohol formed a constituent part. The practice of civilised nations for thousands of years is, then, so far as it goes, an argument in favour of temperance as opposed to abstinence. We do not wish to put this part of our case too high, and our meaning cannot be better expressed than by the words of Sir James Paget, who, in an essay on this subject in the Contemporary Review, writes: “The beliefs of reasonable people are, doubtless, by a large majority favourable to moderation rather than abstinence, and this should not be regarded as of no weight in the discussion. For, although the subject be one in which few, even among reasonable people, have made any careful observations, and fewer still have thought with any care, yet this very indifference to the subject, this readiness to fall in with custom, a custom maintained in the midst of a constant love of change, and outliving all that mere fashion has sustained—all this is enough to prove that the evidence of the custom being a bad one is not clear.”
It is an indisputable fact that nations who have used alcohol have attained to a greater perfection in power and will to do good work, and a longer duration of life in which such work can be performed, than those who have used no alcohol; and, confining our attention to Europe, may we not say that these powers of work, these activities of body and mind in enterprise, in invention, and in production, are more remarkably developed in the inhabitants of the northern than of the southern parts of the Continent, that is to say, among those who have habitually drank more than those who have drank less? And may we not ask how it is that, if the use of alcohol in moderation be pernicious, the inherited effects of it have not during these vast periods of time during which it has been used, made themselves apparent in a marked degeneracy of the race, since we know that these results will make themselves very conspicuous indeed in two generations of persons who are habitually intemperate?
We are told that it is unnatural to make use of alcoholic drinks, and we are lectured about what man in his natural state would do, or {431} not do. This is a misuse of terms; the state in which mankind is at any particular period, the point in his path of development which he has then reached, and his then environment, these constitute his natural state, and not some more or less hypothetical state of being which has been now left far behind.
In order to enable them to thrust their theories upon a certainly unwilling audience, it would be very convenient for the abstainers to show, if they could, that alcohol, in any form and no matter how diluted, is in itself a bad thing. First, then, let us consider whether alcohol, as such, is food. On this point Dr. Lander Brunton says: “The argument in favour of alcohol being food is that it is retained in the body and supplies the place of other foods, so that the quantity of food which would without it be insufficient, with its aid becomes sufficient.” He also quotes Dr. Hammond, who observed in his own case that when his diet was insufficient, the addition of a little alcohol to it not only prevented him from losing weight, as he had previously done, but converted this loss into a positive gain.
The late G. H. Lewes, in his Principles of Physiology, also speaks conclusively on this subject, pointing out that alcohol is one of the alimentary principles. “In compliance with the custom of physiologists we are forced to call alcohol food, and very efficient food too. If it be not food, then neither is sugar food.” Mr. Lewes also states that alcohol taken in large quantities is harmful, depriving the mucous membrane of the stomach of all its water, but that taken in small quantities and diluted it has just the opposite effect, increasing the secretion by the stimulus it gives to the circulation.
The general opinion of the medical world appears to be that alcohol as such, is a food in a special sense, viz., that it checks the waste of tissue and enables a person to attain to a high standard of health and strength mentally and bodily while taking less food than would be necessary without the alcohol. Moleschott says that “although forming none of the constituents of blood, alcohol limits the combustion of those constituents, and in this way is equivalent to so much blood. Alcohol is the savings bank of the tissues. He who eats little and drinks alcohol in moderation, retains as much in his blood and tissues as he who eats more and drinks no alcohol.”
The argument to the effect that alcohol must be useless, because chemists have as yet been unable to trace the exact form and manner in which it acts upon the human economy, would seem to be fallacious in the face of the experience, which shows that it does act, and act {432} beneficially, when taken in a suitable form and in suitable quantity. Experience shows, and instances by the hundred could be given, from the works of medical men, that life can be sustained for long periods of time solely upon alcoholic drinks. Dr. Brudenell Carter mentions a case in his own experience of an old gentleman who lived for many months in moderate strength and comfort and without any remarkable emaciation upon alcoholic drinks alone. Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read before the British Medical Association, gives an instance of a lady who twice in succession nursed a child, subsisting upon each occasion during the greater part of twelve months upon brandy and bitter ale alone; the children, he adds, grew up strong and healthy.
