Intemperance: 
AS GOVERNED BY COSMIC AND SOCIAL LAW. 
HO IV CAN WE BECOME A 
TEMPERATE PEOPLE? 
REPRINTED FROM REPORT OF THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF 
MASSACHUSETTS, 1872. 
BOSTON: 
WRIGHT & POTTER, STATE PRINTERS, 
(79 Milk Street, corner of Federal). 
1872. ANALYSIS OF THE CORRESPONDENCE 
ON THE 
Use aid Abuse of Momting Drinks flroogloit tie Globe, 
Which was Presented to the Legislature in 1871: 
OB, 
INTEMPERANCE AS SEEN IN THE LIGHT OF COSMIC LAW. 
By H. I. Bowditch. 2 
ANALYSIS OF THE CORRESPONDENCE. 
October 15,1871. 
To the Members of the Massachusetts State Board of Health. 
Gentlemen :—In our Second Annual Report is printed a 
correspondence on the use and abuse of alcoholic stimulants 
among foreign nations, and a comparison of the same with our 
own country in this particular. I think this correspondence is 
unique not only for the extent of the surface of the globe that 
it embraces, but likewise for the character of our correspond- 
ents. Last year, owing to want of time, the letters were printed 
without comment, except a most imperfect analysis of them. 
I have thought that they should receive more attention from 
us, and that all their essential truths or apparent truths should 
be sifted out and brought more clearly into view. I have had 
this end in view while preparing this communication for you. 
I cannot perhaps hope to gain the unanimous consent of the 
Board to all the propositions I may feel justified in laying down 
after a fair consideration of the various letters. But I trust 
you will believe that I have endeavored to get at the exact 
truth. 
In commencing the correspondence as your representative I 
had no other object in view than to get the opinions of able cor- 
respondents, most of them either American ambassadors to 
different courts or consuls from the American government 
stationed in all the various important countries of the world to 
which our commerce extends. My questions embraced two 
main ideas. They were put briefly, because I believed that if I 
asked a few questions containing seminal principles, I should 
get ampler responses than if I should ask a greater number, 
which would necessarily require a longer time and perhaps 
much study to answer correctly. 3 
The two ideas were, First: to learn the nature and character 
of the stimulants used (if any were so used) by the inhabitants 
of countries to which said correspondents were accredited, and 
the influence of such indulgence on the health and prosperity 
of the people. 
Second: the relative amount of intoxication in said countries 
compared with that known by such correspondents to exist in 
the United States. 
The papers were sent to thirty-three resident American am- 
bassadors and one hundred and thirty-two consuls and a few 
other non-official personages and friends whose opinions I knew 
would be of great value if obtained. 
Among these correspondents are many of our most distin- 
guished citizens, some of whom are well known for their emi- 
nent intellectual and moral qualities. Usually they have 
resided for some years in the places from which they write, and 
are of course generally well acquainted with the habits of the 
people, not only of the cities from which they reply, but also 
with those of the people of the districts or countries in which 
these cities are situated. Most of them write as if they knew 
well the habits of the people, and also those of our own nation 
in reference to the use and abuse of stimulating drink. Hence 
their opinions on that subject are of great value. 
Extent of our Correspondence on the Use and Abuse of Stimu- 
lants. Cosmic View indicated. 
The correspondence virtually embraces the civilized parts of 
the globe. The letters came from forty-nine different places, 
i. e. from a little more than one-fourth of those to whom the 
circular was sent, which with three from this country, made 
fifty-two different “ observation stations,” so to speak. I admit 
that this number is too small to allow us to lay down perfectly 
positive laws in regard to the topics suggested. But while ad- 
mitting this much, we may, I think, with equal certainty, be 
allowed to find some hints toward the unravelling and estab- 
lishing of the great laws which govern the vice of drunkenness 
the world over. The laws of nature are marvellous in their 
wide-spread and sometimes most hidden influence. Looked at 
broadly, they seem to govern all incidents, even those appar- 
ently most subject to the influence of human caprice. 4 
By the rigor of modern statistical science, we can foretell 
the number of suicides that will be committed during any 
season, or part of a season, in any of the great capitals of 
Europe or of this country. This can be said of most if not all 
human events. Can we not therefore hope to learn by these 
widely spread, if not numerous data on intoxication, some of 
the laws governing this terrible evil of our race ? If we can do 
this, we may be better able to solve that most important ques- 
tion to us of the present hour, viz.: the prevalence of this 
vice and its treatment in Massachusetts. 
The correspondence was begun, in fact, in order to fulfil the 
law of the State, which requires the Board to report from time 
to time whatever information it can obtain upon this vast 
subject. 
Analysis of our Correspondence. 
This correspondence is distributed as follows :— 
From Europe, 28 places. 
Asia, ....... 3 “ 
Africa, 2 “ 
South America, 6 “ 
Canada, 1 “ 
West India Islands, ..... 3 “ 
Islands of the Atlantic, .... 3 “ 
Sandwich Islands (Pacific Ocean), . . 1 “ 
Malta (Mediterranean), .... 1 “ 
Australia, 1 “ 
United States,* 3 “ 
52 
Love of Stimulants a Human Instinct. 
The first deduction we can make from this correspondence is 
that this appetite for stimulants is one of the strongest of hu- 
man instincts. It is seen in every nation, in all quarters of the 
globe. Savage or civilized man alike purchases or makes his 
appropriate stimulant. Nature seems in fact unbounded in its 
liberality in this particular. For wherever on the globe he may 
* la this estimate the valuable correspondence from Massachusetts is considered as a 
unit. 5 
be, man finds some means for exhilaration or for soothing him- 
self amid the cares and trials that he may meet. Having been 
made a free agent he is permitted to use or abuse this bounty, 
and his own tendency to drink. Deeply rooted as any of the 
human instincts, this tendency may, if unrestrained by con- 
science, reason and education, bring disaster and often ruin in 
its train. 
It varies under different Influences, Climate, Race, Fashion, etc. 
But the tendency to inordinate indulgence and intoxication 
seems to vary with varying climatic law; with the character of 
the race, and according to the fashion or taste that may have 
been modified by centuries of custom or of law; with the char- 
acter of the stimulant used ; and finally, with the cultivation 
or non-cultivation of the grape. In other words, this corre- 
spondence seems to indicate that intemperance is governed by 
great cosmic, social and industrial laws. These should all be 
duly considered in any practical treatment of this vast evil. 
I will arrange what I have to say on this part of my subject 
under the following heads. 
1. Intemperance according to isothermal lines. 
2. Intemperance according to race. 
3. Intemperance according to the character of the stimu- 
lant used. 
4. Intemperance as influenced by the culture of the grape. 
I trust that I shall be able sufficiently to show that each and 
all have important bearings upon the sacred cause of Temper- 
ance in this State. I am convinced that in all efforts here in 
behalf of that cause, they must be duly weighed, not only by 
legislators who would enact laws for the prevention of Intem- 
perance, but by the whole people. 
Intemperance according to Isothermal Lines. 
Our correspondence points to the existence of a great cosmic 
law which influences the prevalence of intemperance over the 
entire globe. 
Near the equator, where man is constantly subjected to the 
direct and powerful rays of a vertical sun, and where the 6 
human body is as constantly bathed in perspiration and perhaps 
panting with excessive heat, there seems to be less need of 
stimulating drinks than in countries farther removed from the 
equator. 
Correspondents assure us that in the tropics intemperance in 
the use of liquors is very rare. One speaks of it as a “ social 
crime.” A man may be a gambler, or the grossest of libertines, 
and still be received as an equal in polite society, but if guilty of 
intemperance he loses caste as one who violates one of the 
sacred laws of social life. Moreover the people of the tropics, 
when using these strong drinks, sip them from small “ liqueur ” 
glasses, from which it would be impossible to get the long and 
deep draughts so common in these northern climes. 
These may be said to be the characteristics of the drinking 
customs of nations living between the isothermal lines of 77° 
Fahrenheit, north and south of the equatorial line of 82° 4' F. 
On the chart they are marked green, and all but two lie be- 
tween 77° F. north, and 77° F. south. 
Proceeding northward, as we know by our European corre- 
spondence, and as we may infer also southward over similar 
tracts of country in the southern hemisphere, viz.: between the 
isothermal lines of 77° Fahrenheit, and 50°, north and south, 
we find regions where the grape-vine grows luxuriantly, and 
each man may, if he choose, have his own vineyard. We know 
that in Europe these regions are covered by the richest vine- 
yards and that very many kinds of light and but gently stim- 
ulating wines are made. These wines are drunk freely by all 
the inhabitants. In some districts the babes drink them as 
they would their mother’s milk. They are used by young and 
old. 
In Spain some writers declare that wine is more common 
than water, a fact very easy of belief by any one who has ever 
driven dry-shod over the bed of one of the noblest of the rivers 
of Spain. The vine grows on an arid soil, and the grape-juice 
becomes the universal beverage. 
Intemperance while being still quite rare is less disgraceful 
than at the tropics. We hear nothing of its being a social 
crime. Occasionally a man will reel staggering home support- 
ed by wife and friend on either side. He is mild, and only un- 
duly elated. His excitement bursts out into flashes of drunken 7 
wit or joviality. Rarely if ever does he become malicious or 
cruel. He is “jolly drunk ” not “ crazy drunk,” as men so often 
are with us, so says one of our most intelligent correspondents. 
On the chart, these are marked purple, yellow, orange and 
blue. 
Finally we come above the isothermal lines of 50° F. north, 
and probably south. Over these regions the vine, although it is 
found wild, is of less luxuriant growth, and the grapes seem 
less fitted for the making of wine than grapes grown nearer the 
isothermal line 77°. But whether it be owing to the imper- 
fection of the grape matters but little for our statement, 
which I believe is true, viz.: that Russia and all the great Scan- 
dinavian people, the Anglo-Saxon and Celt of Great Britain, 
above 50° F., drink deeply and of more fiery liquor, than the 
men of the South. Instead of simple exhilaration such as is 
generally seen on the shores of the Adriatic and the vine-clad 
hills of Southern Germany and Spain, the dwellers along the 
Baltic and the northern seas drink even to narcotism, and lie in 
beastly intoxication perchance in the very gutters of many a 
northern city. All these except one (viz.: Ceylon a British 
colony) lie above 50° and are marked scarlet and with a cross. 
All this information from our correspondents may be con- 
densed into the statement of a general law, which I will now 
lay down as I deem it shadowed forth by them : 
Intemperance prevails the world over, but it is very rare at 
the equator. The tendency increases according to latitude, 
becoming more frequent, and more brutal and disastrous in 
its effects on man and society, as we approach the northern 
regions. 
Cosmic View of Intemperance. 
It would seem therefore as if the burning zone of the tropics 
took from man the desire for intoxication from alcohol, while it 
induces him to while away the hours under the fumes of opium, 
tobacco, or of hasheesh, or in the drinking of coffee or of tea. 
In the central regions of Europe the taste for alcohol increases, 
and here bounteous nature provides abundant crops of luscious 
grapes, which serve not only for food, but also afford the mildly 
stimulating wines which can be used temperately by every age, 
and apparently without evil. If indulged in excessively they 8 
will of course produce intoxication, but even that, though a 
little more frequent than in the tropics, is rarely of that 
demoniac or narcotic character seen in the North of Europe, 
and throughout the whole of our own country. 
Finally, above the isothermal line of 50° F. north, and when 
we get into the colder regions of the earth, man dresses in furs, 
and heats his houses with furnaces. He drinks fiery potions, 
which give a glow to his system which enables him, as he thinks, 
to defend himself more easily from the bitter cold climate in 
which his fate has placed him. The northern babe, by the very 
fact that he is born amid snows, tends more to fall into intem- 
perate habits than his young peer of the tropics. The passion 
for drink lies dormant but fiercely threatening the northern 
youth, while some of his other animal passions are checked by 
the same influences of climate. The very reverse happens to 
the youth of the tropics. Heat checks the love of liquor, but 
stimulates to unbridled licentiousness. All this may seem very 
frightful, and some may ask, if I attribute so much to climate, 
how can any one escape ? It is not for me to answer the ques- 
tion, but I know of no good reason why, notwithstanding such 
a question may be asked, the vast influence of climatic law 
should not be broadly stated,—and a germain statement should 
not be neglected, viz.: that as we approach the north the vine 
disappears, or produces a grape less fit for wine, and that, to 
meet this want of some stimulus, man distils an ardent spirit 
from grains or roots, which too often proves a curse to himself 
and to his progeny. For these strong liquids when used 
intemperately encroach more upon the vital forces of man’s 
nature than do the wines of the central portions of the earth.* 
* I find in Beckwith’s “ Practical Notes on Wine ” (London, 1868) the following quota- 
tions : “Prof Liebig writes, ‘wine as a restorative, as a means of refreshment when the 
powers of life are exhausted, as a means of correction and of compensation where mis- 
proportion occurs in nutrition and the organism is deranged in its operation, and as a 
means of protection against transient organic disturbances is surpassed by no product of 
nature or art. * * In the rich cities of the Rhine, wine is the universal medicine for 
the healthy as well as for the sick, and it is milk to the aged.’ ” (page 73.) 
“Of spirits” he says, “he who drinks them draws a bill, so to speak, on his health, 
which must always be renewed, because for want of means he cannot take it up. He con- 
sumes his capital instead of his interest, and the result is the bankruptcy of his body.” 
Mr. Druitt (Report on Cheap Wines) says, “It is not only in a medical point of view, 
but as a friend of sobriety and morals that I venture to advocate the larger use of wine, 
i. e. pure wine as a beverage.” (Beckwith, page 74.) 9 
Climate in America peculiarly stimulating. 
In further proof of the influence of climate, and at the 
same time to give a warning to our people in regard to the 
use of liquors in America, I may add the well-known fact that 
Englishmen on arriving at this country find themselves unable 
to bear the same amount of liquor of any kind that they have 
always used with impunity in Europe. The peculiarly stimulat- 
ing nature of our climate excites the nervous system so much 
that we should endeavor to be more temperate in this country 
than the nations living in Europe between the same isothermal 
lines need to be. The following curious facts illustrative of this 
statement I had from an intelligent physician in this neighbor- 
hood :— 
Two Englishmen were travelling at their ease through New 
England, and continued the same amount of stimulants they 
had always used. They were quite astonished when after a 
three months’ trip they were both about the same time seized 
with an attack of delirium tremens, which had never afflicted 
them in England.* 
Similar but exactly opposite results have been noticed by 
Americans when visiting Europe. Many a total abstinence man 
in America has been led while in Europe to use the mild wines 
of those regions in moderate measure, but as a common bever- 
age at his dinner, and this with decided advantage to his 
general health. On his return to this country he is often either 
unable to use similar wines, or he has no desire for them. 
