Drunkenness and the physiological effect of alcohol / by Charles Mercier.

  • Mercier, Charles Arthur, 1852-1919.
Date:
[1908?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Drunkenness and the physiological effect of alcohol / by Charles Mercier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    In those days the doctor was often half-seas over when he attended his drunken patient; the parson was sometimes drunk in the pulpit; judge, counsel and attorneys pursued their avocation in court in a prevailing atmosphere of hot coppers. The Prime Minister went drunk to the House of Commons, where he was attacked by the Leader of the Opposition, also drunk, while order was kept by a Speaker who was half-seas over. There was no excise on spirits, and the coarser kinds of distilled liquors were didiculously cheap. As you passed along the bye- streets of London, and perhaps of other great cities, you might read the legend hung out over the drink cellars : Here you may get drunk for a penny; dead drunk and clean straw for twopence. Contrast that state of things with what exists now, and then will any teetotaller have the hardihood to maintain that drunkenness has increased, or is becoming worse, or is as bad as ever? Such assertions serve merely to expose the ignorance of those who make them. The fact is undeniable and indis- putable, not only that we are much more sober than we were, but that the English—I say nothing about the Irish or the Scotch, because I do not know—the English are now a sober nation. It is very rare now to see any man above the rank of an artisan drunk, and the enormous majority of artisans—yes, and of day labourers—are sober men. It is futile, I had almost said fatuous, to go on repeating a parrot cry that was once applicable to a state of things that has long passed away. Unless we wilfully shut our eyes, or wilfully say the thing that is not, we are compelled to admit, with whatever reluctance, that the English are now a sober nation. If we consider the altered condition of life and of employ- ment, we see that this must be so. The occupations by which men now earn their living require a skill, a nicety, a vigilance, an accuracy, an attention, which are incompatible with even occasional drunkenness. The horses of a stage coach could find their way to their accustomed destination, even though the driver was so drunk as to be incapable of directing them. Indeed, I have been told by an eye-witness that, in the early