Dr. Francis E. Anstie, in an article published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1862, draws attention to the fact that many substances have an action on the body in small doses, totally different in kind to that which they exercise in large doses e.g., common salt, arsenic, and many others which are either food or poisons, according to the dose. “We are compelled, therefore,” he writes, “to believe that in doses proportioned to the needs of the system at the time, alcohol acts as a food;” and he instances several cases of longevity in which alcohol was the only aliment, excepting in some cases a little water, and in others a spare allowance of bread. Decisively vanquished on this ground, our opponents return to the attack: “You must abstain,” say they, “because your practice, which is now moderate, will insensibly become excessive.” Here we again turn to Mr. Lewes’s work on Physiology, and quote the pithy argument by which he refutes this fallacy. A portion is italicised for the benefit of tea drinkers: “To suppose there is any necessary connection between moderation and excess, is to ignore Physiology, and fly in the face of evidence . . . Men take their pint of beer or pint of wine daily, for a series of years. This dose daily produces its effect; and if at any time thirst or social seduction makes them drink a quart in lieu of a pint, they are at once made aware of the excess. Men drink one or two cups of tea or coffee at breakfast with unvarying regularity for a whole lifetime; but whoever felt the necessity of gradually increasing the amount to three, four, or five cups? Yet we know what a stimulant tea is; we know that treble the amount of our daily consumption would soon produce paralysis—why are we not irresistibly led to this fatal excess?”
Let us now return to our authorities, and from the wealth of material which exists in the published opinions of medical men of distinction, choose a few more extracts in favour of temperance as opposed to total {433} abstinence. Professor Liebig, for instance, says that wine, spirits, and beer are necessary principles for the important process of respiration, and it would seem that the stomachs of all mankind, teetotallers included, will secrete alcohol from the food which is eaten. If any man, therefore, is resolved to carry out total abstinence strictly, he must refuse every sort of vegetable food, even bread itself; for all such diet contains more or less of alcohol.
Sir James Paget, in the article already referred to, asserts that the habitual moderate use of alcoholic drinks is generally beneficial, and that, in the question raised between temperance and abstinence, the verdict should be in favour of temperance.
Dr. A. J. Bernays, in an essay on The Moderate Use of Alcohols, alluding to water as a proposed substitute, remarks on the wretched character of the water which is supplied in towns, and the difficulty of getting it pure. “Water which has gone through some form of preparation, especially through some form of cooking, as in beer, is generally better suited for meals than water itself.”
Dr. Carpenter has also drawn attention to the wholesomeness of bitter beer at meals. “There is a class of cases,” he writes, “in which we believe that malt liquors constitute a better medicine than could be administered under any other form; those, namely, in which the stomach labours under a permanent deficiency of digestive powers.” Bitter beer, he asserts, assists digestion in cases in which no medicine would be of use.
This question of the water reminds us of the following tale: A cobbler was listening to the persuasive eloquence of a teetotaller, and getting somewhat dry over the prosy argument. “Well,” said the knight of St. Crispin, “all you say amounts to this—that water is the best thing any man can drink. Now I am not proud, and am easily satisfied, and don’t want the best—stout, or ale, or even bitter-beer is quite good enough for the likes of me.”
It is very often pointed out that the agricultural labourer and the working classes generally would be better off if they spent the money devoted to beer in food. This is, however, open to question, keeping in mind the fact that alcohol enables the human frame to exist with a smaller amount of food than would be otherwise necessary. Dr. C. D. Redcliffe, in giving his views on alcohol, in the form of a conversation between himself and a patient, speaks very positively on this point. “The glass of malt liquor,” he writes, “or cyder or perry or common wine, if the man have the luck to live in a wine-growing country, will {434} cost less than the amount of ordinary food which must otherwise be eaten in order to preserve health. I have no doubt of the saving in pocket which will result from the adoption of the practice recommended . . . . and I am equally certain that the result will be as beneficial to health as it will be satisfactory financially.” Liebig also testifies to the same effect, stating that in families where beer was withheld, and money given in compensation, it was soon found that the monthly consumption of bread was so strikingly increased that the beer was twice paid for, once in money and a second time in bread.
Mr. Brudenell Carter, while he was practising his profession in a mining district, and daily brought into contact with the results of drunken habits, determined that he “should be a better advocate of abstinence if he practised it,” and he accordingly gave up his liquor. The results we give in his own words:—“After about two months of total abstinence, the conviction was reluctantly forced upon me that the experiment was a failure, and that I must give it up.” His symptoms pointed, he says, “in a perfectly plain way to an excess of waste over repair. I returned to my bitter beer, and in the course of a week was well again.”