Intemperance as influenced by Race. 
From what I have heretofore stated it seems that a child 
born in England or in any country above 50° F. is by that very 
fact more in danger of falling into intemperance than one born 
in Spain or Italy or on a spot still nearer to the equator. 
But in addition to this powerful climatic law each nation 
seems to have its own peculiar tastes in the choice of stimulat- 
ing drinks. Each one also is now perhaps suffering or is bene- 
fited by these tastes as influenced by customs or fostered by 
fashion or by bad or good laws. The Scotchman of the present 
* For curious differences of climatic effect on the nervous system in California, New 
England and Great Britain, see Dr. Tyler’s statement, Appendix, 13. 10 
hour drinks his strong whiskey, poetically styled his “Mountain 
Dew.” The Hollander grows duller and more sluggish with 
his gin. Drunkenness and crime follow in the train of these 
two liquors. The volatile Italian and Spaniard drink their 
mild native wines as freely as they do their mother’s milk. 
Neither of these becomes a nuisance to themselves or to others by 
beastly intoxication. The Frenchman and the people of some 
Swiss countries are, if we may trust to recent academic* discus- 
sions, giving up the unadulterated juice of the grape, and are 
being undermined in health and morals by the powerful but 
seductive stimulus of brandy, absinthe, or of Schnapps. 
The excitable Irishman swallows rapidly his strong whiskey 
containing often more than fifty per cent, of alcohol. Even in 
small quantities this stirs up his combative qualities; or if per- 
chance the shillelah is brandished at some “ vanity fair ” as a 
matter of pure “ fun ! ”, it is often wielded so formidably that his 
neighbor’s head is as readily broken as when the weapon is 
swung in the deadly fight. 
On the contrary, the naturally sedate German drinks slowly 
in beer saloons and, amid clouds of tobacco smoke, from huge 
Lutheran cups, his favorite lager beer containing about six 
per cent, of alcohol. He may become merry or he may become 
dull, but he rarely if ever fights.f The American Republic, 
though broadly British in its origin, and therefore inheriting 
British tastes for strong liquors, has become by immigration 
truly cosmopolitan. For more than a century men from every 
country have taken refuge here and have brought their national 
habits with them. America in her fertility of resources has 
increased this love of strong liquor. “ American drinks,” with 
all their grotesque nicknames, are fast becoming bye-words for 
the confirmed sots or the youthful devotees to drunkenness 
throughout Europe. The native American, I regret to say, 
tends rather to the Celtic than to the German habits of drink- 
ing. 
* See recent debates in the French Academy of Medicine. 
f In continuation of this subject and for curious details relative to Russia, Sweden, 
Norway, Australia, Feejee Islands, Kamtschatka and West Indies, see Appendix, 6, 
7, 8,10, 11, 12. 11 
Races are educated to use Strong Liquors by Bad Laws and by other 
Influences. 
That races may be so educated by evil legislation and by 
other influences in this matter of using intoxicating drinks we 
have a singularly interesting example in the present condition 
of England. The country has been educated in its tastes for 
strong liquors to a higher degree than mere climatic law would 
have carried it. Bad legislation and wars, especially between 
England and France, have been the agencies that have been 
at work. 
The Romans when they had possession of the country culti- 
vated vineyards, and they flourished well in the south of Eng- 
land. After the overthrow of the Roman power and during 
the disturbed times of the early and more modern history, 
grape culture was neglected. 
Alfred the Great, in the ninth century, wisely ordered its 
renewal, and brought over to England foreign fruit growers. 
At the time of the Norman Conquest vineyards were found in 
many of the warm and fruitful valleys where the cloistered 
monks had built their abbeys. Vine Street at Westminster still 
points to the royal vineyard of those days and near by and 
under the protection of royal and knightly castles vines were 
grown and wines made. 
But as the climate of England was not so favorable as that 
of France for grape culture large quantities of wine were 
imported in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In 1373, 
according to Froissart, no less than two hundred ships went 
annually to Bordeaux in the wine trade.* Similar statements 
in regard to the foreign cultivation of the grape in England 
are found at page 470 of Sir Edward Barry’s singularly inter- 
esting work.t It would be fortunate for England if matters 
had not been materially changed from this. 
An author | who has studied the subject writes as follows :— 
“Down to the time of the Revolution of 1688 great quantities of 
* Geschichte des Weins und der Trinkgelage—Ein Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kultur und 
Sittengeschichte nach den besten Quellen bearbeitet und popular dargestellt fiir da3 
deutsche Volk, Von Rudolf Schultze. Berlin, 1867, p. 82, &c. 
t Observations Historical, Critical and Medical on the Wines of the Ancients, etc.; by 
Sir Edward Barry, Bar. London, 1775. 
J Wines and Wine Countries, etc., by Charles Tovey. London: Hamilton Adams & 
Co. 1862. 12 
French wines were imported to the extent, in some years, of 20,000 
tons. The jealousy toward everything French after that time 
induced the laying on of enormous duties by the legislature.” 
(p. 53.) In 1703 by the treaty of Methuen they practically ex- 
cluded the light wines of France, and the English were forced much 
against their will to seek in Portugal the strongly fortified port, 
(p. 56.) This has been unfavorable to the moral status of England. 
For the long-continued use of the coarse and rough vintage of 
Portugal, made additionally so by the addition of spirit, caused the 
relish for light and delicate wines to decline in England.” (p. 57.) 
The writer hopes for much good from the recent treaties 
brought about by Napoleon the Third and Mr. Cobden. 
Already the use of claret is becoming very common and 
stronger beverages are less used. 
In the work above cited, I also find the following quotation 
from a speech made by the present prime minister, Mr. Glad- 
stone, in 1861, when alluding to the same fact (page 18) :— 
“ The taste for wine in England is materially connected with the 
course of our politics and the revolution of 1688, but still more the 
Hanoverian succession and our wars with France contributed great- 
ly to alter the taste of the country, so that those who before loved 
light wines began to love sherry wines. I believe it is on record, 
that the University of Oxford petitioned Parliament against the 
grievance of laying heavy duties on light wines, and compelling 
them to drink port.”* 
I quote these passages, 1st: to prove that we in the north of 
this country, coming as we do chiefly of the British stock, not 
only have the same climatic law that prevails above 50° F., but 
that we likewise inherit this taste for strong drinks as fostered 
by English folly. 
2d: as a warning to our people. By our present unwise and 
high tariff on the mild wines of Europe, the people of this 
country are led to use the only drinks provided for them, viz. : 
the coarser liquors. Are we not, in so doing, following exactly 
* Macaulay (History of England Yol. 4, 235) states that in 1048 wine was given up 
from hospitable homes and punch put in its place, and worse than the change of brandy and 
lemonade for claret, was the increase of crime in 1692. Like causes produce like effects, 
and as in England during the 17th century, so it is now in the 19th century in America. 
We shut out light wines and beers of the same class, and instead thereof we have 
whiskey without stint. 13 
in the absurd way, I do not say wicked example, set by England 
two centuries ago ? The civilization of monarehial Britain of 
the 17th century governs in fact Republican America of the 
19th. God grant that we may take warning in due season. 
Intemperance influenced by Fashion. 
There can be no doubt that the custom of having liquor 
openly displayed upon the “ sideboards ” of our ancestors, and 
the correlative custom of inviting every visitor to “ take a 
glass ” with the host, was in former times a source of unmit- 
igated evil. It often terminated in exciting to gross habits of 
intemperance on the part of the host and of the guest. Espe- 
cially was the latter too often the victim, if he happened to be of 
a profession like a physician that required a daily round of 
visits. He might begin his circuit with mind bright and 
clear, but he concluded it in a very different condition. As 
these private “ bars ” have been, by fashion closed, we may 
hope fashion will, at some future time, consider him that keeps 
an open public bar as much out of the pale of decent society as 
any estate holder, who should revive this custom of olden time 
to which I now refer. 
Some of our foreign correspondence allude to the evil custom 
we have in America of “ treating ” one’s acquaintance to a 
“ drink ” at any hour of the day. They speak of it as most del- 
eterious, and as not existing in the countries where they reside. 
In fact, I believe that the custom of pledging friendship in 
flowing cups of “ grog,” is almost peculiar to this country. It 
is a curious fact, moreover, that this fashion becomes more and 
more dictatorial as one proceeeds southward in the United 
States. In some places in our southern country, to refuse to 
muddle one’s brains with liquor, to be drunk at an open bar at 
the invitation of a friend, is among the grossest of insults ! 
Fashion thus overides, for a time at least, all climatic laws. 
Open Dram Shops an unmitigated Evil. 
Every one, I think, will admit that among the most pernicious 
customs of this country is the support given by the community 
to open dram shops, where the coarser liquors are exposed for 
sale to all comers. It is the great evil of oar country. Our 
correspondents give us important information on this subject. They are open at St. Croix (tropics), but the people there drink 
liquor in small quantities. “ Twenty years ago they were 
frequent at Frankfort in Germany. Brandy was drunk freely. 
Of late years in consequence of improvement in beer, and the in- 
troduction of coffee, these shops have nearly wholly disappeared, 
and intoxication has decreased.” “ Drunkards have disappear- 
ed ” (page 285 Report). There is no doubt, whatever, that to 
devise some way whereby such shops could be, with the 
unanimous consent of the people, effectually closed in our 
country would be of the greatest moral, physical and pecun- 
iary benefit to the nation. 
I recently had a conversation with a German keeper of a 
lager-beer saloon. Although, in the eyes of some of our temper- 
ance friends, we should not expect much wisdom from such a 
source, I got matter so full of common sense, that I will give 
the substance of it:— 
“ Your dram shops for the sale of whiskey and strong liquors are 
very bad for the people, besides being very expensive. A young 
man enters one of them intending to take only one glass of whiskey. 
He meets friends and asks them to ‘ take a glass ’ with him. In so 
doing he pays perhaps three or four times as much as he originally 
intended. 
“ The liquor immediately and rapidly swallowed flies into his head. 
But his companions to return the compliment, perhaps in turn, ask 
him to drink with each one of them, and then he falls into a still 
greater difliculty. For he loses wholly his head, after having pre- 
viously spent more money than he intended. The loss of a whole 
day of work, and perhaps an arrest for drunkenness with entangle- 
ment in the law, and a fine or imprisonment, may very probably 
be the result. 
“The Germans do not have such a custom in their lager-beer 
saloons. A German may be drinking his beer as his friend enters 
and he passes his own mug to him to drink from. His friend sips 
and courtesy is satisfied. Then both sit down, perhaps at the same 
table, and slowly drink a large quantity of lager-beer. Doubtless 
they both become merry, and German songs may be the result, but 
rarely, if ever, do the terrible evils follow which so often flow from 
one glass of whiskey when drank rapidly, and while standing at 
one of your open bars.” In fact, as my informant added as a final remark, “ Any 
German who habitually gets intoxicated in the lager-beer 
saloon, is avoided by the company assembled. They keep away 
from his table and do not invite him to their own.” 
Surely no reasonable man can doubt which of the two customs 
is the better one, or fail to see how very deleterious our custom 
must be. 
Legislators cannot neglect these great Cosmic and Social Laws. 
In all his dealings with intemperance in this country the real 
statesman must consider these primal influences of the climate 
in which a people lives, and of these tastes of the race. In our 
country the question is presented in a more complicated form 
than in any other, from the very fact of the great variety of 
people that forms our nation. Doubtless this makes legislation 
more difficult, but that is no reason why a statesman should 
ignore these great facts. 
Crime in consequence of Intoxication. 
One of the questions asked our foreign correspondents was 
the amount of crime caused by intemperance. The following 
table presents the results of an analysis of their opinions on 
this question : — 
Table showing the relative Amount of Crime consequent on Intoxicating Drinks 
according to the Temperature of the Places in which the Crime occurred. 
Large Amount. 
Isothermal. 
Edinburgh, . . . 4150 
Dublin, .... “ 
Manchester, ... “ 
Toronto, .... “ 
Berne, .... 50.59 
Odessa, .... “ 
Rotterdam,.... “ 
Utrecht, .... “ 
Zurich, .... “ 
Medium Amount. 
Isothermal. 
Copenhagen, . . . 41.50 
Leipsic, . 50.59 
San Juan del Sur, . . 82.4 
Very Little. Isothermal. 
Elsinore, .... 41.50 
Frankfort, .... 50.59 
Japan, .... “ 
Trieste, .... “ 
Athens, .... 59.68 
Cadiz, .... “ 
Fayal, .... “ 
Funchal, .... “ 
Italy, ' “ 
Beyroot, .... “ 
Lima, 68 74 
Pernambuco, . . . 77 82 
St. Croix, .... “ 
Cape Haytien ... “ 
Trinidad de Cuba, . . “ 
Zanzibar, .... “ 16 
Table—Continued. 
Among Foreigners (chiefly American-Eng- 
lish). Isothermal. 
Trieste, . . . . 50 59 
Beyroot, .... 59.68 
Malta, .... “ 
Athens, .... “ 
Cadiz, .... “ 
Constantinople, ... “ 
Egypt, .... 68.77 
Lima, “ 
Isothermal. 
Nicaragua, .... 77.82 
Pernambuco, ... “ 
Increase since Using Spirits (arrack). 
Isothermal. 
Ceylon 77.82 
Due to Spirit, not to Wine. 
Isothermal. 
Italy, 59.68 
A glance at tliis table reveals the fact that where the tempera- 
ture indicates a colder region, and, consequent on the above- 
named climatic law, where ardent spirits are used to the exclu- 
sion of milder stimulants, there crime in consequence of intox- 
ication is more prevalent. Even the apparent exceptions to this 
statement admit of explanation, and seem to prove only the 
over-powering influence of race or of the religion prevailing in 
the place, or that a mild stimulant is used. 
For example, Elsinore in the North, between (41.50) and 
Ceylon at the equator, (77.50), have some peculiarities which 
at first sight seem to render them exceptions. In reference to 
Elsinore, our correspondent states that the people are remark- 
ably peaceable and orderly, having no rowdyism in the streets. 
“ The police magistrate states that no cases of murder, homi- 
cide or theft which have been brought before him could be 
traced to the influence of drink.” 
“ Arrests for street disorder are very rare among the inhabi- 
tants, and chiefly confined to foreign seamen.” 
