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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    such a degree indeed have we succeeded in vary- ing and increasing a pleasure which was designed by nature merely as an incentive to quench our ‘thirst, that to quench, thirst is become one of the last things that people drink for. It is seldom indeed that people in health have any natural thirst, except perhaps after exercise, or labor in a hot day. Under all other circumstances, we anti- cipate the sensation by drinking before it comes on, so.as but seldom to enjoy the natural and healthful gratification of drinking because we are thirsty. Who has not observed the extreme satis- faction which children derive from quenching their thirst with pure water, and who that has perverted his appetite for drink, by stimulating his palate with bitter beer, sour cider, rum and water, and other brewages of human invention, but would be a gainer even on the score of mere animal gratifi- cation, without any reference to health, if he could bring back his vitiated taste to the simple relish of nature. Children drink because they are dry. Grown people drink, whether dry or not, because they have discovered a way of making drinking pleasant. Children drink water because this is a: beverage of Nature’s own brewing, which she has: made for the purpose of quenching a natural thirst. Grown people drink any thing but water, because: this fluid is intended to quench only a natural! thirst, and natural thirst is a thing which they sel-. dom feel. ‘One of the evils, though not the only or the: : greatest one, of perverting the natural appetite of’ thirst, is, that it leaves us without a guide to) direct us when we need drink, and when we do: