The Curiosities of Ale & Beer: An Entertaining History by John Bickerdyke
CHAPTER XV.
20934 words | Chapter 40
CONSTABLE OF FRANCE.
“Dieu de batailes! Where have they this mettle?
. . . can sodden water,
A drench for sur-rein’d jades, their barley broth,
Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?”
_King Henry V._, Act iii., Scene 5.
“If every man is to forego his freedom of action because many make a
licentious use of it, I know not what is the value of any freedom.”
_J. Risdon Bennett, M.D._
_OLD MEDICAL WRITERS ON ALE. — ADULTERATION OF ALE. — ADVANTAGES
OF MALT LIQUORS TO LABOURING CLASSES. — TEMPERANCE_ versus _TOTAL
ABSTINENCE. — ANECDOTES. — GAY’S BALLAD._
Champions of the so-called temperance cause, have gone so far towards
_in_temperance as to say that a moderate drinker is worse than a
drunkard. This absurd declaration stands self-condemned, and without
labouring thrice to slay the slain by disproving an assertion which
carries upon its face the unmistakable marks of a suicide’s death, we
propose in this chapter to prove beyond question, from the works of
ancient, mediæval, and modern writers, that sound malt liquors possess
valuable medicinal and restorative qualities, and that their proper use
is in nowise injurious to health.
In Anglo-Saxon times ale was considered to be possessed of the highest
medicinal virtues. It is mentioned in the _Saxon Leechdoms_ as an
ingredient in many of the remedies therein prescribed, and for the
most serious as well as for the most trifling complaints. In lung
{409} disease a man is to “withhold himself earnestly from sweetened
ale,” to drink clear ale, and in the wort of the clear ale “boil young
oak-rind and drink.” Fever patients are recommended to drink during a
period of thirty days an infusion of clear ale and wormwood, githrife,
betony, bishop-wort, marrubium, fen mint, rosemary and other herbs. For
one “fiend-sick” the receipt runs thus:—A number of herbs having been
worked up in clear ale, “sing seven masses over the worts, add garlic
and holy water and let him drink out of a church bell”; finally the
lunatic is to give alms and pray for God’s mercies. Another remedy for
lunacy is much simpler: “Take skin of a mere-swine (porpoise), work it
into a whip, swinge the man therewith, soon he will be well, Amen.”
Another remarkable receipt runs thus: “Take a mickle handfull of sedge
and gladden, put them into a pan, pour a muckle bowlfull of ale upon
them, boil, and then rub into the mixture twenty-five libcorns. This is
a good drink against the devil.”
For less serious evils the receipts in these Anglo-Saxon pharmacopœias
are numerous. Hiccup is cured thus: Take the root of jarrow, pound it,
and put it into good beer, and give it to the patient to sup lukewarm.“
Then I ween that it may be of good benefit to him either for hiccup or
for any internal difficulty.”
In Anglo-Saxon veterinary surgery beer was also used. “Take a little
new ale and pour it into the mouth of each of the sheep; and make them
swallow it quickly; that will do them good,” says the old _Lœce-boc_.
(_i.e._, Medicine book.)
At the present day, in some country places, cows which have lost their
milk soon after calving, are given warm ale in which aniseed has been
boiled, and ale has often been given to horses with advantage.
Not only as an inward, but also as an outward application, was ale
recommended: For pains in the knees, woodwax and hedge-rife pounded
and put into ale, and used both inwardly and outwardly, was the Saxon
remedy.
The foregoing receipts are sufficient to show the character of the
medicine prescribed in Saxon times. At a later period ale still held
its high position as a cure for most of the evils to which unfortunate
humanity is subject. In the eighth _Book of Notable Things_, a rare
work, supposed to have been written in the sixteenth century, the
following curious remedies are mentioned:—
No. 45. An excellent medicine and a noble restorative for man or woman
that is brought very low with sickness. Take two pounds of dates and
wash them clean in Ale, then cut them and take out the {410} stones
and white skins, then cut them small, and beat them in a mortar, till
they begin to work like wax, and then take a quart of Clarified Honey
or Sugar, and half an ounce of the Podder of Long Pepper, as much of
Mace of Cloves, Nutmegs, and Cinnamon, of each one Drachm, as much of
the Powder of Lignum Aloes; beat all the Spices together and Seeth the
Dates with the Sugar or Honey with an easie fire, and let it seeth;
cast in thereto a little Powder, by little and little, and stir it with
a spatula of wood, and so do until it come to an Electuary, and then
eat every morning and evening thereof, one ounce at a time, and it will
renew and restore again his Complexion, be he never so low brought.
This hath been proved, and it hath done good to many a Man and Woman.
No. 46. A notable Receipt for the black Jaundice. Take a Gallon of
Ale, a Pint of Honey, and two Handfuls of Red Nettles, and take a
penny-worth or two of Saffron, and boil it in the Ale, the Ale being
first skimmed and then boil the Hony and Nettles therein all together
and strain it well, and every Morning take a good Draught thereof, for
the space of a fortnight. For in that space (God willing) it will clean
and perfectly cure the black Jaundice.
In the Twelfth Book is a receipt which was probably far more effective
than most of the ancient remedies:—
No. 49. For a cough; Take a quart of Ale and put a Handful of Red Sage
into it, and boyl it half away; strain it, and put to the Liquor a
Quarter of a pound of Treacle, drink it warm going to Bed.
In Ben Jonson’s _Alchemist_, of about the same date, is a mention of
ale used as medicine:—
Yes, faith, she dwells in Sea-coal lane, did cure me
With sodden ale, and pellitory of the wall,
Cost me but twopence.
We have before us an old pamphlet bearing the title “_Warme Beere_,
or a Treatise wherein is declared by many reasons, that Beere so
qualified is farre more wholesome than that which is drunk cold. With
a confutation of such objections that are made against it; published
for the preservation of Health. Cambridge. Printed by R. D. for Henry
Overton, and are to be sold at his shop entering into Pope’s-Head Alley
out of Lumbard Street in London, 1641.” {411}
The following verses form an apt commencement to this whimsical old
treatise:—
IN COMMENDATION OF WARME BEERE.
We care not what stern grandsires now can say,
Since reason doth and ought to bear the sway.
Vain grandames saysaws ne’er shall make me think,
That rotten teeth come most by warmed drink.
No, grandsire, no; if you had us’d to warm
Your mornings draughts, as I do, farre less harme
Your raggie lungs had felt; not half so soon,
For want of teeth to chew, you’d us’d the spoon.
Grandame, be silent now, if you be wise,
Lest I betray your skinking niggardize:
I wot well you no physick ken, nor yet
The name and nature of the vitall heat.
’Twas more to save your fire, and fear that I
Your pewter cups should melt or smokifie,
Then skill or care of me, which made you swear,
God wot, and stamp to see me warm my beer.
Though grandsire growl, though grandame swear, I hold
That man unwise that drinks his liquor cold.
W. B.
After giving instances of the value of warm beer as opposed to cold,
the author gives the following sage account of the reasons he hath
for the faith that is in him:—“When a man is thirstie, there are two
master-qualities which do predominate in the stomach, namely heat
and drinesse, over their contraries, cold and moisture. When a man
drinketh cold beer to quench his thirst, he setteth all four qualities
together by the ears in the stomach, which do with all violence oppose
one another and cause a great combustion in the stomach, breeding
many distempers therein. For if heat get the mastery, it causeth
inflamation through the whole body, and bringeth a man into fluxes and
other diseases. But hot beer prevents all these dangers, and maketh
friendship between all these enemies, viz., hot and cold, wet and
drie, in the stomach; because when the coldnesse of the beer is taken
away by actuall heat, and made as hot as the stomach, then heat hath
no opposite, his enemie cold being taken away, and there only remains
these two enemies, dry and wet in the stomach: which heat laboureth to
make friends. When one is exceeding thirstie, the beer being made hot
and then drunk into the dry stomach, it immediately quencheth {412}
the thirst, moistening and refreshing nature abundantly. Cold beer is
very pleasant when extreme thirst is in the stomach; but what more
dangerous to the health. Many by drinking a cup of cold beer in extreme
thirst, have taken a surfet and killed themselves. Therefore we must
not drink cold beer, because it is pleasant, but hot beer, because it
is profitable, especially in the Citie for such as have cold stomachs,
and inclining to a consumption. I have known some that have been so
farre gone in a consumption, that none would think in reason they could
live a week to an end: their breath was short, their stomach was gone,
and their strength failed, so that they were not able to walk about
the room without resting, panting and blowing: they drank many hot
drinks and wines to heat their cold stomachs, and cure their diseases,
especially sweet wines, but all in vain: for the more wine they drank
to warm their stomachs, the more they inflamed their livers, by which
means they grew worse and worse increasing their disease: But when they
did leave drinking all wine and betook themselves onely to the drinking
of hot beer so hot as blood, within a moneth, their breath, stomach and
strength was so increased, that they could walk about their garden with
ease, and within two moneths could walk four miles, and within three
moneths were perfectly made well as ever they were in their lives.”
Another curious old pamphlet of about the same period, entitled _Panala
Alacatholica_ (1623) follows the text “That ale is a wholesome drinke
contrary to many men’s conceits,” and after a description of the way in
which ale is spoilt in the brewing and rendered injurious we are told:
“But let a neat huswife, or canny Alewright have the handling of good
Ingredients (sweet Maulte and wholesome water) and you shall see and
will say, there is Art in brewing, (as in most actions) and that many
more, even of those that ayme at brewing the Best Ale, doe yet for all
their supposed dexteritie, misse the marke, than hit upon the mysterie.
For you shall then have a neat cup of Nappie Ale (right _Darbie_, not
Dagger Ale, though effectually animating) well boyled, desecated and
cleared, that it shall equall the best Brewed Beere in transparence,
please the most curious Pallate with milde quicknesse of relish, quench
the thirst, humect the inward parts, helpe concoction and distribution
of meate, and by its moderate penetration, much further the attractive
power of the parts (especially being rectified with that Additament
and _Vehiculum_ which the best Alistra boyles with it; to wit, such a
proportion of Hop as gives not any the least tact of bitternesse to
the Pallate after it growes Drinkable) and being free from all those
former foule {413} imputations, doth by its succulencie much nourish
and corroborate the Corporall, and comfort the Animall powers.”