But a very important point, as we shall hereafter see, is 
the fact, that a “mild, very thin and weak” beer, ranging in 
price from one to four cents per bottle is drunk, averaging about 
twenty gallons annually to each head of the population. “ This 
large annual consumption does not seem to have an injurious 
effect on the health of the people,”—as they are a strong, 
hardy race and “ with an average duration of life greater than 
in the United States.” With this mild beverage a little less 
than one-quarter of the same amount of corn brandy is also 
drunk. The mild beer is evidently the favorite beverage of the 
peoplo. 17 
In the case of Ceylon, we have only to know that the island 
has been governed by the English race since 1815, having been 
previously under the Dutch, and that by the habits of these 
two races the island has been overshadowed. The same results 
have come out on a grander scale in America from similar col- 
onization. In Ceylon the habits of race have overrun all cli- 
matic law. Palm toddy and arrack are everywhere used, and 
the right to distil the latter is a source of revenue to the gov- 
ernment. Opium and hemp are added to these stimulants and 
used by Malays and Hindoos. It would be amusing if it were 
not sad to read the following final comments from our corre- 
spondent. It is so like what is often asserted about similar 
police matters in various parts of Massachusetts. “ Arrack 
drinking and gambling are at the root of much of the crime 
committed in Ceylon, and the police, rural and regular, require, 
to say the least, strict looking after.” 
It seems to be undoubtedly true that crime in the North is 
in the vast majority of cases consequent on intoxication. Our 
Dublin correspondent is especially earnest on this point.* 
The following data from the report of the chief of the 
police of Boston, and the last census report (not yet printed) 
become very interesting in this connection, if we believe that the 
Irishmen of Boston do not in one generation change much 
from the Irishmen of Dublin, and that the habits of the staid 
German, man or woman do not change much if you transfer 
them from the neighborhood of the Black Forest to Boston. 
The report is given under the title of “ Nativity of Prisoners.” 
The following table made from these two sources shows first, 
the number in Boston of Irish and Germans ; second, the num- 
ber of each nation ; third, the percentage of prisoners to the 
whole population :— 
* Mr. Justice Lamson in his address to the grand jury at Armagh, 1869, says that ‘"all 
the crimes we meet on circuit are more or less directly or indirectly caused by drunken- 
ness.” 18 
Population. 
No. of Prison- 
ers. 
Percentage of 
Prisoners to the 
Population. 
Irish, 
56,900 
14,673 
25.78 
German, 
5,606 
364 
6.49 
The extraordinary difference between the percentages of 
crime perpetrated by the German and Irish is a peculiar fact, 
to be interpreted partly by the differences in the temperaments 
of the two people, but still more I am inclined to believe by the 
difference in the liquors used by the two. I cannot but think 
that if the Germans were to drink rum and whiskey as the 
Irish do, a much larger proportion of crime would be found 
among them than now, for whiskey does not, so far as I know, 
affect a German’s body differently from an Irishman’s body. I 
would likewise suggest the following proposition: Take away 
the whiskey from the Irishman and persuade him to use lager 
beer or Bavarian ale, and perhaps you will take from him a good 
deal of his pugnacity, and he will be less frequently drunk. 
But if we had been unable to get official statistical returns, it 
must have been evident to every one that whereas an American, 
or an Irishman is almost daily seen drunk in our streets, a Ger- 
man is very rarely found so. In truth I do not remember to 
have ever seen a German reeling home intoxicated, or sound 
asleep on some doorstep, evidently narcotized as the Yankee or 
Irishman is likely to be by some violent liquor.* 
This fact is as above suggested due partly to the different ex- 
citability of the races ; but still more to the fact that they have 
been for centuries educated to use two very different kinds of 
drink. 
To sum up all, we may say that two factors enter into the 
commission of crime consequent on intemperance, as they do 
into the prevalence of intemperance itself. It appears, 1st: 
that crime due to drunkenness increases as we go from the 
equator. 2d: that a mild stimulant used even in the North 
probably does not lead to crime as stronger liquors do. 
* See Appendix, 4. 19 
Relative Amount of Intoxication in America and Foreign Countries. 
The opinions of our correspondents are almost without excep- 
tion unfavorable to the United States. We have the tastes 
for intoxication which climatic law and long years of habits of 
intemperance on the part of our English ancestry have engen- 
dered, and all these influences are increased vastly by the 
stimulating nature of our own American climate—at least that 
found along the Atlantic slope. 
Dublin, Manchester, Ceylon and the Netherlands would seem, 
with doubtless some others at the North, to vie with America. 
But in the majority of instances other countries stand vastly 
higher than we do in their exemption from intoxication. 
Are all kinds of Ales, Beer, Rum, and distilled Alcoholic Stimulants to he classed 
as alike equally and always injurious ? 
Some writers in this country and in Europe in their zeal for 
the noble cause of temperance, take the affirmative of this ques- 
tion and claim that alcohol in any form is “ always a poison.” 
I cannot hold this opinion, nor do I think that the clinical 
experience of any physician will admit of it. 
The subject is frequently touched upon by our correspondents. 
Professors Tilamus and Swingar, of Amsterdam, write in favor 
of abolishing even the moderate use of strong drinks as “ always 
unhealthy ” and “ against the moral development and material 
prosperity ” of any people, and “ as the greatest underminer of 
the actual welfare of mankind ” (p. 345). 
The Secretary of the Netherland Society for the abolition of 
strong drinks, writes that “ gin is the beverage of the people 
and to such an extent as to create a general anxiety about the 
future of the nation.” He adds, “ we believe that every drop 
of alcohol is injurious and the beginning of wilful poisoning.” 
He likewise states that “ gin drinking is becoming indecent ” 
(p. 340). 
Another correspondent, on the contrary, writes from Trieste 
(p. 334), that “the drinking of wine and beer is universal.” 
“ From infancy to age they (wines) are the common beverage, 
but are generally, as by Homer’s heroes, mixed with water.” 
The same writer admits that on Saturday night a pretty large 
number of laboring people are “jolly drunk,” but not “ savage 
drunk.” The latter condition is “ unknown ”—save among* 
English or American sailors visiting the port. 20 
Among the better classes “ no instance is known of a merchant, 
lawyer, physician, shop-keeper, or master mechanic, becoming 
an inebriate and gradually losing position, prosperity, and 
business, and sinking into a drunkard’s grave.” One or more 
Englishmen and Americans, however, ruin themselves by the 
use not of wine but of spirits (p. 335). 
In Ceylon “ arrack ” (like whiskey) “ is an unmitigated evil 
and ruins many every year.” Let it be remembered, however, 
in this connection, that Ceylon has been for nearly three gen- 
erations a British colony. 
In Russia “ Yodka ” (like our whiskey) drinkers are seen 
staggering through the streets, “ or lying insensible in some 
corner ” (as observable so often in New England). But among 
the wine tipplers, even when drinking freely, rarely are seen 
drunkards (p 301). 
Our ambassador from Greece (p. 258), says : “ Alcoholic 
drinks, spirits, rum, &c., are very deleterious in these warm 
countries. This fact and the comparatively high cost of these 
stimulants limit their consumption. The light wine of the 
country, on the contrary, is generally regarded as harmless in 
its effects, if not positively wholesome, when drunk in modera- 
tion.” And even when used immoderately it, in some instances, 
at least, seems to do little harm, if we may trust the story by our 
correspondent of an old priest, over ninety years old, who had 
drank twelve bottles per diem for many years. While we must 
admit that such habits as this Bacchanalian priest had can 
scarcely be called temperate, it seems to indicate that there is a 
vast difference between the effects of native mild wines, and our 
strong distilled alcoholic stimulants. The well known and as- 
tonishing infrequency of death from delirium tremens and 
diseases of the brain in Athens consequent on liquors drank, 
confirms the above. 
Our correspondent, the Hon. John Jay, minister to Austria, 
entered most warmly into the questions proposed by the Board, 
and through his influence we procured statistical proof from the 
Statistical Central Bureau of the Austrian Empire. The facts 
are terrible and show conclusively that very different effects are 
produced on the human system by different liquors. It seems 
that the various species may be arranged in three categories, 
according to the violence of their effects : First, and mildest, 21 
beer and ale. Second, mild, native, “ unfortified ” wines. 
Third, ardent spirits, rum, brandy, whiskey, and strongly for- 
tified wines. 
Mr. Jay in his letter writes : “ I am advised by those in whose 
judgment I have confidence, that the chief intoxicating drinks 
in Austria are beer and wine, and that but a small amount of 
spirituous liquor is consumed excepting in Galicia ; that the 
relative consumption of wine by the people is diminishing, and 
that of beer is increasing ; that the beer in general use is of light 
kind requiring the consumption of a large amount to stupefy or 
intoxicate.” Among other items quoted by Mr. Jay, is the 
fact that “ each inhabitant of Austria-Hungary expends eight 
times as much money for spirituous liquors as he does for iron, 
the most important agent of active industry (p. 307).* 
Again, the different provinces of the country show the differ- 
ent effects of the ale, wine, and ardent spirits. Three groups 
of provinces can be named as varying most. They can be 
classified according to the liquor most generally used. It is 
found that the Western Provinces, where beer is most used, 
stand highest; the wine-consuming Hungarians, are much be- 
low them; “ while the Galician peasant who ruinously ex- 
changes for brandy his corn before it is ripe and while yet in 
the pod, is lowest in the scale of industrial development. 
Indeed the degeneracy of the race in Galicia, although perhaps 
other agencies may contribute to it, is to be sought mainly in 
the excessive use of corn-brandy, and thence it comes to pass 
that out of the men called to military duty in Galicia, 37.9 per 
cent, are rejected as unserviceable on account of physical dis- 
ability and infirmity, and 18 per cent, on account of under 
stature. Accordingly, in all, 55.9 per cent, of those called are 
unserviceable in the army, while in the entire monarchy 33.5 
per cent, are rejected on account of physical disability and in- 
firmity, and only 9.2 for under stature ” (p. 308). 
Our correspondent at Berne confirms this view by the follow- 
ing statement (p. 263) :— 
“ A very intelligent gentleman at Lucerne, a member of the can- 
tonial legislature said ‘ that some years since he had the charge of 
enrolling the citizens of that canton subject to military service and 
* Statistical Central Bureau of Austria, from the Minister of the Foreign Office. 22 
was struck with the difference between the people where wine is 
produced and lias always been a common beverage, and those of 
other districts where wine is not used and schnapps is the common 
drink. The physical superiority of the former class was, according 
to his account, very striking and the percentage of able-bodied men 
in the wine-producing districts very much greater. He attributed 
the difference in great part, if not to the positive virtues of wine 
as a beverage, at least to the positive evils produced by schnapps- 
drinking.’ ” 
t 
Our correspondent, it is true, suggests that soil and generous 
climate and greater wealth may have had some influence in this 
result. Whatever may be the various causes contributing to 
the result, we cannot shut our eyes to the facts brought forward 
by the Austrian minister, supported as they are by those from 
Switzerland. To me they seem to confirm what medical experi- 
ence teaches, that rum and ardent spirit drinkers lower their 
own vitality, and the children of drunkards are more puny than 
those of the more temperate. 
Ardent Spirits used intemperately Crush out Manliness, and Dwarf a Race. 
Thus we get from our correspondents a most shocking array 
of evidence proving that the free and intemperate use of ardent 
spirits not only crushes out manliness in a man or woman, but 
actually dwarfs the offspring. The sin of intemperate use of 
ardent spirits is visited not only upon the third and fourth gen- 
erction, but must act in all time unless radical reform be insti- 
tuted. Even if a reform be begun, several generations will be 
needed to redeem the progeny of such a degenerate race. 
What a warning this to our country in regard to the use and 
abuse of ardent spirits. 
But while admitting this much in regard to the frightful 
injury to human society arising from the intemperate use of 
“ ardent spirits” 1 must still deny wholly the affirmation of the 
question that it suggests that alcohol is always a “poison.” 
Nevertheless Alcohol is at times needed to save Human Life, or relieve Human 
Weakness. 
I believe that physicians do at times save human life by using 
various stimulating drinks with the utmost freedom. Moreover 
I do not believe there is a single article in the materia medica 23 
that in its various forms of elixirs, tinctures, extracts, Ac., or 
when simply combined with water, is more necessary than 
alcohol in the treatment of disease. I know that some excel- 
lent friends claim that sometime in the future “ good times” 
something will be found that will supersede the use of alcohol. 
They hope for this, believing as they do that it is always “ a 
poison.” But even while they assert this they use these very 
poisons in their daily practice. I think there are but very few, 
if any, who are confident that they will ever see the time when 
they will be able to give up such use. 
It is well for us all to deal frankly on this subject. It is time 
now to look at this question fairly and simply. I take the fol- 
lowing position, and I fearlessly assert that clinical experience 
proves, if it prove anything, that every form of stimulant now 
in use can be made a blessing, if used temperately and on 
proper occasions. But I likewise most freely admit that 
if used intemperately and improperly, each and all may 
become “ poisonous ” to the last degree. Yet more, I believe 
that even when used intemperately, light beer, ale, lager beer, 
wines like claret, &c., do vastly less harm than the stronger 
ardent spirits. In truth, the former cannot produce intoxica- 
tion except after the swallowing of a very large quantity, so 
large that before intoxication is produced the disposition to 
drink is satiated, whereas the stronger liquids cannot be taken 
save in the smallest quantities without danger of intoxication. 
Moreover, the fact of the habitual and long-continued use of 
ale and of the milder light wines without manifest evil is not 
observed in the long-continued use of even small quantities of 
strong stimulants, such as brandy, rum, whiskey, schnapps, 
absinthe, &c. Such intemperance with these drinks is always 
deleteriovs. Man, under the continued influence of the tribe of 
compositions known in America under the various slang terms 
of “ gin-sling,” “ cock-tail,” “ brandy smashes,” “ mint juleps,” 
“ eye-opener,” Ac., Ac., is liable to become at any time a 
beastly drunkard. 
And a man who, knowing this, voluntarily exposes his mind 
and body to the influence of these ardent spirits, commits an 
act which, a priori, one would deem impossible for any reason- 
able man voluntarily to perform, any more than he would con- sent to have himself changed into a chattering fool or a savage 
brute. 
Yet the same amount which produces in ordinary cases such 
terrific results becomes under other circumstances the wisest 
and most blessed treatment in some severe diseases. Dr. Anstie* 
gives the case of a lady who when flooding to death took a bottle 
of brandy in two hours, not only without intoxication but with the 
single effect of producing sleep for ten hours, but no real intox- 
ication, and life was saved. It was actual food to a bleeding 
fellow creature starving for want of its own blood. 