A volume could be filled with similar experiences, but in summing up the result of modern medical opinion, we are contented to rest our case on what has been said on this point by the two great authorities we have before quoted, viz., Sir James Paget and Dr. Bernays; the former writes: “As for the opinions of the medical profession, they are, by a vast majority, in favour of moderation. It may be admitted that, of late years, the number of cases has increased in which habitual abstinence from alcoholic drinks has been deemed better than habitual moderation. But, excluding those of children and young persons, the number of these cases is still very small, and few of them have been observed through a long course of years, so as to test the probable influence of a life-long habitual abstinence. Whatever weight, then, may be assigned to the balance of opinions among medical men, it certainly must be given in favour of moderation, not of abstinence.” Dr. Bernays is still stronger. “The experience of mankind is better than individual experience, and so, for every medical man of distinction who is in favour of total abstinence, I would find twenty men who are against it.” Hardly anyone who has lived among teetotallers will deny that they are large eaters. Now the greater the amount of solid food that is required to keep a human being up to the normal level of health and strength, the greater amount of nervous energy will be consumed {435} in the process of digestion, and the less superfluity of energy will that person have in reserve to meet the other exigencies and activities of life. It therefore seems to follow with the certainty of a mathematical demonstration, that if, as those who are best qualified to judge assure us is the case, the moderate consumption of alcoholic liquors enables a person to keep himself in health and strength upon a less amount of solid food than would be necessary without the aid of alcohol, the life of that man, other things being equal, must be fuller of capacities for all kinds of work, both mental and bodily, than that of a man who takes no alcohol, and who is in consequence forced to use up a greater amount of nerve force in the consumption of a sufficiency of solids to support himself. It is an uncontrovertible fact that the best work has always been done by the moderate drinkers. The physical condition of rigid abstainers has frequently been commented upon; and without wishing to say anything unkind, or uncharitable, about men who are doubtless honest and conscientious, though, in our view, misguided, we cannot but suggest the question—Is the appearance of the average abstainer, who now, happily for the cause of truth, is known to all the world by the blue ribbon he wears, such as may be considered a good advertisement for the opinions he advocates? Does his appearance seem to indicate a physical or intellectual superiority to the average member of the genus homo? We think there can be but one opinion on this point, and it is that each and every of these questions must be answered with an emphatic negative.
On the action of the Temperance Societies, Dr. Moxon, in a very able article, Alcohol and Individuality, after relating how a poor cooper, having a fever caused by a wound, died rather than take the alcohol which was absolutely necessary to sustain him, says: “I believe that to a large extent teetotalism lays firmest hold on those who are least likely ever to become drunkards, and are most likely to want at times the medicinal use of alcohol—sensitive, good-natured people, of weak constitution, to whom the Sacred Ecclesiast directed his strange sounding but needful advice, ‘Be not righteous over much, neither make thyself over wise: why shouldst thou destroy thyself?’”
In August, 1884, The Times devoted several columns to an exhaustive consideration of teetotal theories and the use of alcohol, and it may be said, without fear of contradiction, that neither before nor since has a more valuable treatise appeared on the subject. The writer divides total abstainers into three classes. Of the first class he says: “There are some persons who seem not to require alcohol because they easily {436} digest a large quantity of solid food, and especially of saccharine and starchy matters, . . . . but it is fairly questionable whether their work in life would not be better in quantity or in quality, or both, if they were to consume less solid food, and to make up for the deficiency by a little beer or wine. There are others who have a distinctly morbid tendency towards excess, . . . . which leaves them no safety except in total abstinence. The difficulty with these persons is to keep them from drink, however hurtful they may know it to be, for their condition is one of disease, and they have seldom sufficient resolution to abstain. When they do abstain they furnish striking examples of the success of teetotalism by being changed from a state closely bordering on insanity into responsible members of society; but the ordinary experience with regard to them is that they have a succession of relapses into intemperance, and that they ultimately die, directly or indirectly, from the effects of drink. . . . The third class of abstainers is formed by those who are actuated in the main by benevolent and conscientious motives, which, unfortunately, are seldom controlled by the possession of adequate knowledge. Many clergymen abstain ‘for the sake of example,’ without pausing to consider whether the example may not, in some cases, be a bad one, and whether they would not discharge their manifest duties more efficiently by help of the added force which alcohol would give. Many persons get on fairly well without alcohol because their powers are never subjected to any considerable strain, and these persons too often break down when any strain comes upon them, unless they will consent to modify their mode of living. This, as is too well known, they will not always do; and every medical man has seen instances of fanatical teetotalism leading to complete destruction of the health of those who were governed by it.”
With regard to teetotal societies, the writer considers that they do very little good and a great deal of harm. “They fail,” he says, “to touch the evils of drunkenness, except in a very limited fashion, and they take away alcohol from vast numbers who would be better for the moderate use of it. We think the time has come when philanthropists should cease to listen to mere declamation, and should try to look calmly and fearlessly at the results of observation and experience. Many a good man is injuring his health and diminishing his usefulness in order to adhere, ‘for the sake of example,’ to a fantastic deprivation.”
To check the evils of drunkenness, we rely not on prohibitory legislation, which has been tried elsewhere and found wanting, but on the gradual spread of education and enlightenment; the effects of public {437} opinion, the improvement of the well-being of the humbler classes more particularly with reference to their habitations both in town and country. Perhaps also, but here we speak with greater diffidence on account of the practical difficulties in which such a proposal is involved a remedy is to be found in the confinement of those persons who have shown by their conduct that their inability to refrain from vile excesses arises from actual mental disease.