A long description here follows of the manner in which Panala, a
medicated ale, is to be manufactured. Of its virtues our quaint author
gives the following account:—“This Ale neither offends the Eye with the
loathed object of a muddie substance, nor the smell with any ill vapour
or favour, nor the tast nor stomacke with disgust or ingrate relish,
but ’tis a pure, cleere, delicate, and singular Extract impregnated
with the sincere spirits and vertuosities of excellent Ingredients, of
a moderate temperature, indifferently accommodated to every Age, Sex,
and Constitution, and so familiar and pleasing to Nature.”
Medicated ales of this nature were held in high estimation by our
ancestors. Such was the celebrated Dr. Butler’s ale, which held its
sway for many generations; the following receipt for this ale is given
in the _Book of Notable Things_: “Take Senna and Polypedium each four
ounces, Sarseperilla two ounces, Agrimony and Maidenhair of each a
small handful, scurvy grass a quarter of a peck, bruise them grossly
in a stone mortar, put them into a thin canvass bag, and hang the bag
in nine or ten gallons of ale; when it is well worked and when it is
three or four days old, it is ripe enough to be drawn off and bottled,
or as you see fit.” This ale was sold at houses that had Butler’s head
for a sign, and we meet with further mention of it in a news-sheet
of 1664:—“At Tobias’ Coffee House, in Pye Corner, is sold the right
drink, called Dr. Butler’s Ale, it being the same that was sold by
Mr. Lansdale in Newgate Market. It is an excellent stomach drink,
it helps digestion, and dissolves congealed phlegm upon the lungs,
and is therefore good gainst colds, coughs, ptisical and consumptive
distempers; and being drunk in the evening, it moderately fortifies
nature, causeth good rest and hugely corroborates the brain and memory.”
A few years earlier than this Thomas Cogan was advocating in _The Haven
of Health_ (1584), beer for persons inclined to “rewmes and gout.” Such
persons must avoid “idleness, surfet, much wine and strong, especially
fasting, and not condemn Beere as hurtful in this respect which was so
profitably invented by that worthy Prince _Gambrinius_, anno 1786 years
before the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, as Lanquette writeth
in his chronicle.”
The same writer gives a curious receipt for “_Buttered Beere_,” which
is good for a cough or shortness of wind:—Take a quart or more of
Double Beere and put to it a good piece of fresh butter, sugar candie
an ounce, of liquerise in powder, of ginger grated, of each a dramme,
and {414} if you would have it strong, put in as much long pepper and
Greynes, let it boyle in the quart in the manner as you burne wine and
who so will drink it, let him drinke it as hot as hee may suffer. Some
put in the yolke of an egge or two towards the latter end, and so they
make it more strengthfull.“
The following year John Taylor published in _Drinke and Welcome_ many
modes of application of ale in the various ills to which the flesh is
heir. He thus concludes his somewhat remarkable statements:—”_Ale_ is
universale, and for Vertue it stands allowable with the best recipes of
the most antientest Physisians; and for its singular force in expulsion
of poison is equall, if not exceeding that rare antidote so seriously
invented by the Pontique King, which from him (till this time) carries
his name of _Mithridate_. And lastly, not onely approved by a Nationall
Assembly, but more exemplarily remonstrated by the frequent use of
the most knowing Physisians, who for the wonderfull force that it
hath against all diseases of the Lungs, justly allow the name of a
_Pulmonist_ to every _Alebrewer_.
“The further I seeke to goe the more unable I finde myselfe to expresse
the wonders (for so I may very well call them) operated by _Ale_
for that I shall abruptly conclude, in consideratione of mine owne
insufficiency, with the fagge-end of an old man’s old will, who gave a
good somme of mony to a Red-fac’d _Ale-drinker_, who plaid upon a Pipe
and Tabor, which was this:—
“To make your Pipe and Tabor keepe their sound,
And dye your Crimson tincture more profound,
There growes no better medicine on the ground
Than _Aleano_ (if it may be found)
To buy which drug I give a hundred pound.”
Prynne, the author of the famous _Histrio-Mastix_, seldom dined; every
three or four hours he munched a manchet, and refreshed his exhausted
spirits with _ale_ brought to him by his servant; and when “he was
put into this road of writing,” as Anthony Wood telleth, he fixed on
“a long quilted cap, which came an inch over his eyes,” serving as a
shade, “and then hunger nor thirst did he experience, save that of
his voluminous pages.” Evidence of the high regard in which English
ale was held among foreign doctors in the seventeenth century may be
gathered from an account given in _Hone’s Table Book_ of how, about
1620 some doctors and surgeons during their attendance on an English
gentleman, who was diseased at Paris, discoursed on wines and other
{415} beverages; and one physician, who had been in England, said
the English had a drink which they call Ale, and which he thought the
wholesomest liquor that could be drunk; for whereas the body of man
is supported by natural heat and radical moisture, there is no drink
conduceth more to the preservation of the one, and the increase of the
other, than _Ale_, for, while the Englishmen drank _only ale_, they
were strong, brawny, able men, and could draw an arrow an ell long;
but, when they fell to wine and _Beer_, they are found to be much
impaired in their strength and age.
English doctors would always, it may be supposed, give their
approbation to the nut-brown ale. There must have been some who even in
the good old days leaned to the doctrines of the abstainers; but such
was the faith of our ancestors in the virtues of the national beverage,
that we may imagine the doctor’s advice was disregarded and, indeed,
was even set down to anything but an amiable motive. This we may see
from a verse of the old ballad, _Nottingham Ale_:—
Ye doctors, who more execution have done
With bolus and potion, and powder and pill,
Than hangman with halter, and soldier with gun,
Or miser with famine, or lawyer with quill,
To dispatch us the quicker, you forbid us malt liquor,
Till our bodies grow thin, and our faces look pale;
Observe them who pleases, what cures all diseases,
Is a comforting dose of good Nottingham Ale.
The following receipt is quite gravely given by Dr. Solas Dodd, in
whose _Natural History of the Herring_ (1753) it may be found: “Take
the oil pressed out of fresh Herrings, a pint, a boar’s gall, juices
of henbane, hemlock, arsel, lettuce, and wild catmint, each six
ounces, mix, boil well, and put into a glass vessel, stoppered. Take
three spoonfuls and put into a quart of warm ale, and let the person
to undergo any operation drink of this by an ounce at a time, till
he falls asleep, which sleep he will continue the space of three or
four hours, and all that time he will be unsensible to anything done
to him.” Whether or no we have here an account of a genuine early
anæsthetic we are not prepared to say.
Instances might be recorded without number of the restorative effects
of ale in sickness, and more particularly in fever cases where the
patient has been brought very low, and the loss of tissue has been
great. Of these space only allows us to include a very few. {416}
When Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, lay prostrate with pleuritic
fever, the greatest physicians in the land found their skill avail
nothing; and all the statesman’s alarmed friends got for expending
seven hundred guineas in fees was the cold comfort that everything that
could be done had been done, and the case was hopeless. Whilst those
gathered round the bedside of the supposed dying man listened for his
last sigh, he faintly murmured, “Small beer, small beer.” The doctors
did not think it worth while to say nay, and a half-gallon cup of small
beer was put to the lips of the sick man, who drained it to the dregs,
and then demanded another draught, which he served in the same way:
then turning on his side, he went off into a deep slumber, attended
with profuse perspiration, and awoke a new man.[74] The beneficial
effects of mild ale in fever is commemorated in an old poem, _Small
Beer_:—
Oft known the deadly fever’s flame,
By the scorch’d patient crav’d, to tame.
[74] _Chambers’s Journal_, Jan. 2nd, 1875.
In Sir J. Sinclair’s _Statistical Account_, an extraordinary case
is related of a collier, named Hunter, who suffered from chronic
rheumatism or gout. He had been confined to his bed for a year and a
half, having almost entirely lost the use of his limbs. On Handsel
Monday (the first Monday after New Year’s Day) some of his neighbours
came to make merry with him. Though he could not rise, yet he always
took his share of the new ale, as it passed round the company; and, in
the end, became much intoxicated. The consequence was that he had the
use of his limbs the next morning, and was able to walk about. He lived
more than twenty years after this, and never had the smallest return of
his complaint. This took place in 1758.
An account of a cure, in which, no doubt, faith helped the ale, occurs
in the _Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele_, gentleman, sometime
student at Oxford (London, 1607). “Riding on his way to Oxford, he
stopped all night at Mekham—At supper, he began to talk with the
hostess, who was a simple professor of Chirurgerie, and conceited
therewith.—Peele observing her humour and conceit, upheld all the
strange cures she talked of and praised her, with much flattery, and
promised on his return to teach her something that would do her no
hurt—and added he was on his way to cure a gentleman in Warwickshire,
who was in a consumption. The hostess immediately {417} said there was
a gentleman close by so ill with that complaint, and proposed that
Peele should see him. Peele, knowing as much of doctoring as of music,
declined; but after much pressure, and resisting as long as he could,
was fain to comply. Putting on a bold face he went to the gentleman,
his hostess praising him as a wonderful doctor. After feeling the
pulse, &c., &c., he asked if they had a garden. Yes, they had. He
then went there and cut from every plant, flower, herb and blossom;
boiling the results in _Ale_, straining and boiling again. He told the
patient to take some of this warm, morning, noon, and night. Whether
anything effective was in this _Herbal Mixture_, or from the patient’s
fancy—in eight days after the patient was able to walk about apparently
recovered—and so delighted that he put many pounds in Peele’s pocket.”
A Brown ale called Stitch is mentioned in _The London and County
Brewer_ of 1744 as having being of the greatest benefit in incipient
consumption. It was of the first running of the malt, but of a greater
length than is drawn out of the stout butt beer. It had few hops in it.
Instances of the advantage of good malt liquors in certain cases of
consumption are very numerous. Mons. Frémy, of the Beaujon Hospital, in
Paris, made a series of experiments with malt powder given in the form
of a decoction, and externally by means of baths. The substance was
tried on sixty-four subjects of well-marked phthisis; but the results
were trifling, beyond a certain degree of temporary amelioration.
It was, however, of greater service in cases of chronic bronchitis,
early phthisis, and chronic pulmonary catarrh; its utility being
very marked in this last affection. In some parts of England it is a
common practice for persons in consumption to procure wort (that is an
infusion of malt before the hops are boiled with it for making beer)
from the brewers, and to drink half-a-pint of it daily; and many have
received great benefit from it. The experiments of Dr. Frémy verify the
utility of the English practice.
Of late years various preparations of malt have come to hold a very
high place in popular estimation. A first-rate remedy for a cough is
made thus: Over half a bushel of pale ground malt pour as much hot, but
not boiling, water as will just cover it. In forty-eight hours drain
off the liquor entirely, but without squeezing the grains: put the
former into a large sweetmeat pan, or saucepan, that there may be room
to boil as quick as possible, without boiling over; when it begins to
thicken, stir constantly. It must be as thick as treacle. The dose is
a dessert-spoonful thrice a day. This preparation has a very agreeable
{418} flavour. One of the most easily digested and most nourishing
of foods for those minute but assertive, atoms of humanity called
babies,[75] is malt finely powdered; and chemists keep many kinds of
foods, syrups, lozenges, &c., too numerous to mention, all claiming
their origin from Sir John Barleycorn.
[75] The author knows a malt-fed baby who never cries.—_Verb. Sap._
Among the many virtues of good ale, that of promoting generosity should
take a high place. This peculiar effect is capitally illustrated in an
anecdote of the Rev. Michael Hutchinson, D.D., of Derby. “The people,”
writes Hutton, “to whom he applied for subscriptions (the church was
in need of repair) were not able to keep their money; it passed from
their pockets to his own as if by magic. Whenever he could recollect a
person likely to contribute to this desirable work he made no scruple
to visit him at his own expense. If a stranger passed through Derby,
the Doctor’s bow and his rhetoric were employed in the service of the
church. His anxiety was urgent, and his power so prevailing, that he
seldom failed of success. _When the waites fiddled at his door for a
Christmas box, instead of sending them away with a solitary shilling,
he invited them in, treated them with a tankard of ale, and persuaded
them out of a guinea._”
Malt liquor has long been regarded by eminent medical men as almost
a specific against the scurvy, that dread disease which in former
times wrought such havoc amongst our brave tars. Sir Gilbert Blane,
M.D., records the following instance of the virtues of porter in this
connection:—
“I was furnished,” he writes, in his _Observations on the Diseases of
Seamen_, “by Dr. Clephane, physician to the fleet at New York, with
the following fact as a strong proof of the excellence of this liquor:
In the beginning of the war two store ships, called the Tortoise and
Grampus, sailed for America under the convoy of the Dædalus frigate.
The Grampus happened to be supplied with a sufficient quantity of
porter to serve the whole passage, which proved very long. The other
two ships were furnished with the common allowance of spirits. The
weather being unfavourable, the passage drew out to fourteen weeks
and, upon their arrival at New York, the Dædalus sent to the hospital
a hundred and twelve men; the Tortoise sixty-two; the greater part
of whom were in the last stage of the scurvy. The Grampus sent only
thirteen, none of whom had the scurvy.” {419}
In the Geographical Society’s Journal (vol. ii. p. 286) it is recorded
that during a severe winter on the west coast of Africa the crew of the
Etna suffered so much from scurvy that the least scratch had a tendency
to become a dangerous wound. Capt. Belcher states that “the only thing
which appeared materially to check the disease was beer made of the
essence of malt and hops; and I feel satisfied that a general issue of
this on the coast of Africa would be very salutary, and have the effect
especially of keeping up the constitutions of men subjected to heavy
labour in boats.”
Thomas Trotter, M.D., in his _Medicina Nautica_, “an Essay on the
Diseases of Seamen, comprehending the history of the health in His
Majesty’s Fleet under the command of Richard Earl Howe, Admiral, 1797,”
states that in typhus cases he found porter, where preferred by the
patient, more beneficial than wine. During a low fever, he (the doctor)
was entirely supported by bottled beer, of which he speaks very highly.
In his practice at Haslar Hospital he found bottled porter to be one of
the best ingredients in the diet of a convalescent, and never fail to
strengthen them quickly for duty.
Dr. Hodgkin, writing on Health, says, “I can assert, from well-proved
experience that the invalid who has been reduced almost to extremity
by severe or lingering illness, finds in well-apportioned draughts
of sound beer, one of the most important helps for the recovery of
his health, his strength, and his spirits.” Dr. Paris, who is not a
recent authority, but whose remarks on this subject are most cogent
and bear the stamp of common sense, asserts that “the extractive
matter furnished by the malt is highly nutritive; and we accordingly
find that those persons addicted to such potations are, in general,
fat. This fact is so generally admitted by all those who are skilled
in the art of training, that a quantity of ale is taken at every
meal by the pugilist, who is endeavouring to screw himself up to his
fullest strength. Jackson, the celebrated trainer, affirms, if any
person accustomed to drink wine would but try malt liquor for a month,
he would find himself so much the better for it, that he would soon
take to the one, and abandon the other . . . The addition of the hop
increases the value of the liquor, by the grateful stimulus which it
imparts, and in some measure redeems it from the vices with which it
might otherwise be charged where a corresponding degree of exercise
is not taken. . . I regard its dismissal (table or light beer) from
the tables of the great as a matter of regret, for its slight but
invigorating {420} bitter is much better adapted to promote digestion
than its more costly substitutes.”
Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read before the British Medical
Association in 1862, advances the proposition that nature has provided
in the salivary glands, the liver, and the lungs of every mammal,
an apparatus “for converting all food, especially farinaceous, into
alcohol, and he gives chemical reasons for believing that some such
process actually does take place. Alcohol, he says, after being taken
is incorporated with the blood, and passing in some form not yet
explained into the circulation, ultimately disappears; a small portion
alone passing from the body, and that in the breath. He further says
that when alcohol is mingled with other food, a less amount of the
latter suffices for the wants of the system than if water had been
used as the drink. Dr. Inman cites his own experience of an attempt to
do without his ordinary allowance of ale at dinner; a large increase
of food was necessited, but the demand for this diminished at once on
resuming the ale. Similar facts were noted in the experience of various
members of his family. No loss of health or strength was experienced,
except when the ordinary amount of solids was taken without the beer.
A celebrated French medical man (Dr. Coulier) published an excellent
article on beer (“Article Bière” in Vol. IX. of the _Dictionnaire
Encyclopédique de Sciences Médicales_) considered from a medical point
of view. He says, in effect, that beer being less rich in alcohol
than even the poorest wines, holds an intermediate place between the
latter and purely watery drinks. It presents, according to its mode
of preparation and composition, a continuous scale of more or less
alcoholic drinks, from porter and ale down to small beer containing
little more than one per cent. of alcohol. Its bitter principles
render it tonic and aperient; while the somnolence and heaviness that
follow an over-allowance of this fluid are due to the action of the
essential oil of the hop. He holds that of all fermented drinks, beer
is the one whose taste _se marie le plus agréablement_ with the use
of the pipe. Beer must be considered in the light of an alimentary
drink. In every hundred parts of beer are five of extract containing
a little nitrogenous assimilable matter and salts favourable to
nutrition, but consisting mainly of respiratory food. “If,” he says,
“fermented drinks have become one of the necessities of civilisation, a
prudent regard for health should make us as far as possible reduce the
excitement which the alcohol occasions. In this respect beer presents a
great advantage over wine. Thus a half-bottle of wine {421} containing
12 per cent. of alcohol, which is the common allowance for an adult,
contains 375 grammes of wine, and consequently 45 grammes of anhydrous
alcohol. A bottle of beer containing 4 per cent, of alcohol is equally
satisfying, and contains only 30 grammes of alcohol. Hence, supposing
two meals are taken daily, the beer-drinker daily imbibes 30 grammes
less of alcohol than the wine-drinker; and this difference amounts
in the course of the year to nearly 11 kilogrammes, or 14 litres
(equivalent to 24 lbs. or 3 gallons), of anhydrous alcohol.”
Examples without number might be collected of men who habitually used
alcoholic drinks sometimes in moderation, sometimes, in what we, in
these latter days, should certainly consider excess, and who yet lived
in health and usefulness to the extreme boundary of human life. Old
Parr, if we are to believe Taylor, who sings his praises, was a drinker
of the moderate kind.
Sometimes metheglin and by fortune happy,
He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy,
Cyder, or perry, when he did repair
To Whitsun ale, wake, wedding, or fair,
Else he had little leisure time to waste,
Or at the ale-house huff-cup ale to taste.
Henry Jenkins, who died in 1670 at the wonderful age of 165 years, took
his ale whenever he could get it. He lived very much in the open air
and spent his time in thatching and salmon-fishing. At one time he was
butler to Lord Conyers, of Hornby Castle, and he has left it on record
that when, as often happened, his master sent him over with messages to
Marmaduke Brodelay, Lord Abbot of Fountains, the abbot “always sent for
him to his lodgings, and, after prayers, ordered him, besides wassel, a
quarter of a yard of roast beef (for that the monasteries did deliver
their meat by measure), and a great black Jack of strong ale.” Have
we not, too, the evidence of epitaphs graven in stone, which are well
known never to lie, all bearing out the truth of the longevity of ale
drinkers? Here are two, the first being in Great Walford churchyard:—
Here John Randal lies
Who counting of his tale
Lived threescore years and ten,
Such vertue was in ale.
Ale was his meat,
Ale was his drink. {422}
Ale did his heart revive,
And if he could have drunk his ale
He still had been alive.
He died January 5,
1699.
The second is in Edwalton, Notts:
Ob. 1741.
Rebecca Freeland,
She drank good ale, good punch and wine,
And lived to the age of 99.
Macklin, the comedian, who died in 1797, for upwards of thirty years
was a daily visitor at the Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden.
His usual beverage was a pint of hot stout; he said it balmed his
stomach and kept him from having any inward pains. Whether from the
effects of this inward “balming” or not, Macklin undoubtedly lived to
the age of 97 years.
In Daniell’s _British Sports_ there is an account of Joe Mann,
gamekeeper to Lord Torrington. “He was in constant morning exercise,
he went to bed always betimes, _but never till his skin was filled
with ale_. This he said, ‘would do no harm to an early riser, and to a
man who pursued field sports.’ At seventy-eight years of age he began
to decline, and then lingered for three years. His gun was ever upon
his arm, and he still crept about, not destitute of the hope of fresh
diversion.”