In a similar manner many persons from their earliest youth, 
believers in the principle of total abstinence, have at certain 
times later in life found help in wine or brandy. I have heard 
that one of the most decided of the temperance men of this 
community, one who in previous years had persuaded many 
physicians to assert under their signs manual, that alcohol is 
not necessary in medicine, became at a later and feebler period 
of his life a daily temperate drinker of brandy. He found it 
necessary to his daily support. ‘ I think I have good grounds 
for the belief that there are hundreds of persons in this com- 
munity, especially women, who would be much benefitted if 
they daily would use light wines or lager beer, and substantial 
food, instead of the water, or tea, or coffee, and the variety of 
pies, doughnuts, pickles and cake so common in New England. 
There is no doubt that the American people as a whole do 
not by any means as yet understand the true philosophy of 
food and drink, and this opinion held by many and which has 
been the basis of State legislation for years past, viz.: that all 
liquors are in themselves nothing but evil, and equally evil if 
once taken into the human stomach, proves the truth of this 
assertion. It is radically and wholly erroneous. Those who 
claim to be the especial apostles of temperance say that every 
one who drinks at dinner a glass of sherry or of claret or hock 
or even of lager beer sets quite as bad an example as the most 
incorrigible drunkard. In drinking even thus moderately, 
“ temperately,” he proves that he does not believe that alcohol 
under every form and at all times is a “poison,” and there- 
*0n Stimulants and Narcotics, page 459, by Francis E. Anstie, M. D., M. R, C. P. 
London: Macmillan & Co., 1864. 25 
fore to be absolutely and at all times even in the smallest quan- 
tities prohibited. 
Intemperance as it may be hereafter influenced by the Cultivation of the Grape 
and by the making and using of mild native Wines and of Lager Beer—Grape 
Culture and Lager Beer in America. 
It is the general view presented by our correspondence that 
in the wine-making districts of Europe intoxication is less fre- 
quent'and less severe than in our country. Unfortunately we 
have never extensively cultivated the grape with the idea of 
making wines. Believing in the grape culture as a means of 
promoting temperance, I know no more melancholy sight than 
that which our country presents at the present hour in reference 
to this culture. Although lying exactly within the area capable 
of growing thousands of vineyards it has, till within compara- 
tively a few years, steadily refused to cover its myriads of unused 
hillsides with vines. The slopes of our mountain ranges might 
grow green under vine terraces like those of Europe. 
And here I would ask a question full of meaning, as I believe 
it should be, to all Americans. What would have been the 
effect on the present condition of our country if two centuries 
ago we had begun to cultivate widely the grape-vine and had 
continued to do so until now ? Two benign results I believe 
would have followed, viz.: we should have been, first, a more 
temperate people, because we should have used less of whiskey 
and of its vile adulterations ; and, second, a vast trade, which in 
a commercial point of view would have been beneficial to our 
people, would have arisen as it has arisen in corresponding 
parts of Europe. 
Various individual attempts have been made at sundry times 
to introduce vineyards into America. 
Under date of Jan. 25, 179B, and in writing to Albert Gala- 
tin, Thomas Jefferson tells of an experiment made on land 
near Monticello in Virginia by Mr. Mazzie, an Italian.* A sub- 
scription of <£2,000 was made and vines procured and several 
laborers imported. His laborers agreed to serve four years. 
Three years passed when war broke out, and Mr. Mazzie was 
compelled to let the place. He went to Europe and the horses 
of his tenant ruined the vineyard. And thus “ ended an 
♦Works of Thomas Jefferson, Yol. 3, p. 505. Taylor andMaury: Washington, D. C., 
1853. 26 
experiment which from every appearance would in a year or 
two more have established the practicability of that branch of 
culture in America.” Mr. Jefferson was always a hearty sup- 
porter of the doctrine of the value of the grape culture as a 
temperance measure. In 1818, Dec. 13, when writing to M. 
de Neuville, he thus expresses himself:—* 
“I rejoice as a moralist at the prospect of a reduction*of the 
duties on wine by our national legislature.! It is an error to view a 
tax on that liquor as a tax only on the rich. It is a prohibition of 
its use to the middling classes of our citizens and a condemnation of 
them to the poison of whiskey which is desolating their homes. 
“No nation is drunken where wine is cheap and none sober 
where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the com - 
mon beverage. 
“ It is in truth the only t antidote to the bane of whiskey. Fix 
but the duty at the rate of other merchandise and we can drink 
wine here as cheap as we can drink grog, and who will not prefer 
it ? Its extended use will carry health and comfort to a much 
enlarged circle. Every one in easy circumstances (as the bulk of 
our citizens are) will prefer it to the poison to which they are now 
driven by ardent spirits, and the treasury will find that a penny 
apiece from a dozen is more than a groat from one. This reforma- 
tion will require time. Our merchants know nothing of the infinite 
variety of cheap and good wines to be had in Europe and particu- 
larly in France, Italy and the Grecian Islands, as they know little 
of the variety of excellent manufactures and comforts to be had any 
where out of England. Nor will these things be known nor of 
course called for here until the native merchants of these countries 
to whom they are known shall bring them forward, exhibit and 
vend them at the moderate profits they can afford. This alone will 
procure their familiarity with us and the preference they merit in 
competition with corresponding articles now in use.” 
But why, I ask, should we rest on foreign importations ? The 
vine grows indigenously from far up in Canada down to the 
Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast. 
Scandinavian adventurers coasting along New England shores 
* Works, Yol. 7, p. 110. 
f See Appendix 5, Letter from Horatio G. Perry, Esq., late Secretary of Legation at 
Madrid. 
J Probably Mr. Jefferson knew little or nothing about lager beer. 27 
centuries ago found the vine in such profusion that they called 
it “ The Good Vineland.” Vines grew freely on our hills when 
New England was first settled. I have already alluded to Mr. 
Mazzie’s experiment under the patronage of Mr. Jefferson near 
Monticello. But long before that, viz., in 1620, a London com- 
pany was formed and established a colony in Virginia. But 
the savages cut off the colonists. The Jesuits had such a suc- 
cessful grape culture in Louisiana that they were ordered by 
France to discontinue it for fear that it would injure the trade 
of the mother country. 
In 1828 John Adlum published a small volume entitled 
“A Memoir on the Cultivation of the Grape in America and 
the Best Mode of Making Wine.”* 
Its object was most excellent, viz.: to diffuse some practical 
and useful information throughout the country on the best 
method of cultivating the native grape and of making wine. 
He applied to the government for a lease of a portion of the 
public grounds of Washington for the purpose of forming a 
vineyard, which would contain specimens of all our native 
grapes. The writer enters enthusiastically into his subject. He 
claims that this will eventually be the most profitable article of 
agriculture in the United States, and he is sure we shall make 
more wine off the same space of ground than any other country 
and that there is no reason why every farmer should not have a 
vineyard as well as an apple or peach orchard ; that we have 
all the latitudes and climates of the best wine countries of 
Europe ; that the wines produced in France are worth more 
than one hundred and forty millions of dollars annually, and 
that a similar trade might be had in America. Whether each 
and all of the positions be absolutely correct I cannot pretend 
to decide, but it is evident that the neglect mentioned by Mr. 
Adlum, so far as the whole country is concerned, is as true now 
as when he wrote. Mr. Adlum advises every one having a 
farm to plant vines, one for every pannel of fence he has 
around his garden (page 83).f 
In 1855 R. H. Phelps published at Hartford a small work 
* Washington. Printed for the author by William Green, 1828. 
t Mr. Adlum mentions the fact that Mr. Jefferson once received two bottles of a wine 
made by a Mr. A. of the Fox grape, which Mr. Jefferson said “could not be distinguished 
by company at his table from the far-famed Burgundy named Chambertin” (p. 149). 28 
entitled “ The Vine, its Culture in the United States : Wine- 
making from Grapes and other Fruits, etc.” He speaks of the 
care with which the culture could be extended, and cuttings 
sent by mail to all parts of the Union (p. 14), and gives direc- 
tions for the making of wine. This writer has the following 
excellent remarks relative to this part of our subject, viz : the 
bearing of grape culture on temperance (p. 45) :— 
“ Reliable statistics convince us that the importation of wine has 
fallen far behind the rate of increase of population in England and 
America while the production and consumption of alcoholic liquor 
have increased in a most astounding proportion. A writer well 
posted on the subject remarks :—‘ In our wine-growing countries 
where the use of wine is interdicted by extravagant duties the 
consumption of spirits increases to an alarming degree. England, 
with a population of 24,000,000, consumes 28,000,000 gallons of 
spirits, exclusive of porter, ale and beer, while France with a pop- 
ulation of 83,000,000, consumes but 15,000,000 gallons of her 
own brandies and of these a larger proportion is used in manu- 
factures, in fortifying wines for shipment and in the preparation 
of fruits and confections made only in her own territories. The 
manufacture of whiskey, spirits and ale for home consumption in 
the United States amounts to 86,000,000 of gallons annually; 
this is exclusive of exports!’ In regard to the high duties on 
wine in England, Redding says:—‘ The enormity of the duty is 
the cause of the diminished consumption of wine. In 1700 the 
population of England was 5,475,000 and the wine consumed, a 
little less than 6,000,000 gallons per annum. In 1851 the popula- 
tion was 17,922,000 while the consumption of wine was only 
6,448,517. It is clear that the people of England one hundred and 
fifty years ago drank three times as much wine, in proportion, as 
they do now. The natural consequence has been the increased 
consumption of spirits. From 1730 to 1830 the consumption ot 
British-made spirits increased from 873,000 gallons to 7,730,101, 
keeping pace with the increase of crime as if not only the tempera- 
ture of the atmosphere but the amount of misery, pauperism and 
crime were to be gauged by alcohol. Ireland in, 1821, paid duty 
only on 2,649,170 gallons of home-made spirits, but in 1828 not 
less than 9,004,539; i. e., in seven years the amount of spirit made 
had quadrupled ! There were made in England, Ireland and Scot- 
land in the year ending Jan. 5, 1850, 22,962,000 gallons. It is a 
fact, therefore, however much of an anomaly it may appear, that 
inebriety in that country has increased with the diminution of wine 29 
consumption, and morals, as well as health, have suffered by the 
same decrease and the augmented use of ardent spirits. ’ 
Longworth, of Cincinnati, about 1820, first established per- 
manently the grape culture and wine making in this country. 
As he did this he felt he was doing a good work for temper- 
ance. f And from his efforts the hills of Ohio now resound 
to the songs of laborers from the Rhine, keeping time to their 
accustomed work, viz.: upon vine culture and wine making. 
Dr. Flagg in his report to the Horticultural Society saysj 
(page 48) 
“ I am confident that the introduction of pure light wines as a 
common beverage will produce a great national and moral reform, 
one that will be received by our temperance brethren ere long as a 
national blessing, one that will complete the reformation they have 
already begun. The temperance cause is rapidly preparing public 
sentiment for the introduction of pure American wines. * * * 
Just in proportion as strong drinks are abandoned a more wholesome 
one will be instituted.” 
Still more recently California has come into the field, and the 
vine culture has become a most important branch of industry 
for that State. It is destined to increase almost indefinitely. The 
result may not be very apparent yet. Those however who have 
been longest acquainted with that State, assure me that in their 
opinion the use of the mild wines is supplanting that of ardent 
spirits, and that “ drunkenness is much less common than for- 
merly.’^ 
Finally, only four years since, a book was published which I 
deem most important as indicating the great advances we have 
made in this branch of national industry. || 
While admitting that the grape culture is still in its infancy 
in this country, the author gives important statements on the 
whole subject. In his preface he says :— 
*The Vine: its Culture in the United States. By R. H. Phelps, 
t See Appendix 3, Larz Anderson Esqr.’s Letter. 
% Phelps as above. 
§ Appendix 2, Dr. Morrison’s Letter. 
|| An Elementary Treatise on American Grape Culture and Wine-making. By Peter 
B. Mead. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1867. 30 
“Grape culture is fast working itself up to the first position 
among the productive interests of the country. The capital invest- 
ed in it may already be counted by millions.” “ It is safe to say that 
these products will at no distant day have an important commercial 
value as respects a foreign trade.” “ Some of our wines even now 
sell higher than European wines.” “ We have no hesitancy in 
recording our conviction that grape culture may be made the hand- 
maiden of the temperance cause.” 
I fully agree with all that has been said of the value of light 
wines as an aid to temperance, but I believe that Germans are 
destined to be really the greatest benefactors of this country, 
by bringing to us, if we choose to accept the boon, their lager 
beer. Lager beer contains less alcohol than any of the native 
grape wines. This fact with the other fact that the Germans 
have not the pernicious habits of our people of treating to 
sharp liquors at open bars, would, if we chose to adopt their 
customs, tend to diminish intemperance in this country. 
What shall we do in Massachusetts to prevent the evil of a too free use of Intox- 
icating Dritilcs, and to make our people truly temperate ? 
If, gentlemen, you have glanced at what has preceded, you 
will see that if we wish to avoid the manifold evils arising from 
intemperance we must take strong ground against it, and in 
favor of radical measures to prevent its prevalence. If it be 
true that Galicia has stunted the growth of her people by sell- 
ing its unreaped corn for the whiskey that is to be made of it,— 
if that nation and Switzerland cannot, in consequence of their 
use of ardent spirits, produce as many able-bodied men as other 
nations can,—if the physicians of France, after various aca. 
demic discussions * of the evils resulting from the use of liquor 
similar to our whiskeys, rum or brandy, feel called upon to sol- 
emnly warn the French nation against the use of absinthe and 
all that class of intoxicating drinks,—if all these things be 
true, then surely we should hasten to warn our people. We 
here are bound by the triple fetters of the laws of climate, of 
race and of two centuries of habits of intoxication, increased as 
these have been by wars and by bad legislation. 
I would submit therefore the following suggestions naturally 
prompted by the study I have made on this subject. I hope 
* See “Every Saturday,” Boston, Nov. 25th, 1871. 31 
that at least some of them will prove serviceable to the cause 
of genuine temperance. 
In all the later efforts made in behalf of temperance it has 
seemed to me, that in our vain endeavors to gain all we wish 
by positive law, we have too much ignored the time-honored 
agencies of education and of moral suasion. We have forgot- 
ten that it is impossible in a republic to carry out any law that 
is unsupported by the deeper sentiments of the people. Unless 
we can persuade them to believe that a law is just and right and 
according to the fitness of things, they will not long obey it. 
The law may be enforced, it is true, in certain instances, much 
to the detriment it may be of the comfort and of the rights cf 
the individual, but I repeat that no law can be long enforced 
which is hated and disbelieved in by the‘people. 
On the contrary, I am confident that our people could be 
gradually led to a higher temperance by appeals to its common 
sense, while depicting the evils of intemperance, by observing 
that the use of some liquors is infinitely deleterious, while the 
“ temperate” use of others does little or no harm. 
