Temperance prize essays / By Drs. Mussey and Lindsly.

Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Temperance prize essays / By Drs. Mussey and Lindsly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ing its great abundance, the wealthy and luxu- rious indulged extensively in the use of expensive. wines. Hollinshead in his chronicle relates that the great Shane O’Neil, who was so bitter an oppo- nent to Queen Elizabeth, usually had in his cellar at Dundrun 200 tons of wine, of which as well as of usquebagh he drank copiously, and to such excess that his attendants were often obliged to bury him in the earth chin-deep until the heating efiects of intoxication had subsided. From the earliest period, with the exception already mentioned, no restriction had been laid on the distillation of spirits until the year 1661, when a duty of fourpence per gallon was levied upon all the aqua vite in the kingdom. Alcohol, as already mentioned, seems to have been held in much higher estimation as a remedial agent shortly after its discovery than at any sub- sequent period. It seems at first to have been prescribed and used as a sort of universal pana- cea, and to have been confided in asa medicine, which was to expel disease and misery, if not death, from our world. Bitter experience how- ever soon convinced mankind that its virtues had been greatly overrated; and in a short time it sunk down to the subordinate rank which it now occupies among the articles of the materia medica. We accordingly find it but seldom mentioned by authors who flourished later than the fifteenth century, and when referred to at all, it is merely as aiding in the preparation of other medicines. Riverius, who lived about the year 1600, speaks of it occasionally as employed in the administra- tion and preparation of other, remedies, The