The next instance, to be found in HONE’S YEAR BOOK, illustrates, not so
much the tendency of beer and ale, when taken in large quantities, to
make men healthy, wealthy, and wise, as to make them fat. On November
30, 1793, died at Beaumaris, William Lewis, Esq., of Llandismaw, in the
act of drinking a _cup_ of Welsh ale, containing about a wine _quart_,
called a “tumbler maur.” He made it a rule, every morning of his life,
to read so many chapters in the Bible, and in the evening to drink
eight gallons of ale. It is calculated that in his lifetime he must
have drunk a sufficient quantity to float a seventy-four gun ship. His
size was astonishing, and he weighed forty stone. Although he died in
his parlour, it was found necessary to construct a machine in form of
a crane, to lift his body in a carriage, and afterwards to have the
machine to let him down into the grave. He went by the name of the King
of Spain, and his family by the different titles of prince, infantas,
&c. {423}
One of the great teetotal arguments against the use of malt liquors,
one which the advocates of total abstinence generally fall back upon
when beaten on every other point, is that beer is adulterated. This
assertion, if it could be substantiated, would undoubtedly cut away
the very foundation of our argument as to the wholesomeness of ale and
beer. We must, then, shortly consider the point. Time out of mind the
brewers have been accused of adulterating their ale and beer, with
what truth, at any rate at the present day, we shall see anon. Opium,
henbane, cocculus indicus, and we know not what noxious drugs besides,
it has commonly, and we think somewhat recklessly, been asserted, find
their way into the brewing vessels. Some time ago M. Payen, a French
chemist of distinction, created quite a panic amongst the drinkers of
pale ale by asserting, in a lecture at the Conservatoire des Arts et
Métiers, that strychnine was prepared in large quantities in Paris
for exportation to England, where it was employed to give, or to aid
in giving, the esteemed bitter flavour to pale ale. This statement
appearing in _Le Constitutional_, and other French papers, soon found
its way into the English journals, to the consternation of the drinkers
and purveyors of this beverage.
The leading firms of Burton ale brewers at once threw open their
breweries and stores in the most unreserved manner, and “The _Lancet’s_
Analytical Sanitary Commission” undertook an inquiry on the subject.
Forty samples of beer, all brewed before the promulgation of the
statement, were analyzed by the commission, as well as samples taken
by other analysts at the request of Messrs. Allsopp and Sons. Needless
to say, not a particle of strychnine was discovered. Half a grain of
strychnine will destroy life, and a grain would be required to impart
to one gallon of beer its ordinary degree of bitterness. The flavour of
hops and strychnine differs. To bitter the amount then brewed at Burton
16,448 ounces of strychnine would be required. Not so much as 1,000
ounces of strychnine were manufactured in the whole world yearly.
In a quaint pamphlet entitled _Old London Rogueries_, the following
statement is made seriously:—“There ought also to be compiled a
delectable and pleasant treatise by such as sell bottle-ale, who, to
make it fly up to the top of the house at the first opening, do put
gunpowder into the bottles while the ale is new, then by stopping it
close make people believe it is the strength of the ale, when, being
truly sifted, it is nothing indeed but the strength of the gunpowder
that worketh the effect, to the great heart-burning of the parties who
drink the same. This is a truly strange and marvellous artifice, and
must be reckoned {424} among the lost inventions.” We wonder if these
cunning retailers of the olden time ever used shot as well as powder
with their bottled ale, which doubtless would have greatly increased
the effect.
In October, 1883, a statement was loudly trumpeted forth from teetotal
platforms that 245,000 cwt. of chemicals were used every year in
England in brewing. After a good deal of discussion on the subject,
it leaked out that the figures had been arrived at by a firm of hop
dealers, anxious to run up the price of hops. By a blunder in their
calculations they had come to the conclusion that there was a deficit
of 245,000 cwt. of hops in this country. From this it was argued that
245,000 cwt. of chemicals were used. This house of cards fell when it
was conclusively proved that there were at the time actually more hops
in England than were required by the brewers.
With regard to the question of adulteration at the present day, it
could be wished that those who are induced by a fanatical hatred of
alcohol in any shape or form to make this alleged adulteration a reason
for further restrictive legislation on the brewing trade, would take
the trouble to look at the reports annually published by the Inland
Revenue Commissioners in which this point is dealt with. Here are a few
extracts from their report for the year 1881, soon after the repeal
of the Malt-tax. “Brewers have no doubt been experimenting with other
descriptions of grain, as might have been expected, but we believe that
barley, from its peculiar fitness for malting, will in the end maintain
its superiority; and we are informed that a new method of preparing
inferior barley for brewing purposes promises to be highly successful.”
“So far as we are aware, no attempts have been made to use materials
in brewing at all detrimental to the public health; and the presence
of the Revenue officers in breweries affords fresh security to the
public—if indeed any such were needed—against all such practices.”
In the same report Professor Bell, the Principal of the Inland Revenue
Laboratory, goes into detail and gives very valuable statistics,
showing the way in which the opinion given by the Commissioners was
arrived at. In 1881, 8,626 samples of beer were tested, of which 4,666
were analyzed to see if any foreign body had been added, as well as
to check the original gravity. Of this large number the whole were
nearly correct, but actually 17 per cent, were found not alone to
be up to the standard test, but above it; and out of nearly 20,000
brewers, which, in round numbers, was then the extent of the trade in
the United Kingdom, only some 300 were even suspected of having used
illegal materials. Of the ninety samples of beer submitted for analysis
as being suspected {425} to have been tampered with, sixty-three were
found to have been “sugared,” but in every instance this occurred at
the public-house or beerhouse, a matter which was beyond the control of
the brewer, and was as much a fraud on him as on the Revenue and the
public. Mr. Bell goes on to state that whatever adulteration prevails
is wholly confined to the publican and the beer retailer, and even
where it does prevail, at the most the practice means nothing worse
than diluting the beer with water and afterwards adding sugar; still,
as Mr. Bell remarks, “Reprehensible as the practice is, as being a
fraud on the public as well as the Revenue, yet it is satisfactory to
know that no adulterant of a poisonous or hurtful character has been
detected.”
Dr. Thudichum, in a work _Alcoholic Drinks_, published by the Executive
Council of the late Health Exhibition, speaking of the supposition
that hops are sometimes supplanted, entirely or in part, in the
manufacture of beer by absynth, menyanthes, quassia, gentian, and other
matters, regards such adulteration as rare and such as “if practised
persistently would no doubt be discovered, and the liquids produced by
their aid would be declined by the public.”
An Irish brewer told us of a rather comic incident connected with hop
substitutes. A traveller in these commodities was in the habit of
pestering our friend, who informed the man that he believed his wares
were poisonous, and that he ought to eat some to prove the contrary.
With a wry face the traveller swallowed a portion of his sample and
shortly afterwards left. Coming again in a week’s time the same
performance was gone through. The traveller made yet another visit,
when the brewer said the experiment had not satisfied him, as so small
a quantity of the hop had been eaten. This time the traveller outdid
himself, and when and before leaving the brewery promised to write and
inform the brewer if the bitter meal had any evil effects. Whether the
traveller died, or whether he discovered that he had been befooled, we
do not know, but nothing more was heard of him.
We believe that the importance of a supply of good, pure beer to
the labouring classes of this country can hardly be over-estimated,
particularly having regard to the fact—as we shall show with greater
particularity, when we come to discuss the question of total abstinence
as opposed to temperance, that malt liquors undoubtedly assist in the
support of the body, and are in practical effect equivalent to so much
easily digested food.
“Thou clears the head o’ doited lear,
Thou cheers the heart o’ drooping care; {426}
And strings the nerves o’ labour fair,
At’s weary toil.
Thou even brightens dark despair,
Wi’ gloomy smile.”
Dr. Paris, from whose works we have already quoted, explains that it is
the stimulus of the beer that proves so serviceable to the poor man,
enabling his stomach to extract more aliment from his innutritive diet.
“Happy is that country,” he writes, “whose labouring classes prefer
such a beverage to the mischievous potations of ardent spirit.”
Barley wine is without doubt the wine of this country, and where shall
we find, all the world over, a more stalwart, muscular, able-bodied
race of labouring men than we find at home? The mighty thews of the
English navigator are renowned, and not at home only, for it is well
known that while the French railways were making, the contractors
actually imported English “navvies” to do the heavy work, paying them
higher wages than their French competitors.
We would commend to the attention of those who, as the phrase goes,
would rob a poor man of his beer, the certainty that, though the evils
of intoxication can hardly be exaggerated, yet in counselling the
labouring classes everywhere, and under all circumstances, to abstain
from all kinds of liquor, they are taking upon themselves a very grave
responsibility.
The following old Somersetshire song has, we believe, at any rate in
this form, never before appeared in print. It was taken down verbatim
from the lips of the singer at a harvest-home. The verses no doubt
lack the elegance of the productions of our greater English poets,
but the composer, whoever he may have been, treated his subject with
commendable vigour of expression, and “Robin Rough, the Plowboy,”
illustrates in a remarkable manner the love of the agricultural
labourer for his beer, and his belief in its health-giving qualities; a
belief, by-the-bye, founded on many centuries of experience:—
I’ze Robin Rough, the plowboy,
A plowman’s son am I,
And like my thirsty feyther,
My trottle is always a-dry,
The world goes round, to me it’s reet,
Why need I interfere?
For I whistles and sings from morn till neet,
And I smokes and I drinks my beer. {427}
For I likes a drop of good beer, I does;
I’ze fond of a drop of good beer, I is.
Let gentlemen fine
Sit down to their wine,
But I will stick to my beer.
There’s Sally—that’s my wife, zurs—
Likes beer as well as me,
She’s the happiest woman in life, zurs,
As happy as woman can be.
She minds her work,
Takes care of bairns,
No gossiping neighbours near;
When every Saturday neet returns,
Like me she drinks her beer.
For Sally likes her beer, she does,
She’s fond of a drop of good beer, she is,
Let gentlemen fine
Sit down to their wine,
But my Sally will stick to her beer.