We should begin with the young and impress upon them that 
the use of “ ardent spirits ” tends to burn up their very vitals, 
and that instead of growing in manly beauty, they and their 
future children will tend to become a degraded race, and more 
liable to disease than temperate people are. I would have them 
see the horribly disgusting nature of intoxication, that state in 
which man voluntarily gives up all reason and wallows like a pig 
in his own filth. It would not be necessary to make drunk the 
Helots of the nation in order to warn our youths, as was done in 
ancient Sparta. We should only need to show them examples 
offered daily in all our streets and by-ways, and then warn them 
to flee from all such abominations. We might carry them to 
the so-called “ sanctities of home ” and show them how the 
home of the drunkard becomes unsanctified. Filled with noi- 
some smells and dirt; the stranger enters and finds both par- 
ents wholly incapable of defending their own threshold or their 
own helpless, starving children. They may perhaps, be spew- 
ing upon their own hearthstone in utter irreverence for the 
idea of what a real liome-hearthstone should be. We all, I 
fear, have been remiss in not doing whatever we can toward 
educating our youths and maidens to the strictest temperance 32 
and to perfect manliness and womanliness in the use of these 
dangerous drinks. 
In our gatherings for festivity have we always been careful not 
to provide the grossly intoxicating drinks ? I fear not. Have 
we not heard at times of “ snug little rooms ” where fiery fumes 
too strong for delicate nostrils are offered to our young men ? 
Do the clubs act wisely in keeping for common, every-day use 
the more potent liquors ? I think not. Have we in season and 
out of season at our own tables, urged upon our children the 
accursed influence of intemperance, and the beauty of a manly 
temperance in all things ? And permit me upon this subject of 
home education to dilate a little more freely though still very 
generally. I think there are three modes of educating our 
young people. Two of these often tend ultimately to produce 
intemperance in after-life, though founded on wholly opposite 
views on the subject of the use and abuse of intoxicating drinks. 
The third one I deem the truest method. 
In some families all spirituous liquors, mild wines, and light 
beer, of every nature are looked upon and prohibited as “poi- 
sons.” The young people grow up under that impression, and 
are sometimes surprised, when entering upon the more active 
duties of life, to find that the majority of their young compan- 
ions have very different views. The previous recluse of domes- 
tic life indulges a few times without danger, and then disbeliev- 
ing the previous parental instructions, which were founded on an 
untruth, rushes more wildly than he would otherwise have done 
into unlimited indulgence, with its almost invariable conse- 
quence, besotted drunkenness. 
In another family the exact reverse of this takes place. 
Wines and liquors are dispensed freely. Young and old 
indiscriminately are allowed the free use of them. No cau- 
tious words are used, no restraint on the junior members of 
the house. No warnings are given as to the tendencies to the 
easy formation of intemperate habits. The youth ill such a 
family is as regularly and as successfully educated to drunken- 
ness as one is educated to any other business. 
The golden mean lies between these two extremes. A youth 
will be less likely to fall into intemperance before whom wine 
has been, at times, exhibited as a beverage, that may be good for 
certain times and for certain ages, but which should never be 33 
used intemperately by any one or by those not really needing 
it, or ever by the young, unless as medicine, or under very 
extraordinary circumstances. 
One thus educated is much better able to meet temptation 
than those who grow into manhood under either of the other 
fashions. 
To sum up all in one word, what we want in Massachusetts 
to promote a really godly temperance, is education in all the 
causes of intemperance, education in its gross evils. Moral 
suasion in public and private, of late too much neglected, 
and by some I fear, despised, should be more thoroughly carried 
out. This is the foundation of all true action ; without it all 
effort is vain. 
Is there no Common Ground upon which all who desire to restrain Intemperance 
can stand harmoniously ? 
It is much to be regretted that there is, at present, no com- 
mon ground of temperance permitted to exist by the ultra 
defenders of either side of this important question. Some de- 
sire total abstinence to be the rule. On the other hand, this 
idea is resisted by many with an energy which threatens to lead 
to the opposite extreme of perfect freedom in the sale of all in- 
toxicating drinks. But the larger proportion of the commu- 
nity, while working and praying for temperance, do nevertheless 
use and feel they have a perfect right to use wine or ale if not 
for good companionship, at least, for the reason St. Paul 
advised Timothy to use it, viz.: for “ thy stomach’s sake.” 
Under the banner of total abstinence from all stimulating 
drinks these latter persons cannot stand. They are temperate 
drinkers, and therefore cannot be received as comrades among 
those who claim to be the only true defenders of the temper- 
ance faith. Let us look a little more closely into this subject 
of intoxicating stimulating articles. Alcohol is not by any 
means tho only stimulus that brings disease and misery on 
human beings, although perhaps it is a stronger inducement to 
crime than all others. 
Were, therefore, a strict rule made that no articles stimulat- 
ing to the nervous system should be used by the present party 
of devotees to abstinence, the dogma would split that party into 
innumerable fragments. It would probably be divided into va- 34 
rious small cliques, each excluded for its intemperate use of 
some favorite stimulus, tobacco, opium, coffee or tea, &c. 
Scarcely a week passes that I am not called to “ prohibit,” in a 
particular case, all use of the one or the other of these articles. 
There are thousands of what could be happy lives were it 
not for the “ demon of intemperance ” in the use of tobacco. 
Not a few cannot now taste a drop of coffee, because of over- 
indulgence in earlier life, and often am I obliged to cut off tea 
from a patient and fall back upon the first drinks given by 
nature to man, viz.: milk or water. But because I have to do 
this in the cases of certain men or women, I do not therefore 
infer that the whole community must wholly give up either of 
these articles. I know they are very necessary to mankind as a 
whole. A man may be able to smoke his two or three cigars, 
or chew daily as long as he lives. He may disgust other people 
by the habit, but he may not materially injure himself. Nay, 
there is no doubt that this wicked weed is, at times, of infinite 
value to man. For example, our soldiers fought the battles of 
the late civil war more easily in consequence of the almost uni- 
versal use of tobacco. It supplies at times the want of food to 
the hungry, and often, I doubt not, solaced the sufferings of the 
wounded on the battle-field. But let the miserable condition of 
many who have used and are still using it inordinately, tell the 
tale of the evil resulting therefrom. “ Give me the choice,” 
said a physician of my acquaintance, who himself had once been 
a victim to intemperance in the use of tobacco, “ give me the 
choice of which I should prefer for a son, the intemperate use of 
tobacco or of rum, and I should immediately say, ‘ let him be 
a drunkard. Rum is less hurtful than tobacco.’ ” I quote 
this as a victim’s judgment, not as my own, though I have seen 
insanity produced, as I believe, by tobacco. Similar evil comes, 
in some instances, from tea,* coffee, and above all from opium, 
the use of which I regret to believe is increasing. 
As a fitting termination of this part of my subject, I append 
the following list of various ales, wines and spirits, with the 
relative amounts of alcohol in each. It is taken chiefly from 
Brande’s Chemistry. 
* For intoxication caused by tea, see Appendix 14. 35 
Table showing the percentages of Alcohol in various Stimulating Drinks, 
Wines, &c. {Braude's Chemistry. Art., Alcohol.) 
Portuguese Wines. 
Poi*t contains 14.27 to 25.83 per ct. of alcohol. 
Bucella, 18.49 “ “ 
Spanish. 
Sherry, contains 13.98 to 23.86 “ “ 
Malaga, 17.26 to 18.94 “ “ 
Madeira and Canary Islands. 
Madeira, contains 14.09 to 24.42 “ “ 
Malmsey, 12.86 to 16.40 “ “ 
French. 
Claret, contains 12.91 to 17.11 “ “ 
“ 1811, 1st growth, . . 7.72 “ “ 
“ Chateau Latour, . . 7.78 “ “ 
“ Vin ordinaire, ... 8.99 “ “ 
Champagne, 11.30 to 13.80 “ “ 
Burgundy, 12.16 to 16.60 “ “ 
Hermitage, 12.32 to 17.43 “ “ 
Sauterne, 14.22 “ “ 
Frontignan, 12.79 “ “ 
Sicilian and Italian. 
Marsala, contains 18.20 to 26.03 “ “ 
Lacryma, 19.70 “ “ 
Falernian, 18.99 to 20.00 “ “ 
German. 
Hocheimer, contains 8.88 to 14.37 “ “ 
Johannisberger, .... 8.71 “ “ 
Riidesheimer, .... 6.90 to 12.22 “ “ 
Rhenish, 7.00 to 7.58 “ “ 
Cape. 
Cape Madeira, .... contains 18.11 to 22.94 “ “ 
Constantia, 14.50 to 19.75 “ “ 
Muscat, 18.25 “ “ 
Hungarian. 
Tokay, contains 9.88 “ “ 
Persian. 
Sheraaz, contains 12.95 to 19.80 “ “ 36 
British. 
Grape, contains 18.11 per ct. of alcohol. 
Raisin, 23.30 to 26.40 “ “ 
Currant, 20.55 “ “ 
Gooseberry, 11.84 “ “ 
Orange, 11.26 “ “ 
Elder, 8.79 “ “ 
Mead, 7.32 « “ 
Cider, 5.21 to 9.87 « “ 
Perry, 7.26 “ « 
Malt Liquors. 
Ale, Burton, contains 8.88 “ “ 
“ Edinburgh, .... 6.22 “ “ 
“ London, .... 6.20 “ “ 
Brown Stout, .... 6.80 “ “ 
London Porter, .... 4.20 “ “ 
“ Small Beer, . . . 1.28 “ “ 
Edinburgh, 5.36 to 7.35 “ “ 
Spirituous Liquors. 
Brandy, contains 53.40 “ “ 
Rum, 53.68 “ “ 
Gin, 57.60 “ “ 
Scotch Whiskey, .... 54.32 “ “ 
Irish Whiskey, .... 53.90 “ “ 
American Whiskey, procured at 
Parker House, Boston (best), 50.00 “ “ 
American Whiskey, procured at 
Weeks & Potter’s (real Bour- 
bon, from Kentucky), . . 51.00 “ “ 
American Whiskey, worst of 
Michael Doherty’s, with large 
deposits of extraneous matter, 44.50 “ “ 
Lager Beer.* 
Pfaff’s, in Boston, . . . contains 5£ “ “ 
Second specimen, ... 6 “ “ 
The above American liquors and the lager beer were analyzed 
by Professor Wood, of the Harvard Medical School. 
If the community follow the extremists of either side, a 
common standing spot can never be found. It is evident, if we 
can trust human testimony as given by our correspondents, 
beers and mild native wines should appear in a very different 
* See Dr. Wigglesworth’s Letter, Appendix 9, for farther remarks on the above subject. 37 
light before us from that which ardent spirits should hold. 
Cannot Total Abstinence advocates, therefore, as a present Tem- 
perance measure, permit the use of lager beer and of light wines, 
while all of their apparent but not real opponents, the Tem- 
perance advocates, should go to the utmost verge of moral 
suasion to check and finally banish, if that be possible, ardent 
spirits from the community.* Can there not be a union on this 
reasonable basis ? 
Will Total Abstinence ever prevail universally ? 
As I consider the love of stimulants a human instinct, which 
is seen wherever man lives, I cannot believe in the possibility 
of its suppression. It may be modified and regulated by the 
moral sense and by law when the gratification of that instinct 
interferes with the good order of society, but it cannot be by 
any means extinguished, prohibited. It rests upon a great 
cosmic law which cannot be annihilated by any puny effort of 
ours. The sun regulates that law as he regulates those of the 
seasons. We may modify its power and save ourselves by 
proper efforts from its effects, but the tendency will remain 
forever. In the presence of that really fearful law, all “ Maine 
Laws ” seem to me utterly powerless. But we in New Eng- 
land have not only this great climatic law to contend against, 
but we have also the influences of race and of a race educated 
to drunkenness by bad laws and by war. Therefore our task 
for the promotion of a real temperance is trebly difficult.! 
* Mr. Druitt says, “ Cheap -wine would cut off the temptation to gin and with an equal 
bulk of water would be in many cases a happy substitute for tea. I know a great deal of 
the better class of needlewomen, milliners, and speak from experience ” (Beckwith, 
above quoted, page 75). Again he says, “ No one who has ever made the experiment 
will fail to give the preference to wine over spirits or can refuse to give a helping hand to 
any 1 movement ’ that will send them fairly to their proper places as medicines for the sick 
and aged, and not as beverages for the healthy.” “ Civilized ” (and I would add also as 
proved by our correspondence uncivilized) “man must drink, will drink; but it should 
be wine ” (Beckwith, page 76_). 
t If we do not succeed in carrying out the principle of prohibition in Massachusetts it 
will not be the first unsuccessful attempt at legislation on liquor drinking made by the 
English race, as the following from Mr. Tovey fully proves: In the reign of Edward VI., 
a statute was passed called “An act to avoid excess of liquor.” It declares that “ none 
but those who can spend one hundred markes for yearly rent, etc., or be the son of a 
Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount or Baron shall have or keep more than ten gallons in his 
house.” Second,—No tavern was allowed except in cities and only two in these except the 
larger ones, London having forty, the others less. Third,—No one was allowed to retail 
wine to be spent or drunk within the respective houses on pain of forfeiting i£10 for such 
offence (page 43). (f Quoted above.) 38 
My position will be opposed by many. It will be denied 
that this is a human instinct, and in proof it may be said 
that some men and more women never during their whole 
lives use stimulants. Before admitting this argument, I must 
ask how many there are in the world who do not use some 
stimulant. There may be many who do not use alcoholic 
stimulants, but I suspect that there are but few, almost 
none, who “ totally abstain” from all stimulants unless per- 
chance it be some anchorite in his mountain cell who, from 
fanaticism, chooses to eat pulse and to drink water. I deem a 
love of stimulants as much a human instinct as any other of 
the so-called human instincts. And the proposition of total 
abstinence from stimulants, because intoxication prevails widely 
in the community, seems to me as preposterous as it would be 
to advise universal celibacy, because of the existence of gross 
evils in connection with those instincts that lead to the divine 
institution of marriage. 
From the study I have made of our correspondence I am 
.induced to believe that the permission to sell mild ales, beer, 
and light wines would, under certain very general rules, be 
really a promotion of temperance in New England, as it appar- 
ently is elsewhere. Should not therefore all friends of tem- 
perance, instead of endeavoring to bring about total abstinence, 
urge the general government to admit all mild “ unfortified ” 
European wines free of duty. They should urge the cultiva- 
tion of the grape in this country. And upon this part of our 
subject permit me to refer to many details relative to American 
grape culture already given in a previous part of this commu- 
nication. 
Note.—While presenting this view I fully coincide with Dr. 