Lord Bramwell, in a pamphlet called Drink, has written to very much the same effect. He also calls in question the right of society to interfere with individual liberty to the extent proposed by the teetotallers. Is it reasonable, he asks, that because some people drink to excess, alcoholic liquors are to be denied to millions to whom it is a daily pleasure and enjoyment with no attendant harm? If a man is drunk in public, punish him; but it does seem hard that the sober man should be punished—for withholding a pleasure and inflicting a pain are equally punishment. “Then see the mischief of such laws,” he continues. “The public conscience does not go with them. It is certain they will be broken. Every one knows that stealing is wrong; disgrace follows conviction. But every one knows that drinking a glass of beer is not wrong; no discredit attaches to it. It is done, and when done against the law you have the usual mischiefs of law-breaking, smuggling, informations, oaths, perjury, shuffling, and lies. Besides, as a matter of fact, it fails. Nothing can show this more strongly than the failure in Wales of the Sunday Closing Act.” Lord Bramwell in the end comes to the conclusion that drunkenness cannot be prevented by legislation. “Whether it is desirable to limit the number of drink shops,” he writes, “is a matter as to which I have great doubt and difficulty. But grant that there is the right to forbid it, wholly or partially, in place or time, I say it is a right which should not be exercised. To do so is to interfere with the innocent enjoyment of millions in order to lessen the mischief arising from the folly or evil propensities, not of themselves, but of others. And, further, that such legislation is attended with the mischiefs which always follow from the creation of offences in law which are not so in conscience. Punish the mischievous drunkard, indeed, perhaps, even punish him for being drunk in public, and so a likely source of mischief. Punish, on the same principle, the man who sells drink to the drunken. But go no further. Trust to the good sense and improvement of mankind, and let charity be shown to those who would trust to them rather than to law.”
Other arguments in opposition to those who would introduce what {438} is known as local option may be briefly summed up as follows:—Such a system would establish the principle that a majority of ratepayers in one district may put a stop to any trade or calling to which they may happen to object, although the same trade remains perfectly legitimate in other places; it would concentrate the evil, shifting the area of the sale of drink, and thus intensifying the mischiefs complained of; it would introduce invidious class distinctions, since its effects would principally be felt by the poor and the labouring classes, and in place of a trade which is now subject to inspection and regulation, it would substitute a secret and irresponsible one.
In this discussion, the balance of experience, of reason, and of authority is vastly in favour of the temperate man rather than the abstainer, and it may be said without fear of contradiction from any reasonable or unbiassed person that, for the great majority of the people of this country, the most wholesome, the most nutritious, and the most pleasing alcoholic liquor, is the “wine of the country,” good, sound ale and beer.
To the reader who has been patient enough to follow us thus far, we give our best thanks, hoping that he may have found something to amuse, something, perhaps, to instruct in these pages—our best thanks, we say, and, as a parting word, a few verses by old John Gay, entitled
A BALLAD ON ALE.
Whilst some in epic strains delight, Whilst others pastorals invite, As taste or whim prevail; Assist me all ye tuneful Nine, Support me in the great design, To sing of nappy Ale.
Some folks of cider make a rout, And cider’s well enough no doubt When better liquors fail; But wine that’s richer, better still, Ev’n wine itself (deny ’t who will) Must yield to nappy Ale.
Rum, brandy, gin with choicest smack, From Holland brought, Batavia rack, All these will nought avail {439} To cheer a truly British heart, And lively spirits to impart, Like humming nappy Ale.
Oh ! whether thee I closely hug In honest can, or nut-brown jug, Or in the tankard hail, In barrel or in bottle pent, I give the generous spirit vent, Still may I feast on Ale.
But chief when to the cheerful glass, From vessel pure, thy streamlets pass, Then most thy charms prevail; Then, then, I’ll bet and take the odds That nectar, drink of Heathen Gods, Was poor compared to Ale.
Give me a bumper: fill it up: See how it sparkles in the cup; O how shall I regale ! Can any taste this drink divine, And then compare rum, brandy, wine, Or aught with nappy Ale?
Inspired by thee, the warrior fights, The lover wooes, the poet writes And pens the pleasing tale; And still in Britain’s isle confest, Nought animates the patriot’s breast Like generous nappy Ale.
High church and low oft raise a strife And oft endanger limb and life, Each studious to prevail: Yet Whig and Tory, opposite In all things else, do both unite In praise of nappy Ale.
Inspired by thee, shall Crispin sing Or talk of freedom, church and king, And balance Europe’s scale: {440} While his rich landlord lays out schemes Of wealth in golden South-Sea dreams, The effects of nappy Ale.
Ev’n while these stanzas I indite,
The bar-bells’ grateful sounds invite
Where joy can never fail.
Adieu, my Muse ! adieu, I haste
To gratify my longing taste
With copious draughts of Ale.