Now there’s my dad, God bless him,
He’s now turned eighty-five,
Hard work does ne’er distress him,
He’s the happiest man alive.
Though old in age
He’s young in health,
His head and his heart both clear,
Possessing these and blest with peace,
He smokes and he drinks his beer—
For he’s fond of a drop of good beer, he is,
He very much likes his beer, he does,
Let gentlemen fine
Sit down to their wine,
But my feyther will stick to his beer.
Now, lads, need no persuasion,
But send your glasses round,
There’s no fear of an invasion
While barley grows in ground; {428}
May trade increase
And discord cease
In every coming year.
Possessed of these and blest with peace,
Why, we’ll smoke and we’ll drink our beer.
For I likes a drop of good beer, I does,
I’ze fond of a drop of good beer, I is.
Let gentlemen fine
Sit down to their wine
But we’ll all of us stick to our beer.
The poet Bloomfield, in the _Farmer’s Boy_, may possibly better please
our more critical readers. In describing the harvest-homing, he says:—
Now noon gone by, and four declining hours,
The weary limbs relax their boasted pow’rs;
Thirst rages strong, the fainting spirits fail,
And ask the sov’reign cordial, home-brew’d ale:
* * * * *
A wider circle spreads, and smiles abound,
As quick the frothing horn performs its round,
Care’s mortal foe, that sprightly joys imparts
To cheer the frame and elevate their hearts.
Shakespere has been called by the teetotallers as a witness in favour
of abstinence from intoxicating liquors. Does he not make Adam, in _As
You Like It_, say—
Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly?
Hot and rebellious liquors! yes; but would Shakespere have classed ale
amongst them? It seems far more probable that the reference is to the
strong wines of which the topers of his time drank deeply, the “malmsey
and malvoisie,” the “neat wine of Orleance, the Gascony, the Bordeaux,
the sherry sack, the liquorish Ipocras, brown beloved Bastard, or fat
{429} Aligant,” or to the “aqua vitæ,” the manufacture of which in the
reign of Mary was the subject of restrictive legislation.
Our consideration of the arguments put forward by the teetotal
theorists has so far been slightly delayed by the few pages we have
thought it well to devote to the accusations made against brewers of
adulteration, and of the evident advantages of malt liquor to the
labouring classes—proved beyond doubt without any necessity for learned
disquisitions on chemistry or physiology. In turning now to a more
particular consideration of the much-vexed question of temperance
_v._ total abstinence, we do not propose to attempt the advancement
of any novel or startling theories, but merely to give publicity to
the arguments in favour of the temperate use of alcoholic drinks, as
opposed to the total abstinence therefrom, supporting our arguments, as
it will be found we shall be able to do, by the opinions of some of the
best-known medical and scientific writers of the present day.
One of the first things that strikes an observer who considers, as
impartially as he can, the case put forward by the extreme advocates
of abstinence, is that the controversy itself is a very modern one,
and that, with the tendency to run into opposite extremes which is a
characteristic of human opinion, we pass suddenly from the centuries
in which it was held no shame for a man to be drunk, into these
present years, when there exists a considerable, and in some sense,
an influential body of persons, who not only will not touch alcoholic
drink themselves upon any terms, but who think it their duty to press
for such legislation as would deprive all men, be they temperate or
otherwise, of the power of buying, selling, or drinking any liquor
of which alcohol is a constituent. “Poison!” “Touch not the accursed
thing!” “Away with it!” and so on—very voluble, occasionally eloquent,
sometimes plausible. But will the fierce denunciations of these
apostles of a new religion—a religion not of temperance, but, as it has
been well called, of “intemperate abstinence,” bear the searching light
of calm and quiet argument? We had once a friend who, while fond of his
pipe, was always interested in reading about the terrible evils which
the weed would, according to the infallible dicta of the anti-tobacco
lecturers, be sure in time to bring upon his unfortunate constitution.
Before sitting down to read one of these lectures, he used always to
light a large and favourite briar; he said it enabled him to follow
the lecturer’s points so much better. Now we do not ask our readers
to follow the example of our friend _mutatis mutandis_. We do not say
that such a proceeding would of necessity assist him in following our
arguments. All we claim {430} is a patient hearing, for there never
has been a time in which an unprejudiced discussion of the subject
would be of greater advantage than at present.
Human habit of centuries, of thousands of years, of such time that the
memory and record of the human race, to use a legal phrase, runneth
not to the contrary, is evidence in our favour. Whenever he has had
the requisite skill, man has produced, enjoyed, and, we maintain, has
been improved by drinks in which alcohol formed a constituent part.
The practice of civilised nations for thousands of years is, then,
so far as it goes, an argument in favour of temperance as opposed to
abstinence. We do not wish to put this part of our case too high, and
our meaning cannot be better expressed than by the words of Sir James
Paget, who, in an essay on this subject in the _Contemporary Review_,
writes: “The beliefs of reasonable people are, doubtless, by a large
majority favourable to moderation rather than abstinence, and this
should not be regarded as of no weight in the discussion. For, although
the subject be one in which few, even among reasonable people, have
made any careful observations, and fewer still have thought with any
care, yet this very indifference to the subject, this readiness to fall
in with custom, a custom maintained in the midst of a constant love of
change, and outliving all that mere fashion has sustained—all this is
enough to prove that the evidence of the custom being a bad one is not
clear.”
It is an indisputable fact that nations who have used alcohol have
attained to a greater perfection in power and will to do good work,
and a longer duration of life in which such work can be performed,
than those who have used no alcohol; and, confining our attention to
Europe, may we not say that these powers of work, these activities of
body and mind in enterprise, in invention, and in production, are more
remarkably developed in the inhabitants of the northern than of the
southern parts of the Continent, that is to say, among those who have
habitually drank more than those who have drank less? And may we not
ask how it is that, if the use of alcohol in moderation be pernicious,
the inherited effects of it have not during these vast periods of time
during which it has been used, made themselves apparent in a marked
degeneracy of the race, since we know that these results will make
themselves very conspicuous indeed in two generations of persons who
are habitually intemperate?
We are told that it is unnatural to make use of alcoholic drinks, and
we are lectured about what man in his natural state would do, or {431}
not do. This is a misuse of terms; the state in which mankind is at
any particular period, the point in his path of development which
he has then reached, and his then environment, these constitute his
natural state, and not some more or less hypothetical state of being
which has been now left far behind.
In order to enable them to thrust their theories upon a certainly
unwilling audience, it would be very convenient for the abstainers
to show, if they could, that alcohol, in any form and no matter how
diluted, is in itself a bad thing. First, then, let us consider whether
alcohol, as such, is food. On this point Dr. Lander Brunton says: “The
argument in favour of alcohol being food is that it is retained in
the body and supplies the place of other foods, so that the quantity
of food which would without it be insufficient, with its aid becomes
sufficient.” He also quotes Dr. Hammond, who observed in his own case
that when his diet was insufficient, the addition of a little alcohol
to it not only prevented him from losing weight, as he had previously
done, but converted this loss into a positive gain.
The late G. H. Lewes, in his _Principles of Physiology_, also speaks
conclusively on this subject, pointing out that alcohol is one of the
alimentary principles. “In compliance with the custom of physiologists
we are forced to call alcohol food, and very efficient food too. If it
be not food, then neither is sugar food.” Mr. Lewes also states that
alcohol taken in large quantities is harmful, depriving the mucous
membrane of the stomach of all its water, but that taken in small
quantities and diluted it has just the opposite effect, increasing the
secretion by the stimulus it gives to the circulation.
The general opinion of the medical world appears to be that alcohol
as such, is a food in a special sense, viz., that it checks the waste
of tissue and enables a person to attain to a high standard of health
and strength mentally and bodily while taking less food than would be
necessary without the alcohol. Moleschott says that “although forming
none of the constituents of blood, alcohol limits the combustion of
those constituents, and in this way is equivalent to so much blood.
Alcohol is the savings bank of the tissues. He who eats little and
drinks alcohol in moderation, retains as much in his blood and tissues
as he who eats more and drinks no alcohol.”
The argument to the effect that alcohol must be useless, because
chemists have as yet been unable to trace the exact form and manner in
which it acts upon the human economy, would seem to be fallacious in
the face of the experience, which shows that it does act, and act {432}
beneficially, when taken in a suitable form and in suitable quantity.
Experience shows, and instances by the hundred could be given, from the
works of medical men, that life can be sustained for long periods of
time solely upon alcoholic drinks. Dr. Brudenell Carter mentions a case
in his own experience of an old gentleman who lived for many months in
moderate strength and comfort and without any remarkable emaciation
upon alcoholic drinks alone. Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read before
the British Medical Association, gives an instance of a lady who twice
in succession nursed a child, subsisting upon each occasion during the
greater part of twelve months upon brandy and bitter ale alone; the
children, he adds, grew up strong and healthy.
Dr. Francis E. Anstie, in an article published in the _Cornhill
Magazine_ in 1862, draws attention to the fact that many substances
have an action on the body in small doses, _totally different in
kind_ to that which they exercise in large doses _e.g._, common salt,
arsenic, and many others which are either food or poisons, according
to the dose. “We are compelled, therefore,” he writes, “to believe
that in _doses proportioned to the needs of the system at the time_,
alcohol acts as a food;” and he instances several cases of longevity
in which alcohol was the only aliment, excepting in some cases a
little water, and in others a spare allowance of bread. Decisively
vanquished on this ground, our opponents return to the attack: “You
must abstain,” say they, “because your practice, which is now moderate,
will insensibly become excessive.” Here we again turn to Mr. Lewes’s
work on Physiology, and quote the pithy argument by which he refutes
this fallacy. A portion is italicised for the benefit of tea drinkers:
“To suppose there is any necessary connection between moderation and
excess, is to ignore Physiology, and fly in the face of evidence . . .
Men take their pint of beer or pint of wine daily, for a series of
years. This dose daily produces its effect; and if at any time thirst
or social seduction makes them drink a quart in lieu of a pint, they
are at once made aware of the excess. Men drink one or two cups of tea
or coffee at breakfast with unvarying regularity for a whole lifetime;
but whoever felt the necessity of gradually increasing the amount to
three, four, or five cups? Yet we know what a stimulant tea is; we know
_that treble the amount of our daily consumption would soon produce
paralysis_—why are we not irresistibly led to this fatal excess?”