Anstie’s remarks in his very important contribution made on this 
subject. They are in a work entitled “ Uses of Wine in Health 
and Disease” (by Francis E. Anstie, M. D., of London. New 
York edition, Redfield, 1870.) “We would state our firm convic- 
tion that for youth (say under 25) whose bodily frame is not fully 
consolidated, the proper rule is either no alcohol or very little 
indeed” (page 18). Again: “Both temperance and economy most 
strongly argue that the bulk of the community should limit them- 
selves to the class of natural wines produced under such conditions 
as enable the cheaper varieties to be relied on as sound, wholesome 39 
and palatable” (page 36). And again: “It is among the class of 
natural wines averaging not more than ten per cent, of alcohol that 
we must seek the type of a universal alcoholic beverage for every- 
day life” (page 16). 
How shall we treat the Drunkard ? 
I think that the drunkard has been treated at times with a 
great deal too much of false sentimentality. Every young man 
should be taught to feel that, in getting drunk, he violates one 
of the highest of social laws. He degrades himself lower than 
the brute, and should be treated, for the time being, as one lower 
than man. I would not, however, be vindictive, but would put 
forth a hand to support him when he rises. This I would do 
again and again if need be, until I was convinced that he was 
a real dipsomaniac — a man insane for drink. Then I would 
for a time deprive him of his liberty, and he should be placed 
in an inebriate asylum. In the present condition of our 
country, Massachusetts should have several inebriate asylums. 
Over these asylums should be put men wise and humane, but 
firm of purpose. Under that surveillance the victim should 
remain until he had gained sufficient moral power to enable 
him to govern his appetite. He must be cured of his disease 
as he would be of any malady in a public hospital. Upon this 
subject I cannot speak with the authority of one who has had 
experience, I therefore shall quote from a communication* sent 
by Dr. Day, late superintendent of the New York State Asylum 
for Inebriates, now at Greenwood, in this State. 
Summary of the principal Subjects considered in this Letter. 
First.—Stimulants are used everywhere, and, at times, abused 
by savage and by civilized man. Consequently, intoxication 
occurs all over the globe. 
Second.—This love of stimulants is one of the strongest of 
human instincts. It cannot be annihilated, but may be regu- 
lated by reason, by conscience, by education, or by law when it 
encroaches on the rights of others. 
Third.—Climatic law governs it. The tendency to indulgo 
to intoxication being not only greater as we go from the heat 
of the equator towards the north, but the character of that in- 
toxication becomes more violent. 
Appendix 1. 40 
Fourth.—Owing to this cosmic law, intemperance is very 
rare near the equator. It is there a social crime, and a 
disgrace of the deepest dye. Licentiousness and gambling are 
small offences compared with it. To call a man a drunkard is 
the highest of insults. On the contrary, at the north of 50° it 
is very frequent, is less of a disgrace, is by no means a social 
crime. 
Fifth.—Intemperance causes little or no crime toward the 
equator. It is the almost constant cause of crime either 
directly or indirectly at the north above 50°. 
Sixth.—Intemperance is modified by race, as shown in the 
different tendencies to intoxication of different peoples. 
Seventh.—Races are modified physically and morally by the 
kind of liquor they use, as proved by examination of the 
returns from Austria and Switzerland. 
Eighth.—Beer, native light grape wines and ardent spirits, 
should not be classed together, for they produce very different 
effects on the individual and upon the race. 
Ninth.—Light German beer and ale can be used even freely 
without any very apparent injury to the individual, or without 
causing intoxication. They contain very small percentages of 
alcohol (4 or 4.5 to 6.50 per cent.) Light grape wines, unforti- 
fied by an extra amount of alcohol, can be drunk less freely 
but without apparent injury to the race, and with exhilaration 
rather than drunkenness. Some writers think they do no harm 
but a real good if used moderately. They never produce the 
violent crazy drunkenness, so noticeable from the use of the 
ardent spirits of the North. 
Ardent spirits, on the contrary, unless used very moderately, 
and with great temperance, and with the determination to omit 
them as soon as the occasion has passed for their use, are 
almost always injurious, if continued even moderately for any 
length of time, for they gradually encroach on the vital powers. 
If used immoderately, they cause a beastly narcotism which 
makes the victim regardless of all the amenities and even the 
decencies of life, or perhaps they render him furiously crazy, 
so that he may murder his best friend. While those who live 
in the tropics merely sip slowly ardent spirits from the tiniest 
of glasses, with the slightest appreciable effect, the denizen of 41 
the frozen North swallows half tumblers full of the same to the 
speedy production of intoxication. 
Tenth.—Races may be educated to evil by bad laws, or by 
the introduction of bad habits. England’s taste for strong 
drinks has been fostered by legislation, and by wars of nearly 
two centuries since. France and parts of Switzerland are be- 
ginning to suffer from the introduction of absinthe and of 
schnapps. Especially is this noticeable since the late Franco- 
Prussian war. By classifying all liquors as equally injurious, 
and by endeavoring to further that idea in the community, are 
we not doing a real injury to the country by preventing a freer 
use of a mild lager beer, or of native grape wine instead of 
the ardent spirits to which our people are now so addicted ? 
Eleventh.—A race, when it emigrates, carries its habits with 
it, and, for a time at least, those habits may override all 
climatic law. 
Twelfth.—England has thus overshadowed our vriiole country 
with its love of strong drinks, and with its habits of intoxica- 
tion, as it has more recently covered Ceylon, parts of the East, 
and Australia. 
Thirteenth.—This influence on our own country is greater 
now than it would have been if our forefathers, the early 
settlers, had cultivated the vine, which would have been prac- 
ticable, as seen by the recent examples of Ohio and California, 
and from the fact that the whole of the United States lies in the 
region of the earth’s surface suited to the grape culture. 
Fourteenth.—If these early settlers had done this, our nation 
would probably have been more temperate, and avast industry 
like that of France, of Spain and of Italy and Germany, in 
light native wines, would long ago have sprung up. 
Fifteenth.—The example set by California and Ohio, should 
be followed by the whole country, where the vine can be grown. 
As a temperance measure it behooves every good citizen to pro- 
mote that most desirable object. We should also allow the 
light, unfortified wines of Europe to be introduced free of duty 
instead of the large one now imposed. Instead of refusing the 
German lager beer, we should seek to have it introduced into 
the present “ grog shops,” and thus substitute a comparatively 
innoxious article for those potent liquors, which now bring 
disaster and death into so many families. 42 
Sixteent/i.- Holly Tree ” branches for the sale of good 
food, tea and coffee, cheaply to the people, should by the 
benevolent cooperation of the community, be made to take 
the places of the numerous grog shops now open for the sale of 
ardent spirits. 
Seventeenth.—The moral sense of the community should be 
so aroused to the enormity of the evils flowing from keeping an 
open bar for the sale of ardent spirits, while those for the sale 
of light wines and of lager beer should not be opposed, except 
for the sale to habitual drunkards, after due notice from friends. 
Sellers violating such law might be compelled to support for a 
time the family of their victim. 
Eighteenth.—The horrid nature of drunkenness should be 
impressed by every means in our power upon the moral sense 
of the people. The habitual drunkard should be punished, or 
if lie be a dipsomaniac, he should be placed in an inebriate asy- 
lum for medical and moral treatment, until he has gained suf- 
ficient self-respect to enable him to overcome his love of drink. 
These asylums should be established by the State. 
Nineteenth.—The appendix contains various letters on intem- 
perance in this and other countries, on reciprocity treaties for 
introduction of European wines, &c. 
In the sincere belief, gentlemen, that this analysis of our cor- 
respondence will, eventually at least, tend to help onward the most 
excellent cause of temperance everywhere, and in the hope that 
none will be offended at the expression, at times, of my own in- 
dividual opinions, which in the course of the discussion I have 
deemed it my right and duty to give, I remain, 
Your colleague and friend, 
HENRY I. BOWDITCH. A CHART or thk 
Prepared to illustrate some of the general inferences 
believed to be fairly dedueible from the correspondence on the 
Use and Abuse of Stimulating Art icles of Drink by people living in 
various parts of the Earth as published in die 
SECOND ANNUAL REPORT OF THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS 
VkleJReport I$7Jpp.251 to 3S& 
find deport .IS>72. 
summaby 
Stimulants are used and often every where alike by civilized 
and by Savage man . 
Intemperance is very rife rJfK isothermal line. 
1 • n 
. It is very rare and ot a natch \ dangerous character between the 
Isothermal lines of (>r South of the Heat Equator 
Intemperance is also rarer dangerous where the vine is grown , 
. and wines are made and sold (*iltl.vo and used with entire freedom by all 
from babyhood to old age 1 
. . w • - • j I 
EXPLANATION OF THE VARIOUS SIGNS. 
SIGNS 
VINES 
light WINES 
ardent spirits 
DRUNKENNESS 
GUM ATE 
Green • 
not (/mint 
no! made or used /Weir 
used temperately 
very rare 
tropical 
Purple • 
grown 
made and used freely 
„ temperately 
rare. 
temperate 
Yellow Q 
grown 
marie and used freely 
„ freely 
Ware in wine drinkers 
t ooinmtm in t/r e drrnKers 
do 
Orange £ 
no l grown 
imported and do 
i/ temperately 
[fitspirits. 
1XITV 
do 
Blue 4) 
grown recently 
made remitlv 
v freely 
(lesstlian. before the 
{introduction of 
do 
Scarlet + 
notgrown 
not made or used freely 
» intemperately 
Xfrines . 
very eon mum 
cold 
Purple® 
grown 
made and used freely 
» intemperately 
very common 
temperate 
JST O TP E s . 
Zf * ZQrrS iiructe.i v 
a fr]u' r "/«< <>, u r 
(an berna<«: 
Zl*i**ZnpgrtT ■ :,hio< of‘the English 
*?* - 
£’tho 0/ an* of the 
L 9v(tp& m ltiire ■ 43 
Appendix : 
CONTAINING ADDITIONAL CORRESPONDENCE TO THAT PUBLISHED IN 
THE SECOND REPORT OF THE BOARD, AND EXTRACTS FROM 
SUNDRY WORKS BEARING UPON THE SUBJECT. 
[1.] 
Prof. H. I. Bowditch, M. D.: 
My Dear Sir:—The subject, to which you alluded in the brief 
conversation we had a few days since, is one which has occupied 
my attention for a number of years, and the more I investigate it 
the more complicated it appears as a social question. It is a fact 
that drunkenness is a disease only too common,—one from which our 
race has suffered almost from the beginning of its existence. In all 
ages political economists and philanthropists have sought a remedy, 
both from motives of economy and philanthropy. But it is only 
for the past few years comparatively, that men of learning have 
attempted an investigation from any scientific or philosophical stand- 
point. Good men have labored and prayed, while they were con- 
stantly lifting the warning voice; communities have been aroused 
and the most stringent laws have been enacted against the sale of 
intoxicating drinks; drunkenness has ever been branded as a crime 
per se, and yet the foulest deeds have constantly been committed, 
and the criminal records of all nations show, that the cause of a 
large percentage of offences that need to be punished by the strong 
arm of the law, are traceable to the inordinate use of intoxicating 
drinks. 
Every community throughout the civilized world is suffering from 
the curse of drunkenness; for crime, pauperism, physical and men- 
tal debility are the natural fruits of intoxication. Such being the 
case, sober, reflective minds feel that the remedy must be sought 
for deeper than ever. 
The time for itinerant lecturing by those who have only a super- 
ficial view of the subject, has passed away, and the disgusting style 
of mimicry and buffonery which used to caricature on the plat- 44 
form the antics and vagaries of the poor diseased inebriate, has 
ceased to be popular. Reflective minds, especially in our State, are 
beginning to reason about the matter, and they soon find that the 
entire subject resolves itself into the following inquiries, to answer 
which in the most conclusive manner, men of science have been 
carrying on their investigations:— 
What is the true pathological condition of the unfortunate 
class of men called inebriates ?—and can any remedy be devised by 
which those men can be restored to lives of usefulness, and instead 
of being mere drones in the social hive, become actual helpers in 
the Commonwealth? 
As to the first question, did I possess the ability to answer it sat- 
isfactorily to myself, the limits of this Communication, which of 
necessity must be brief, would render it impossible. I can merely 
throw together a few thoughts rather as suggestions, or hints, and 
I shall not attempt a thorough discussion of the subject. 
There are various forms of inebriety, as there are various forms 
of fevers and of other diseases. There is for instance what is called 
dipsomania, which generally manifests itself in periodical attacks. 
For several months the patient may be a total abstainer, and often- 
times the loudest and most enthusiastic in denouncing either the sell- 
ers or drinkers of intoxicants. He is evidently in earnest, and 
often whole communities may be roused through his instrumentality 
against what he well callj* the damning traffic. Soon, however, a sud- 
den change takes place, and he is found again wallowing in the mire 
of intemperance. If the question be asked of him how he thus dis- 
graces himself, his answer will always be that he cannot tell, nor 
point to the primary steps which led him to take the first dram. It 
came about suddenly, and before he was aware of it he had fallen. 
Such men, when the spell is upon them, will sacrifice friends, prop- 
erty, and even life to gratify their passion for alcohol. I have 
known such individuals to walk twelve miles through deep snow to 
obtain alcoholic stimulants, and in more than one instance even the 
very snow through which they struggled has become their winding 
sheet. They will deprive themselves of everything, even selling 
their clothes to procure the poison they crave. 
How, sir, I contend that there must be in the case of those men 
a pathological condition which we have not yet fathomed. There 
must be deep in the human framework a form of disease which we 
should reach and remedy before we can expect a thorough cure in 
such cases. The disease is molecular, affecting the molecules and 
nflueneing the operations of the mind, thus rendering its manifes- tions abnormal in different ways, of course, according to the habit 
and temperament of the individual. Some, for instance, are cruelly 
inclined, breathing out murder even against the innocent, while 
others are simply. silly,—so generous that they will share their all 
with the first one they meet, or so pious that often unsophisticated 
persons really imagine that they mean what they say, and are truly 
the subject of religious influences. If even it is true that there is 
but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous it is especially the 
case with the dipsomaniac, who may to-day electrify by his earnest- 
ness for temperance while to-morrow he shall disgust by his maud- 
lin talk while suffering from an attack. How can such cases be 
reached except through medical treatment in connection with whole- 
some influences ? Another and perhaps a more numerous class of 
cases is what may be called the asthenic form. In this form the 
alcohol which is imbibed by the patient seems to have an affinity 
for the muscular system while the above-named class is more par- 
ticularly affected in the nervous tissue. The patients in this case 
are more docile and good-natured while able to do anything, but 
they soon become helplessly drunk. At first the speech is affected, 
then the power of locomotion is lost, then follows a state of coma, 
during which the individual is quite insensible. After a while, he 
may arouse himself and move away, but only with the intention of 
procuring another drink. 
