An essay on the pernicious effects of the use of ardent spirits / by the late Doctor Benjamin Rush.

  • Rush, Benjamin, 1746-1813.
Date:
1815
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the pernicious effects of the use of ardent spirits / by the late Doctor Benjamin Rush. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    ±o when pressed, and mixed with certain proportions of su- gar and water, and a little spirit, to counteract their dis- position to an excessive fermentation. It is no objection to these cheap and home-made wines, that they are unfit for use until they are two or three years old. The foreign wines in common use in our country, require not only a much longer time to bring them to perfection, but to pre- vent their being disagreeable even to the taste. 4* Molasses and Water, also Vinegar and Water, sweetened with sugar or molasses, form an agreeable drink in warm weather. It is pleasant and cooling, and tends to keep up those gentle and uniform sweats on which health, and life often depend. Vinegar and water con- stituted the only drink of the soldiers of the Roman re- public, and it is well known they marched, and fought in a warm climate, and beneath a load of arms which weigh- ed sixty pounds. Boaz, a wealthy farmer in Palestine, we find treated his reapers with nothing but bread dip- ped in vinegar. To such persons as object to the taste of vinegar, sour milk, or buttermilk, or sweet milk diluted with water, may be given in its stead. I have known the labour of the longest and hottest days in summer support- ed by means of these pleasant and wholesome drinks with great firmness, and ended, with scarcely a complaint of fatigue. 5. The Sugar Maple affords a thin juice which has long been used by the farmers in Connecticut as a cool, and refreshing drink in the time of harvest. The set- tlers in the western counties of the middle states will do well to let a few of the trees which yield this pleasant juice, remain in all their fields. They may prove the means not only of saving their children and grand chil- dren, many hundred pounds, but of saving their bodies from diseases and death, and their souls from misery beyond the grave. R