Let us now return to our authorities, and from the wealth of material
which exists in the published opinions of medical men of distinction,
choose a few more extracts in favour of temperance as opposed to total
{433} abstinence. Professor Liebig, for instance, says that wine,
spirits, and beer are _necessary_ principles for the important process
of respiration, and it would seem that the stomachs of all mankind,
_teetotallers included_, will secrete alcohol from the food which is
eaten. If any man, therefore, is resolved to carry out total abstinence
strictly, he must refuse every sort of vegetable food, even bread
itself; for all such diet contains more or less of alcohol.
Sir James Paget, in the article already referred to, asserts that the
habitual moderate use of alcoholic drinks is generally beneficial, and
that, in the question raised between temperance and abstinence, the
verdict should be in favour of temperance.
Dr. A. J. Bernays, in an essay on _The Moderate Use of Alcohols_,
alluding to water as a proposed substitute, remarks on the wretched
character of the water which is supplied in towns, and the difficulty
of getting it pure. “Water which has gone through some form of
preparation, especially through some form of cooking, as in beer, is
generally better suited for meals than water itself.”
Dr. Carpenter has also drawn attention to the wholesomeness of bitter
beer at meals. “There is a class of cases,” he writes, “in which we
believe that malt liquors constitute a better medicine than could be
administered under any other form; those, namely, in which the stomach
labours under a permanent deficiency of digestive powers.” Bitter beer,
he asserts, assists digestion in cases in which no medicine would be of
use.
This question of the water reminds us of the following tale: A cobbler
was listening to the persuasive eloquence of a teetotaller, and getting
somewhat dry over the prosy argument. “Well,” said the knight of St.
Crispin, “all you say amounts to this—that water is the best thing any
man can drink. Now I am not proud, and am easily satisfied, and don’t
want the best—stout, or ale, or even bitter-beer is quite good enough
for the likes of me.”
It is very often pointed out that the agricultural labourer and
the working classes generally would be better off if they spent the
money devoted to beer in food. This is, however, open to question,
keeping in mind the fact that alcohol enables the human frame to exist
with a smaller amount of food than would be otherwise necessary. Dr.
C. D. Redcliffe, in giving his views on alcohol, in the form of a
conversation between himself and a patient, speaks very positively on
this point. “The glass of malt liquor,” he writes, “or cyder or perry
or common wine, if the man have the luck to live in a wine-growing
country, will {434} cost less than the amount of ordinary food which
must otherwise be eaten in order to preserve health. I have no doubt
of the saving in pocket which will result from the adoption of the
practice recommended . . . . and I am equally certain that the
result will be as beneficial to health as it will be satisfactory
financially.” Liebig also testifies to the same effect, stating that in
families where beer was withheld, and money given in compensation, it
was soon found that the monthly consumption of bread was so strikingly
increased that the beer was twice paid for, once in money and a second
time in bread.
Mr. Brudenell Carter, while he was practising his profession in a
mining district, and daily brought into contact with the results of
drunken habits, determined that he “should be a better advocate of
abstinence if he practised it,” and he accordingly gave up his liquor.
The results we give in his own words:—“After about two months of total
abstinence, the conviction was reluctantly forced upon me that the
experiment was a failure, and that I must give it up.” His symptoms
pointed, he says, “in a perfectly plain way to an excess of waste over
repair. I returned to my bitter beer, and in the course of a week was
well again.”
A volume could be filled with similar experiences, but in summing up
the result of modern medical opinion, we are contented to rest our
case on what has been said on this point by the two great authorities
we have before quoted, viz., Sir James Paget and Dr. Bernays; the
former writes: “As for the opinions of the medical profession, they
are, by a vast majority, in favour of moderation. It may be admitted
that, of late years, the number of cases has increased in which
habitual abstinence from alcoholic drinks has been deemed better
than habitual moderation. But, excluding those of children and young
persons, the number of these cases is still very small, and few of
them have been observed through a long course of years, so as to test
the probable influence of a life-long habitual abstinence. Whatever
weight, then, may be assigned to the balance of opinions among medical
men, it certainly must be given in favour of moderation, not of
abstinence.” Dr. Bernays is still stronger. “The experience of mankind
is better than individual experience, and so, for every medical man of
distinction who is in favour of total abstinence, I would find twenty
men who are against it.” Hardly anyone who has lived among teetotallers
will deny that they are large eaters. Now the greater the amount of
solid food that is required to keep a human being up to the normal
level of health and strength, the greater amount of nervous energy
will be consumed {435} in the process of digestion, and the less
superfluity of energy will that person have in reserve to meet the
other exigencies and activities of life. It therefore seems to follow
with the certainty of a mathematical demonstration, that if, as those
who are best qualified to judge assure us is the case, the moderate
consumption of alcoholic liquors enables a person to keep himself in
health and strength upon a less amount of solid food than would be
necessary without the aid of alcohol, the life of that man, other
things being equal, must be fuller of capacities for all kinds of work,
both mental and bodily, than that of a man who takes no alcohol, and
who is in consequence forced to use up a greater amount of nerve force
in the consumption of a sufficiency of solids to support himself. It
is an uncontrovertible fact that the best work has always been done by
the moderate drinkers. The physical condition of rigid abstainers has
frequently been commented upon; and without wishing to say anything
unkind, or uncharitable, about men who are doubtless honest and
conscientious, though, in our view, misguided, we cannot but suggest
the question—Is the appearance of the average abstainer, who now,
happily for the cause of truth, is known to all the world by the blue
ribbon he wears, such as may be considered a good advertisement for the
opinions he advocates? Does his appearance seem to indicate a physical
or intellectual superiority to the average member of the _genus homo_?
We think there can be but one opinion on this point, and it is that
each and every of these questions must be answered with an emphatic
negative.
On the action of the Temperance Societies, Dr. Moxon, in a very able
article, _Alcohol and Individuality_, after relating how a poor cooper,
having a fever caused by a wound, died rather than take the alcohol
which was absolutely necessary to sustain him, says: “I believe that
to a large extent teetotalism lays firmest hold on those who are
least likely ever to become drunkards, and are most likely to want at
times the medicinal use of alcohol—sensitive, good-natured people, of
weak constitution, to whom the Sacred Ecclesiast directed his strange
sounding but needful advice, ‘Be not righteous over much, neither make
thyself over wise: why shouldst thou destroy thyself?’”
In August, 1884, _The Times_ devoted several columns to an exhaustive
consideration of teetotal theories and the use of alcohol, and it
may be said, without fear of contradiction, that neither before nor
since has a more valuable treatise appeared on the subject. The writer
divides total abstainers into three classes. Of the first class
he says: “There are some persons who seem not to require alcohol
because they easily {436} digest a large quantity of solid food, and
especially of saccharine and starchy matters, . . . . but it is fairly
questionable whether their work in life would not be better in quantity
or in quality, or both, if they were to consume less solid food, and
to make up for the deficiency by a little beer or wine. There are
others who have a distinctly morbid tendency towards excess, . . . .
which leaves them no safety except in total abstinence. The difficulty
with these persons is to keep them from drink, however hurtful they
may know it to be, for their condition is one of disease, and they
have seldom sufficient resolution to abstain. When they do abstain
they furnish striking examples of the success of teetotalism by being
changed from a state closely bordering on insanity into responsible
members of society; but the ordinary experience with regard to them
is that they have a succession of relapses into intemperance, and
that they ultimately die, directly or indirectly, from the effects of
drink. . . . The third class of abstainers is formed by those who are
actuated in the main by benevolent and conscientious motives, which,
unfortunately, are seldom controlled by the possession of adequate
knowledge. Many clergymen abstain ‘for the sake of example,’ without
pausing to consider whether the example may not, in some cases, be a
bad one, and whether they would not discharge their manifest duties
more efficiently by help of the added force which alcohol would give.
Many persons get on fairly well without alcohol because their powers
are never subjected to any considerable strain, and these persons too
often break down when any strain comes upon them, unless they will
consent to modify their mode of living. This, as is too well known,
they will not always do; and every medical man has seen instances of
fanatical teetotalism leading to complete destruction of the health of
those who were governed by it.”
With regard to teetotal societies, the writer considers that they do
very little good and a great deal of harm. “They fail,” he says, “to
touch the evils of drunkenness, except in a very limited fashion, and
they take away alcohol from vast numbers who would be better for the
moderate use of it. We think the time has come when philanthropists
should cease to listen to mere declamation, and should try to look
calmly and fearlessly at the results of observation and experience.
Many a good man is injuring his health and diminishing his usefulness
in order to adhere, ‘for the sake of example,’ to a fantastic
deprivation.”
To check the evils of drunkenness, we rely not on prohibitory
legislation, which has been tried elsewhere and found wanting, but
on the gradual spread of education and enlightenment; the effects
of public {437} opinion, the improvement of the well-being of the
humbler classes more particularly with reference to their habitations
both in town and country. Perhaps also, but here we speak with greater
diffidence on account of the practical difficulties in which such a
proposal is involved a remedy is to be found in the confinement of
those persons who have shown by their conduct that their inability to
refrain from vile excesses arises from actual mental disease.
Lord Bramwell, in a pamphlet called _Drink_, has written to very
much the same effect. He also calls in question the right of society
to interfere with individual liberty to the extent proposed by the
teetotallers. Is it reasonable, he asks, that because some people drink
to excess, alcoholic liquors are to be denied to millions to whom it
is a daily pleasure and enjoyment with no attendant harm? If a man is
drunk in public, punish him; but it does seem hard that the sober man
should be punished—for withholding a pleasure and inflicting a pain are
equally punishment. “Then see the mischief of such laws,” he continues.
“The public conscience does not go with them. It is certain they will
be broken. Every one knows that stealing is wrong; disgrace follows
conviction. But every one knows that drinking a glass of beer is not
wrong; no discredit attaches to it. It is done, and when done against
the law you have the usual mischiefs of law-breaking, smuggling,
informations, oaths, perjury, shuffling, and lies. Besides, as a matter
of fact, it fails. Nothing can show this more strongly than the failure
in Wales of the Sunday Closing Act.” Lord Bramwell in the end comes to
the conclusion that drunkenness cannot be prevented by legislation.