Of course the two classes I have described may be subdivided into a 
number of varieties of which I have not time to speak now. I will 
simply say, in answer to my first inquiry, viz., Can anything be done 
for these unfortunates ?—yes, most emphatically yes; and in my 
own practice I can point to numerous cases which have been thor- 
oughly cured. True the process must be slow, from the very nature 
of the case, but a radical cure can be effected in most instances,—as 
often in fact as in any other disease of a psychological character. 
We have as yet never been able to use the requisite means for the 
proper treatment of such cases. I am aware that it is contemplated 
in this State to put in operation the means needed for that purpose, 
for our arrangements are now far from being satisfactory. 
There should be one or more asylums for the treatment of these 
persons, situated away from business centres, where nature has been 
prolific in her gifts, where the “ mind diseased ” may find repose, 
where the corrupted body may be purified and made a medium 
for a higher, holier mental development. 
I think it is the duty of the State to control the drunkard as it 
does the insane. I very much doubt, in most cases, whether per- 
sons thus afflicted can be cured, even with the best appliances in 46 
less than one year. In looking over my record for the past fifteen 
years I find the men who have remained with me the longest have 
shown the best evidence of permanent cure. I have thus, Doctor, 
made a few brief statements, which I believe to be true, and if car- 
ried out in practice would result in great good to the unfortunate, 
and be in harmony with the civilization of the age. 
I have the honor to be, Sir, very truly yours, 
Albert Day. 
Greenwood, Nov. 1, 1871. 
[2.] 
Quincy, Sept. 20,1871. 
Dr. H. I. Bowditcii : 
My Dear Sir :—In your note of the second instant you inquire 
“ if the fact of wine being made in California tends to drunkenness 
or otherwise.” 
Before the introduction of the native wines, when the stronger 
alcoholic stimulants were used, drunkenness wras very common in 
California. The native wines are now found in nearly every house- 
hold ; they have supplanted to a great extent the use of the 
. stronger alcoholic drinks. It is a fact which no one familiar with 
California for the last twenty years will deny, that drunkenness is 
much less common now than formerly. This change is undoubt- 
edly due to the substitution of the mild wines of the country for 
the stronger alcoholic stimulants. 
I think the annual report of the Hark-A way Association of San 
Francisco will furnish you the statistical information you desire. 
Yours respectfully, 
James Morrison. 
[3.] 
Gilsey House, New York, Sept. 20,1871. 
My Dear Doctor :—I am well assured from my own observa- 
tion, that the introduction and general use of light wines have 
contributed to the lessening of intemperance in Ohio. On my 
return home, I will endeavor to procure such statistics as may be 
obtained, if any exist relative to arrests, etc. The subject is an 
interesting one, and for a long time engaged the attention of Mr. Longworth in his lifetime, who believed he was aiding, most mate- 
rially the cause of temperance, by his encouragement of the culture 
of the vine. 
I am, very truly yours, 
Larz Anderson-. 
Henry I. Bowditch, M. D., Boston. 
[4.] 
Ipswich, Oct. 28, 1871. 
My Dear Doctor :—I have taken from the records of the Essex 
House of Correction, the following tabular view of the commit- 
ments for ten years, showing the percentage of common drunkards 
for each year:— 
YEARS. 
Whole No. Com- 
mitted. 
Common 
Drunkards. 
Per Cent. 
1861, 
402 
107 
24 
1862, 
395 
91 
24 
1868, 
415 
121 
29 
1864, 
207 
48 
23 
1865, 
174 
27 
15J 
1866, 
225 
19 
8! 
1867 
177 
18 
10 
1868, 
261 
39 
iH 
1869, 
214 
45 
21 
1870, 
232 
29 
1*1 
Now it may be that this has little bearing on the subject of pro- 
hibition. But there are some coincidences that are interesting. 
Whether they bear the relation of cause and effect is worth con- 
sidering. 
We had the prohibitory law on the statute book up to 1868, 
when the legislature passed a license law. Previous to 1865 there 
had been no special effort to enforce the law. The legislature of 
that year (1865) passed the Act creating the State Police, who 
were especially to suppress grog shops, etc. Now, observe that in 
1865 the per cent, of common drunkards drops from 28 to 
The next year when the force had come to understand better their 
work, the per cent, fell to 8£, and was only 1* higher in 1867. 
The license law of 1868 finds our per cent, of common drunkards 
at the close of the year, Its effect naturally must run over to 
the next year, and the per cent, reaches 21. 48 
The legislature of 1869 revived the prohibitory law exempting 
cider, and in 1870 further exempted porter, ale and lager beer. 
The returns from our small institution go for little, unless similar 
results should prevail throughout the State. I have no figures at 
command, but I somewhat confidently expect that what is true of 
this institution will be found general, so far as the decrease of com- 
mon drunkards is coincident with the establishment and work of 
the State police, and the increase with the working of the license 
law of 1868. I think Boston, probably Suffolk County entire, 
should be excepted. The liquor interest has had its own wTay com- 
paratively there. 
The deduction from this small horizon line is inevitably in favor 
of prohibition, even with the confessed imperfect enforcement of 
the law. 
I should state that I have presented common drunkards only as 
being the best representative of this view of the subject. I have 
omitted entirely the commitments for simple drunkenness, which 
will average as many nearly as the common drunkards, and with 
little variation in the proportion. 
Nor is this all that intemperance brings to us. An analysis of 
the circumstances and causes of all the catalogue of crimes which 
fill the prison, shows that intemperance is the cause of crime in a 
large majority of cases. 
Every year 60 per cent, of all our commitments are directly 
traceable to drunkenness. Can the tide be stopped ? Is the en- 
forcement of the law alone to rid us of the monster? Were there 
only the pecuniary interest of the liquor traffic to meet, powerful 
as it is, the result would not be doubtful. But there are climatic 
influences, the universal desire for stimulants, the education of our 
civilization for some centuries, social customs and hereditary 
tendencies, all tending, in a greater or less degree, to perpetuate 
the evil. 
I doubt not all this may seem to you, and in fact is, trite. You 
comprehend all the difficulties of the subject. 
A visit to Chicago in 1868, and my observation there of the 
habits of the German population, first brought to my mind doubts 
that total abstinence will ever be an accomplished fact. I visited 
the beer gardens on Sunday, to see how the Germans spend the 
day. There was a band of music, a dance floor, rude seats and 
tables like our New England picnics in a beautiful grove, and lager 
in such quantities as I had never conceived. Everybody, old and 
young, drank and seemed to continue to drink dui'ing the after- 
noon. But lager was the only beverage,—no liquors, no drunken- ness, and no fights, or disorderly conduct. The young men and 
maidens were merry and danced; the elders drank and talked with 
the gravity and dignity becoming to the respectable German 
citizen; the children sipped their mug of lager, and gambolled on 
the grass, and all went home apparently sober, to resume without 
doubt their usual avocations on the morrow. There were probably 
two thousand persons taking their weekly recreation. And this 
was only one of half a dozen similar places about the suburbs of 
the city. Now if this had been an American or Irish congregation, 
and the beverage the usual vile concoctions called gin and 
brandy, would not the closing scenes of the afternoon have been 
very different ? Broken heads, bloody noses, and the wayside 
strewn with the wrecks of humanity in beastly intoxication. I 
thought, if we could be rid of the grosser liquors — banish them — 
put them in the pale of dangerous drugs, to be only dispensed by 
the physician like other poisons, and substitute the lager of the 
Germans, and the light wines of France and California, should we 
not be doing our best to exterminate the curse of drunkenness ? 
I expect we shall yet come to this conclusion. The difficulty is 
that with the tastes of our people, lager and wines will be, indeed 
now are, a cover for the sale of the grosser liquors ; and worse than 
all, these liquors are without exception adulterated or poisonous. 
I have written, at your request, this somewhat crude statement of 
my present views, as briefly as possible. 
Truly yours, 
Y. G. Hurd. 
Dr. H. I. Bowditch, Boston. 
[5.] 
Madrid, October 30th, 1871. 
My Dear Doctor Bowditcii :—About your inquiry relative to 
the introduction of Spanish ordinary wines into our country, the 
whole matter of the projected international convention to which 
you allude, passed by so completely so long since, that I am afraid 
the data I could give you now would not be worth much for your 
purpose. It never amounted to any formal negotiation as between 
the two governments. The Legation archives might show some- 
thing on this subject if thoroughly ransacked, but if my memory is 
not at fault the two governments never committed themselves to 
anything like definite propositions on any side. I perfectly 
remember, however, the circumstances under which the informal discussion of this idea arose and its course was in a few words 
as follows:— 
It was when Spain was taxing the bread of the people of Cuba 
by a custom duty of eight (I think) dollars per barrel on American 
flour imported into Cuba, besides a discriminating duty against our 
shipping, by which all merchandize imported in our ships paid an 
extra percentage, over what it would have paid if imported in 
Spanish ships, whilst the Castilian flour paid only two dollars on its 
introduction into Havana. 
We were pressing constantly for a reduction of these exorbitant 
duties upon o\jr flour (as well as other articles) in Cuba, and the 
irritating discrimination against our shipping. 
I did a good deal of good work in this direction, and it was a 
long time up-hill work, slow and apparently almost fruitless. At last, 
however, there were signs that considerable impression had been 
produced. Various leading senators and deputies came to me and 
in informal convei'sation exchanged their views with me, manifest- 
ing their willingness to reduce the Cuban flour duties if a cor- 
responding concession should be made to Spanish products in the 
United States, and it was distinctly said that the reduction of our 
wine duties on the cheap ordinary wines grown in Castile would be 
the most desirable, as it would tend to reconcile the landowners of 
Castile to the loss of the protective duties, favoring their flour in 
Cuba. 
I had several conferences on this subject, and remember clearly 
the statements of the Marquis of Duero, President of the Senate, 
saying that the lands of Castile were better adapted to the culti- 
vation of vineyards than of wheat, and that the opposition of the 
Castilians to the reduction of the Cuban flour duties could be over- 
come, by thus conceding a better market for their wines. 
In my communications to Washington on this subject, I remember 
to have urged the same argument stated in your letter—that the in- 
troduction of cheap and sound wines into our country would be a 
salutary measure for the health of our people, and would tend to 
diminish the vice of drunkenness. 
I trust it would be so to some extent and after some time. But 
I greatly fear that the vitiated taste of our people, accustomed to 
whiskey and rum, and other strong alcoholic drinks, would i*eject 
the pure juice of the grape as insipid or less agreeable to them. If 
they did not like cheap wine they would not drink it, and it might 
be found to'result, in practice, that no people can be expected to 
confine itself to drinking cheap wines except it produces them. I 
suppose that, if we ever come to produce them, we shall drink them 51 
also, and the taste for them will grow into our national habits, whilst 
the taste for rum and whiskey will grow out and decline. 
But I doubt whether the efforts of the trader can hope to be so 
crowned. Trade depends on profits for its development, and a 
quick and constant demand for an article of merchandise is essential 
to build up the trade. I doubt whether the trade could build up 
the demand. 
As regard the negotiations alluded to, no treaty was ever made. 
But continuing my efforts in the direction indicated we soon after 
did obtain (by Royal decree) the reduction of the Cuban flour 
duties, and the abolition of the discriminating duties, on the ground 
that it was not good policy for them to continue to irritate the 
Cubans, and throw them into sympathy with the United States by 
holding up to them constantly a barrel of flour worth six dollars at 
Key West, and fifteen dollars at Havana. Also, soon after, our war 
tariffs on wines, &c., made all idea of reduction on Castilian wines 
hopeless. 
Yours ever faithfully, 
Horatio J. Perry. 
[6.] 
24 Charles St., November 9th, 1871. 
My Dear Doctor :—Bastin in his “ Guide en JRussie,” writes, 
“ At the fetes, champagne flows abundantly, and it was not without 
reason stated that the consumption of this wine in Russia exceeds 
that in any other country.” “ The common cheap drink is the hitter 
Ivwass.” “ The immoderate use of brandy makes great ravages in 
the poor class, and, according to a report published by the best phy- 
sicians, alcoholic liquors are one of the chief causes which now-a- 
days people the hospitals of St. Petersburg, and which have made 
so many victims.” Walking out of Hotel de Bellevue, Ho. 58 
Nevsky Prospect (the principal street) about midday, early in Sep- 
tember, (and not a fete day) I counted eleven intoxicated people 
during a walk of six minutes, i. e. turning to the left I. walked to the 
first bridge, crossing the street (three minutes distance) and back. 
I quote Bastin once more :— 
“ The national beverage is Kwass in St. Petersburg, also beer and 
brandy, the favorite drink of a people frequently indulging to ex- 
cess, like most northern nations.” 
The trade in Crimean wines has increased within the last few 
years. The Russian drinks spirit also in his tea. In Sweden at the restaurants cold meats and many varieties of 
spirit, Branntwein (flavored with anise, &c.) stand on the counter and 
are indulged in by the customer for a mere trifle before beginning a 
meal, at which he is expected to take wine, and which closes “ en 
regie ” with Swedish punch, a strong sirupy fluid, the use of which is 
spreading into other countries. The Branntwein is like the German 
Kiimmel, and is so cheap that the means of intoxication are always 
at hand. Still the Swede, “ the Frenchman of the North,” is not so 
gross in his indulgence in liquor as the Russian. Wines, of course, 
in the northern countries, far from France or Spain, are somewhat 
expensive. The beer is much inferior to the German beer, and less 
drunk. 
In Norway (according to Dr. Munroe) “the consul here says beer 
has existed for thirty years or more; also that drunkenness is now 
on the increase.” It may have existed, but certainly beer was more 
seen by me, offered to me, and spoken of in my hearing during my 
visit in 1870, than during my visit in 1866. Where he gets his 
proof that drunkenness is increasing I do not know. I was les8 an- 
noyed by inebriates on my second than on my first visit, and even 
if drunkenness is increasing it is probably due simply to the spirit 
drunk, for the beer is too thin and weak ever to produce such an 
effect. It is much weaker than German beer, whereas if it is to 
take the place of spirit it should be at least as strong as beer else- 
where. Increasing poverty and thinning of the population is more 
probably the real cause of increase in habits of intemperance. As 
a rule, the Norwegian is more temperate in his whole manner of 
life than the Russian. Corn brandy is used by the country people. 
Very respectfully, 
Edward Wiggles worth, Jr. 
[7.] 
109 Mt. Vernon St., Nov. 18, 1871. 
Dr. Bowditch: 
Dear Sir :—In the summer of 1864 I spent a week in Gotten- 
burg on the Swedish coast, and while there met a number of the 
inhabitants, both Swedish and English merchants. One evening 
the conversation turned upon drunkenness, the prevalent vice of 
Northern Europe, and they were unanimous in regard to the reform 
in this respect in Gottenburg, due to the introduction of cheap por- 
ter by Mr. Carnegie, a Scotch merchant and philanthropist. 53 
Murray also alludes to this in his guide book. The distillation 
of strong liquors has diminished from 40,000,000 gallons in 1850 to 
10,620,000 in 1861. It is but fair to say, however, that the Ameri- 
can Encyclopedia attributes this to the increase of dissenters from 
the established church, and of temperance societies. 
In 1865 I spent two months in Norway, travelling, and saw a 
great deal of drunkenness there, although beer is both cheap and 
abundant. Mr. Lootz, the Swedish and Norwegian counsel, says 
that this has always been the case in Bergen, his native city, and 
that the drinking of Fimkel, the corn brandy of the country, is still 
on the increase. It should be mentioned that the brandy is of 
course much cheaper in proportion than the beer. 
Very truly yours, 
W. F. Munroe. 
[8.] 
Fifth Avexue Hotel, New York, Friday, Nov. 24,1871. 
My Dear Sir :—I regret that I have not found an earlier oppor- 
tunity of collecting my thoughts with reference to our conversation 
of last Sunday evening, and now that I think the subject over, I 
fear my remarks will be of a somewhat fragmentary character, for 
it is now nearly three years since I travelled through our Austral- 
ian and New Zealand colonies, and I am unable to refer to my 
diaries and papers, or any books on the subject. I would, first of 
all, draw your attention to some of the exceptional circumstances in 
connection with the bearing of native wines on drunkenness in 
Australia. The classes of people who at present form the chief popu- 
lation of New South Wales, have a large element of convictism in 
them, and the low tastes consequent thereon have not yet been 
eradicated; also a large mass of emigrants to that colony, as well 
as to the colonies of Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland, 
though not actually of the criminal class are but a few grades re- 
moved, for a man who fails in the struggle of life in England from 
drunkenness, is generally shipped off to Australia by his friends ; 
this rule holding good from the highest to the lowest classes. You 
have therefore a mass of mankind to deal with of the lowest type. 
The climate nearly all the year round is hot, and thirsty weather 
prevails for ten months out of the twelve; therefore drinks of some 
kind must be had, and the prevailing intoxicating liquors are Hol- 
land gin and brandy of the worst description. When these cannot be 
obtained, tea, without milk, sweetened with coarse brown sugar is the beverage, morning, noon, and night. A man may be so situated 
for nine months to two or three years that he can only obtain tea; 
he then comes to some of the towns, generally with money and 
drinks it all away, never stopping until his money is exhausted; and 
this it is which fills the lunatic asylums with those who have lost 
their reason through drunkenness. In the colony of Victoria are 
three large lunatic asylums built by the state at a cost of $725,000 
dollars (£150,000), and I was informed by an officer high in the po- 
lice service, that these asylums were largely filled by those who 
first suffered from delirium tremens, and then became insane. On 
this class, of what I should call hard drinkers, the larger cultivation 
of the vine would have no effect. They have always been accustomed 
to a strong, burning drink, and would consider native wine simply 
as so much water; but with the succeeding generation will grow up 
a taste for light wines, especially amongst the higher classes. The 
price of spirits and native wine is much the same, a drink of either 
being obtained from twelve to twenty-five cents. The demand for 
native wine is largely on the increase. Many wine grower’s told me 
in 1858 that their cellars of wine would be sold every year before 
the vintage had begun; the wine being drunk generally not more 
than one year old. I do not remember how long wine has been 
grown in Australia, but I think the first vineyards were established 
at Albany on the river Murray in Hew South Wales, and Victoria, 
about thirty years ago; it is, however, only within the last five or 
ten years that the demand has been sufficient to induce men to go 
into the vine cultivation, and I was informed that every year sees 
more land covered with vines, and greater pains taken with the 
production of the wine. In Hew South Wales and Victoria the 
wines are of the Bordeaux and Rhine description, and these are 
admirably suited to the climate. In South Australia a description 
of Spanish and Burgundy wine is produced, but these are chiefly 
sold for Tasmania, and the southern portion of Hew Zealand, where 
the climate is cold enough to admit of such heavy and generous 
wines being drunk. You will see by these remarks that the pres- 
ent is too early a period to judge of the effect of wine growing in 
Australia (no wine is made in Hew Zealand, and but little, if any, 
in Tasmania) on drunkenness in our colonies, the introduction of 
light wines being of too recent a date, and the present drinkers-to- 
excess being those who never have cared, and never would, for such, 
a description of stimulating liquors. My idea is, that twenty-five 
years hence it will have had a marked effect in reducing drunken- 
ness, and in improving the moral and physical health of our colonies. 55 
Should you desire any other information, and will send me a list of 
questions I will try and answer them. 
Believe me to remain, faithfully yours, 
F. Jacomb Hood. 
H. I. Bowditch, Esq., M. D., Boston. 
[9.] 
November 28th, 1871. 
My Dear Doctor :—I looked up beer on getting home. Lager- 
bier is simply beer for storage,—from lager, a warehouse. It needs, 
therefore, to preserve it, a trifle more alcohol than beer which is to 
be drunk at once. The common Bavarian beer is a good type of lager- 
bier. This contains less than three per cent, of alcohol. ‘In fact, 
lager-bier is so weak that most of the superior beers, even those 
for immediate drinking, are stronger than lager. Of these the best 
is Dreher’s Klein Schwechater M'drzen or March beer, in Yienna. 
So Bock-bier universally, (from Bock, a goat as butting everyone 
over who drinks it). And strongest of all, the Salvator bier of 
Munich brewed once a year. 
“Gerhardt’s Chimie Organique,” Yol. II. p. 267, has a good 
article on beer. I quote from it. 
Burton’s ale, 8.88 per cent, of alcohol. 
Brown stout, 6.80 “ “ “ 
London porter,..... 4.20 “ “ “ 
Small beer, 1.28 “ “ “ 
Augustiner double beer of Munich, . 3.6 “ “ “ 
Salvator bier, 4.2 “ “ “ 
Bock bier, ...... 4 “ “ “ 
Common Bavarian beer, . . . 2.9 “ “ “ 
Thus while rum, gin, Scotch and Irish whiskeys, &c., contain 
fifty + per cent, of alcohol (fifty-three to fifty-four), ales never run up 
to nine per cent, and beers never run much above four and usually 
much less. 
There is a good analysis of German beers in Liebig’s and Kopps’ 
annual report on chemistry for 1850 (Yol IV.), page 466. 
In Pelouze and Fremy’s Traite de Chimie, fifth vol., i. e. the sec- 
ond vol. of the Chimie Organique, page 467, there is a good article, 
“ Beer = from 2-4 per cent, alcohol.” Payen’s Precis de Chimie In- 
dustrielle, Yol. II. p. 315, sets French beer at 4.5 per cent. Blox- am’s Chemistry, page 1491, “ strong ales.” Johnston’s Chemistry 
of Common Life, first vol., p. 301, agrees with your views. 
Barret, D’Alcolization, per cent, of alcohol in wines, p. 247. Hen- 
derson’s History of Wines, Rhine wine, p. 221. Mulder’s Chemistry 
of Wines. 
With highest respect, 
Edward Wiggleswortii, Jr. 
CIO.] 
Milton Hill, Dec. 14,1871. 
My Dear Sib :—Our legislators have not as a body, it seems to 
me, much patient thought to the subject of temperance as 
it demands. In dealing with a matter may I not say of such infinite 
importance, because its relations seem to be almost infinite as affect- 
ing the welfare of the human race, everybody, and legislators in 
particular, should take into consideration climate, the effect of the 
sun, quality of the soil, and last but not least, race. Latitude has 
a good deal to do with temperance, and so has race. So far as my 
own experience — and I may safely say I have been no small trav- 
eller—goes, I am decidedly of the opinion that where light ales are 
used intemperance is a minimum quantity compared with those 
countries where are used rum, whiskey, brandy, Madeira and sherry, 
and in fact where any kinds of liquor in which the percentage of 
alcohol is large, are drunk. 
I wish to call your attention for a moment to the islands of Porto 
Rico and Cuba, both of them islands of importance, and where the 
number of inhabitants is very large. Drunkenness in these islands 
is rare, but the use of wine is universal. The Spanish government, 
wisely I think, permit the free importation of the wines of Spain 
into those islands; and they are so cheap, costing the consumer for 
the common kind about five cents a bottle, and considered so whole- 
some that they are used by the poorest classes. Even the caleseros, 
exposed both night and day to sun and rain and late hours, use them 
freely at their meals, and I believe with good effects. I never saw 
a calesero drunk, or any the worse for his drinking. 
Very truly yours, 
E. H. Faucon. 
Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, 113 Boylston Street. [11.] 
In the Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition 
by Commodore Charles Wilkes, U. S. N.*, we find the following 
ceremonial at the time of the making of the “ ava ” intoxicating 
drink and preparing it for the king of the Feejee Islands: 
“ Ava was chewing when Captain Hudson and his party entered. 
They were kindly received by the king who seated them near him. 
There is a peculiar ceremony used by these people in mixing their 
ava. It having been first chewed by several young persons, on the 
pouring in of the water they all raise a kind of howl. * * Those 
present were arranged in a semicircle, the chief operator being in 
the centre with an immense wooden bowl before him. The latter, 
immediately after the water is poured in, begins to strain the liquid 
through the woody fibres, and at the same time he sings. He is accom- 
panied in his song by all present who likewise imitate all his mo- 
tions with the upper part of their bodies while in a sitting posture. 
The motions keep time to the song. The. king joined occasionally 
in the song, and when any important stage of the operations was 
arrived at the song (leased and a clapping of bands ensued. As 
each cup was filled to be served out, the ambati sitting near uttered 
the same wild howl as before. The first cup is filled from another, 
etc. * * * They are very particular to see that no one'touches 
the king’s cup except the cupbearer.” Thus much we learn of the 
ceremonial of drinking the favorite stimulus of these islands. 
In Yol. 5, page 98, Com. Wilkes in giving an account of the 
Kingsmill islanders, while he distinctly states that “ they have no 
intoxicating drink,” also describes a “toddy,” karaca, procured 
from the cocoanut-tree. The twig on which the nut is growing is 
tied up and the fruit is prevented from ripening. The twig being 
then cut off, the juice, a species of liquid like molasses, flows out. 
This drink is used at feasts and dipped out of large bowls by means 
of cocoanuts or human skulls. 
* Narrative, etc., by Charles Wilkes. New York: Putnam. Yol. 3, 115. [12.] 
Drinking Habits of Kamtsciiatka. 
Dr. Lindley* (page 38) states that the following disgusting 
custom prevails simply for the intoxicating effects, produced by 
a variety of fungus, called Amanita Muscaria: “It is used by 
the inhabitants of North-eastern Asia, in the same manner as wine, 
brandy, arrack, opium, etc., are used by other nations.” The plant 
at times grows plentifully; at others is scarcely found. It is dried 
and preserved. It is swallowed as a bolus or taken in infusions in 
soups etc. Mixed with certain berries (vaccinum uliginomm) its 
effects are like those of strong wine. It makes a man a merry 
fool or dead drunk. It excites muscular exertion, and it produces 
violent spasms or narcotism according to the dose. But the most 
peculiar effect and which shows to what extent men will go for the 
sake of a stimulus, is the following which I shall describe in the 
words of the author:—“ It is said that from time immemorial the 
inhabitants have known that the fungus imparts an intoxicating 
quality to that secretion (the urine) which continues for a consider- 
able time after taking it. For instance, a man moderately intoxi- 
cated to-day will by the next morning have slept himself sober, but, 
as is the custom, by taking a teacup of his urine he will be more 
powerfuly intoxicated than he was the preceding day. It is there- 
fore not uncommon for confirmed drunkards to preserve their urine 
as a precious liquor against a scarcity of the fungus. The intoxicat- 
ing quality of the urine is capable of being propagated, for every 
one who partakes it has his urine similarly affected. Thus, with a 
very few Amanitie a party of drunkards may keep up their debauch 
for a week. Dr. Langsdorf mentions that by means of a second 
person taking the urine of the first, the third of the second, and so 
on, intoxication may be propagated through five individuals.” 
[13.] 
Dr. Tyler, late Superintendent of the McLean Asylum for the 
Insane, states to me that from long experience, he is sure that the 
tendency of the climate of California is to produce an exhilaration 
and excitement rather than depression of the nervous system and 
* The Vegetable: or the Structure, Classification and Uses of Plants, etc; by John 
Lindley, Ph. D., F. R. S., and L. S. 3d. ed., London: Bradbury & Evans, 1846. 59 
that this is exactly the reverse of the English climate, which tends 
to a depression of the same. 
This difference of climatic effects is so noticeable that Dr. Tyler 
has frequently seen persons coming from California with rather un- 
balanced minds, and they were always exhilarated, rarely if ever 
depressed, after arriving in New England. Such persons frequently 
get well here. On the contrary, a man depressed here will recover 
in California, whereas under the English climate the depression 
would be increased. Southern Europe has a more exhilarating 
effect. 
Dr. Tyler has noticed these changes so often in his consultation 
experience that he feels very confident the effects are those of cli- 
mate and not those produced by change of place and scene. 
[14.] 
A physician who has under his professional charge a large insti- 
tution for the maintenance of aged persons, informs us that the 
demand among the inmates for stimulus in the form of tea is a 
matter of constant observation, and he moreover gives it as his 
opinion that from twenty to twenty-five per cent, of the whole 
number are tea-sots, drinking tea regularly from four to six times 
daily, and as much oftener as they can procure it. They show the 
effect of this over-stimulation by increased mental irritability, mus- 
cular tremors; also in a greater or less degree by sleeplessness. 
The following fact has also come to our knowledge: A domestic 
in the family of a friend appeared at times intoxicated. As it was 
certain she could not get any of the so-called intoxicating liquors, 
great surprise was caused, until at length the problem was solved 
by the discovery that the individual drank large quantities of the 
strongest tea, of which she was constantly sipping. 
[15.] 
Since the presentation of this Report to the legislature, and con- 
sequently too late for publication this year the Board has received 
a very voluminous, interesting and valuable report on the subject 
of Intemperance in Sweden. The paper was prepared by Mr. Gyl- 
lenshiold, the secretary of the National Temperance Society of 
Sweden, and chief of an important bureau in the Department of 
Justice, at the request of the American minister-resident, Hon. C. 
C. Andrews. It will be published next year.