“Whether it is desirable to limit the number of drink shops,” he
writes, “is a matter as to which I have great doubt and difficulty. But
grant that there is the right to forbid it, wholly or partially, in
place or time, I say it is a right which should not be exercised. To do
so is to interfere with the innocent enjoyment of millions in order to
lessen the mischief arising from the folly or evil propensities, not
of themselves, but of others. And, further, that such legislation is
attended with the mischiefs which always follow from the creation of
offences in law which are not so in conscience. Punish the mischievous
drunkard, indeed, perhaps, even punish him for being drunk in public,
and so a likely source of mischief. Punish, on the same principle, the
man who sells drink to the drunken. But go no further. Trust to the
good sense and improvement of mankind, and let charity be shown to
those who would trust to them rather than to law.”
Other arguments in opposition to those who would introduce what {438}
is known as local option may be briefly summed up as follows:—Such a
system would establish the principle that a majority of ratepayers in
one district may put a stop to any trade or calling to which they may
happen to object, although the same trade remains perfectly legitimate
in other places; it would concentrate the evil, shifting the area of
the sale of drink, and thus intensifying the mischiefs complained of;
it would introduce invidious class distinctions, since its effects
would principally be felt by the poor and the labouring classes, and in
place of a trade which is now subject to inspection and regulation, it
would substitute a secret and irresponsible one.
In this discussion, the balance of experience, of reason, and of
authority is vastly in favour of the temperate man rather than the
abstainer, and it may be said without fear of contradiction from any
reasonable or unbiassed person that, for the great majority of the
people of this country, the most wholesome, the most nutritious, and
the most pleasing alcoholic liquor, is the “wine of the country,” good,
sound ale and beer.
To the reader who has been patient enough to follow us thus far, we
give our best thanks, hoping that he may have found something to amuse,
something, perhaps, to instruct in these pages—our best thanks, we say,
and, as a parting word, a few verses by old John Gay, entitled
A BALLAD ON ALE.
Whilst some in epic strains delight,
Whilst others pastorals invite,
As taste or whim prevail;
Assist me all ye tuneful Nine,
Support me in the great design,
To sing of nappy Ale.
Some folks of cider make a rout,
And cider’s well enough no doubt
When better liquors fail;
But wine that’s richer, better still,
Ev’n wine itself (deny ’t who will)
Must yield to nappy Ale.
Rum, brandy, gin with choicest smack,
From Holland brought, Batavia rack,
All these will nought avail {439}
To cheer a truly British heart,
And lively spirits to impart,
Like humming nappy Ale.
Oh ! whether thee I closely hug
In honest can, or nut-brown jug,
Or in the tankard hail,
In barrel or in bottle pent,
I give the generous spirit vent,
Still may I feast on Ale.
But chief when to the cheerful glass,
From vessel pure, thy streamlets pass,
Then most thy charms prevail;
Then, then, I’ll bet and take the odds
That nectar, drink of Heathen Gods,
Was poor compared to Ale.
Give me a bumper: fill it up:
See how it sparkles in the cup;
O how shall I regale !
Can any taste this drink divine,
And then compare rum, brandy, wine,
Or aught with nappy Ale?
Inspired by thee, the warrior fights,
The lover wooes, the poet writes
And pens the pleasing tale;
And still in Britain’s isle confest,
Nought animates the patriot’s breast
Like generous nappy Ale.
High church and low oft raise a strife
And oft endanger limb and life,
Each studious to prevail:
Yet Whig and Tory, opposite
In all things else, do both unite
In praise of nappy Ale.
Inspired by thee, shall Crispin sing
Or talk of freedom, church and king,
And balance Europe’s scale: {440}
While his rich landlord lays out schemes
Of wealth in golden South-Sea dreams,
The effects of nappy Ale.
Ev’n while these stanzas I indite,
The bar-bells’ grateful sounds invite
Where joy can never fail.
Adieu, my Muse ! adieu, I haste
To gratify my longing taste
With copious draughts of Ale.
+ The + End +
[Illustration]
{441}
[Illustration]
APPENDIX.
PASTEUR’S DISCOVERIES.
One talks glibly enough of fermentation, but the majority of us would
be puzzled if asked to say what it is. For many years it has been known
that minute particles of life are ever present in substances undergoing
fermentation, but until recently proved beyond question by M. Pasteur,
it was not known that the peculiar changes are wholly caused by these
living atoms, which are so small that they can only be seen through the
most powerful microscope. This discovery was the key to many problems.
Pasteur soon traced the diseases of wine to the presence of various
organisms which, fortunately, could be easily destroyed by heat. From
this it followed that wine once heated to a certain temperature could
be kept an indefinite length of time, provided, of course, no exposure
to the air took place, for from the air germs of organisms similar to
those killed by the application of heat might again enter the wine and
multiply themselves.
The method of preserving the wine discovered by Pasteur is simple: In
a suitable metal vessel the bottles of wine are placed, their corks
firmly tied down. The vessel is then filled to such a depth that the
water is level with the wires of the corks. One of the bottles, in
which is placed the bulb of a thermometer, should be filled with water.
The water in the vessel is then gradually heated until the thermometer
shows that the water in the bottle has attained a temperature of 212
Fahr.
Pasteur proved by repeated experiments that the flavour of the wine
is not in any way damaged by this operation. The discovery solved an
important economic question, for wines heated in this manner can now be
exported into all countries, or kept for an almost indefinite period
without losing their flavour or perfume.
We have mentioned Pasteur’s labours for the wine-growers, for on them
were based his studies on beer. {442}
At the close of the Franco-Prussian war, Pasteur, who was then
recovering from an illness which lasted over two years, became eager
to commence an investigation which would bring him again to the study
of fermentation. Influenced, no doubt, by the patriotic wish of making
for French beer a reputation equal to that of Germany, he attacked the
diseases of malt liquors.
Beer is far more difficult to keep than wine, and it is said to be
diseased when it has turned sharp, sour, ropy or putrid. To trace the
causes of these undesirable conditions was Pasteur’s aim, and, as
usual with any investigation undertaken by him, he met with success.
In studying the fermentation of wine, he had discovered a new world
peopled with minute beings of many different species, and in the
fermentation of beer his discoveries were of much the same nature.
In wine the fermentation may be said to take place by itself, the
organisms which cause it, finding their way into the liquid without
the assistance of man; but in beer-brewing a small quantity of certain
organisms (yeast) is put into the sweet wort by the brewer. These
organisms multiply themselves, and, if of the right species, turn the
sugar principally into alcohol and carbonic acid gas. The one remains
in the beer, the other partly escapes and hangs about the surface of
the liquid, as anyone who has put his nose into a fermenting tun has
no doubt discovered. It is absolutely necessary for the production of
drinkable beer that the right species of organism be set to work in
the wort. If the wort was left to itself to ferment, as is wine, the
results would be very unsatisfactory. Various kinds of organisms (from
which wine is protected by its acidity) would enter into it from the
air, divers ferments would take place, and more often than not an acid
or putrid beer would be the result.
Every beer-disease Pasteur found to be caused by its own peculiar
organisms, which enter into the liquid sometimes from the air and
often in the yeast, and the causes of many mysterious occurrences
in breweries at once become clear. Professor Tyndall said of this
discovery: “Without knowing the cause, the brewer not unfrequently
incurred heavy losses through the use of bad yeast. Five minutes’
examination with the microscope would have revealed to him the cause of
the badness, and prevented him from using the yeast. He would have seen
the true torula overpowered by foreign intruders. The microscope is,
I believe now everywhere in use. At Burton-on-Trent its aid was very
soon, invoked.”
The brewer has, therefore, to keep his wort free from foreign organisms
{443} other than the yeast plant. When the wort is boiled, any harmful
organisms it may contain are killed, and it can be indefinitely
preserved even in a high temperature, provided the air with which
it comes in contact is free from the germs of the lower microscopic
organisms. Pasteur’s son-in-law, in the account he has written of
the great _savant’s_ life and labours, says that some brewers have
constructed an apparatus which enables them to protect the wort while
it cools from the organisms of the air and to ferment it with a leaven
as pure as possible. At the Exhibition of Amsterdam were shown bottles
only half full, containing a perfectly clear beer which had been tapped
from the opening of the Exhibition.
As the causes of disease in beer are much the same as in wine, the
same preservative—heating—may be applied. But beer differs from still
wines in containing carbonic acid gas which heat displaces, and as beer
which has lost its briskness is not pleasant drinking, it can only be
advantageously so treated when contained in bottles. Both in Europe and
America, says M. Pasteur’s son-in-law, the heating of beer is practised
on a large scale. The process is called _Pasteuration_ and the beer
_Pasteurised_ beer.
A very high temperature, as we have shown, kills the germs of disease
in wine and beer. Extreme cold has the effect of indefinitely
suspending the action of the ferment. A moderate temperature seems
most favourable to the action of the organisms which work the wondrous
changes in the wort. In England beer is usually fermented at a
temperature of between 60° and 70° Fahr., and the process only lasts
a day or two. In Germany the general practice is to ferment at about
40°, a temperature maintained by means of vessels containing ice, which
are thrown into the fermenting tuns. This lower temperature checks the
action of the ferment and the process lasts for fifteen or even twenty
days.
The only other point to be noticed here in connection with fermentation
is the peculiar fact discovered by Pasteur, that the organisms
causing the ferment can live without air. When the wort is in the
fermenting tun, the sides of the tun, together with the heavy carbonic
acid gas hanging over the surface of the wort, exclude all air from
the organisms, which can only obtain a small amount of oxygen from
the liquid. There is, in fact, life without air. Pasteur made some
interesting experiments which showed that there was a great difference
in the action of the organisms according as they were placed in
deep vats, cut off from the air by the carbonic acid gas, or in
flat-bottomed {444} wooden troughs with sides a few inches high. In
this latter situation the life of the ferment seemed enhanced, but
the amount of sugar decomposed by the organisms was proportionately
different from that decomposed in the vats. In the vats one ounce of
ferment decomposed from seventy to a hundred and fifty ounces of sugar,
while in the troughs the same quantity of ferment decomposed only five
or six ounces of sugar. The experiment showed that the more the yeast
was exposed to the air, the less was its power as a ferment, and that
there is a remarkable relation between fermentation and life without
air.
Dumas once said to Pasteur before the Academy of Sciences: “You have
discovered a third kingdom—the kingdom to which those organisms belong
which, with all the prerogatives of animal life, do not require air for
their existence, and which find the heat that is necessary for them in
the chemical decompositions which they set up around them.”
[Illustration]
{445}
[Illustration]
INDEX.
A.
Adulteration of Beer … 423–4
Ale Drinkers, Great … 421
Ale, English, on the Continent … 414
Ale-bench, The … 190
Ale-berry, or Ale-brue … 383
Ale-bush, The … 216
Ale-conners … 106, 109
Ale-draper … 190
Ale-founder … 107
Ale-gafol … 35
Ale-garland, The … 216
Ale-house Lattices … 188
Ale-house Poetry … 226
Ale-houses in Mediæval Times … 187
Ale-houses in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries … 188, 191
Ale-houses, Suppression of … 110
Ale-pole, The … 216
Ale-sellers in fourteenth century, Tricks by … 39
Ale-stake … 108, 215, 219
Ale-taster … 109
Ale-wives … 104, 124–6, 128–9, 134, 192, 215, 314
_Ale-wife’s Supplication_ … 129
Ale-yard, The … 401
Alice Everade, a Brewster … 104
_All is ours and our Husbands_ … 112
Allsopp and Sons, Messrs. … 336
Ancient Britons, Use of Beer by the … 1, 28
Angel at Islington, The … 198
_Answer of Ale to the Challenge of Sack_ … 8
Apricot Ale … 386
Arboga, Beer of … 181
Armenia, Xenophon’s account of Beer in 401 B.C. … 27
_Arraigning and Indicting of Sir John Barleycorn, Knight_ … 20
Assize of Ale … 99, 102–3, 129
Atkinson, Richard, Advice to Lord Dacre … 8
B.
_Bacchanalian Joys Defeated_ … 192
“Baiersk öl” … 180
_Ballad on Ale_, Gay’s … 438
Banbury Ale … 171
Baptism in Ale … 38, 401
Barclay, Perkins & Co. … 341, 368
_Barrel of Humming Ale, The_ … 12
Barnstable Ale … 172
Bass, Ratcliffe and Gretton, Messrs. … 343
Bavarian Beer … 180
Bede-ales … 99
_Beer_, an American Poem … 13
Beer Brewers, The … 143, 147
Beer Powders … 176
Beer Street, Hogarth’s … 16
Beer, the Temperance Drink … 16, 18
Bees, Beer used in taking Swarms of … 403
Ben Jonson … 205
_Beowulf_, Mention of Ale in … 33
Bid-ales … 272
_Birthday Ode, A_, by Peter Pindar … 357
Bitter Beer, ancient cure for Leprosy among the Jews … 26
Black Boy Inn, Chelmsford, The … 220
Black Jacks … 396
Blackberry Ale … 386
Blind Pinneaux … 385
Boar’s Head in Eastcheap, The … 203
Boorde, Andrew, on Ale and Beer … 6
Boozer … 26
Borage … 390
Boswell, Anecdote of … 292
Bottled Beer, Origin of, etc. … 178
Bragget: Bragawd … 171, 378
Brasenose College Poems, and Ale … 7, 165, 389
Breakfast, Ale at … 274, 275
_Brewer’s Coachman, The_ … 148
Brewers’ Company, Historical Notes on the, etc. … 134, 137, 143, 147
Brewers of old London, The … 123, 146
_Brewers’ Plea; or, a Vindication of Strong Beer_ (1647) … 116
Brewhouse (German) of the sixteenth century … 131
Brewhouse in sixteenth century, Contents of … 56
Brewing at the present day … 331
Brewing in a Teapot … 2, 339
Brewing Trade in 1297, Legislation concerning the … 134
Brewing Trade, Regulations for, in the fifteenth century … 104
Brewsters … 100
Bride-Ales … 269, 272
Brown Betty … 389
βρυτον, “Britain” derived from … 31
_Bryng us in Good Ale_ … 230
Burton Ales … 160
_Burton Ale_; a Song … 161
Burton-on-Trent, Historical Account of, etc. … 335
Butler’s Ale, Dr. … 413
Buttered Beere … 385, 413
Buxton, Jedediah, a Great Beer Drinker … 293
C.
Cakes and Ale … 43, 239
Cambridge Ale at Stourbridge Fair … 105
Castle Coombe, Ancient Regulations concerning Brewing at … 107
Caton, Cornelius, of the White Lion, Richmond … 194
Cereris Vinum … 28
Cerevisia … 28
Charity, Ale Distributed in … 184, 278
Chaucer’s Reference to Ale … 40
Chavelier de Malte, The … 149
Chester Ale … 162
China Ale … 386
Christian Ale … 271
Christmas Carol, An Ancient … 263
Christmas Customs … 239, 264
Christopher North’s Brewhouse … 61
Church Ales … 239, 266–70
Churches, Ale Sold in … 272
Clamber-clown … 385
Clerk Ales … 270
Cobbett on Homebrew, in 1821, 46
Cock Ale … 385
Cock Tavern, The … 209
Cœlia … 28
_Coggie o’ Yill_, a Song … 329
Cold Tankard … 390
Collistrigium … 101
_Complete Angler, The_, Sold under the King’s Head Tavern … 205
Consumption cured by Ale … 414
Cookery, Beer used in … 403
Cooperage, sixteenth century, A … 334
Cooper, Origin of the Drink … 375
Coopers, Brewers forbidden to act as … 113
Coopers of Old London … 139
Copus-Cup … 391
Cornhill, The Taverns of … 203
Cost of Brewing in the sixteenth century … 57
Cotswold Games, The … 247
Country Sports and Pastimes, Herrick upon … 233
Cowslip Ale … 386
Crown and Anchor, Strand, The … 211
Cucking Stool, A Punishment for Ale-wives … 102
Cuckoo Ales … 272
Curmi … 28
Cwrw … 28
D.
Darby Ale … 162
Dawson, John, Butler of Christchurch, Oxford … 167
Derivations of “Ale” and “Beer” … 32
Devil Inn, Fleet Street, The … 208
Dietetic uses of Ale … 273
Dinton Hermit, The … 277
Distinctions between Ale and Beer … 6, 32, 152
Dogsnose … 388
“_Doll thi, doll, doll this Ale, dole_” … 404
Domestic uses of Ale … 403
Donaldson’s Beer-cup … 391
Dorchester Ales … 172
Dover’s Games … 247
_Drinke and Welcome_ … 4, 41, 147, 153, 158, 161, 188, 414
Drinking Customs … 279, 280, 290, 383
Drinking Vessels … 393
Drink-Lean … 247
Drunkenness in Olden Times … 108, 114, 116, 282, 292
E.
Early Closing, temp. Edward I. … 109
Edinburgh Ales … 169
Egg-Ale … 387
Egg-hot … 388
Egypt, Ancient use of Beer in … 25
Egypt, Suppression of Beer Shops in … 1, 25
Elderberry Beer … 386
English Ale, famous among foreigners in fourteenth century … 37
Epitaphs on Ale-drinkers, Brewers, and Innkeepers … 150, 164, 196, 208
Eucharist, use of Ale in the Administration of the … 402
Everlasting Club, The … 214
Export of Ale in Ancient Times … 113
Extraordinary Tithes … 91
F.
Falcon Inn, Chester, The … 197
Falcon Tavern, Bankside, The … 205
_Farmer’s Delight in the Merry Harvest, The_ … 253
Farmer’s Return, Hogarth’s … 45
Fever Cases cured by Ale … 415
Fire, Ale used to Extinguish … 407
Fish, Ale used as Food for … 402
Fishing Lines, Ale used to Stain … 402
Flip … 388, 389
Foot Ales … 273
Fowls, Beer as a Drink for … 403
Foxcomb … 385
Francis Francis on Bitter Beer … 5
Freemason’s Cup … 391
Frozen Ale … 169
Furry Day at Helston, The … 244
G.
Gentleman’s Cellar of the twelfth century … 52
George Inn, Salisbury, The … 196
German Beer … 178, 180
_Geste of Kyng Horn_, Extract from … 32
Gin Lane, Hogarth’s … 17
Give Ales … 272
Glutton-Masses … 286
_Good Ale for my Money_, a Ballad … 317
Grace-cup, The … 384
Grains … 145, 403
_Grand Concern of England, etc., The_ (1673) … 118
Greyheards, Anecdote of the … 398
Grout Ale … 164
Guild Feasts … 271
Guinness, Messrs … 348
Gustator Cervisiæ … 107
H.
Hacket, Marian, Ale-wife … 128
_Hal-an-low_, The; a Song … 244
Halders, Dame, of Norwich, Ale-wife, Anecdote of … 192
Hanaps … 395
Harrison on Homebrew and Malting in 1587, 54
Harvest Home Customs and Songs … 256–9
Harwood, Ralph, supposed Inventor of Porter … 366
Haymaker’s Song, The … 252
_Health to all Good Fellowes_, a Ballad … 325
Heather Ale … 175
Heaving … 241
Help Ales … 272
Herodotus on Egyptian Brewing … 25
Herrick … 15
Hicks, William, Brewer to the King … 149
_High and Mightie Commendation of a Pot of Good Ale_ … 71, 320
Highgate Oath, The … 198
Hobby Horse Dance … 239
Hock-Cart, The … 254
Hock-tide … 241
Hollowing Bottle, The … 255
Homebrew and Malting, Earliest Account of … 47
Hop-bine Ensilage … 82
Hop-Gardens of England … 87
Hop-Growers’ Troubles … 89
Hop-growing countries of Europe … 87
Hop-Pickers … 92
Hop-poles and wires … 88
Hop-Searchers … 70
Hop-Substitutes … 78
Hop-Substitutes, Anecdote … 425
Hops, Early Introduction into England of … 67
Hops, Early Mention of … 66
Hops in America and Australia … 87
Hops in Saxon times … 66
Hops, Legislation concerning … 73, 78
Hops, Medicinal uses of … 85
Hops, Mention of, in the City Records … 68
Hops, Prosecutions for using … 69
Hops, Various uses of … 82, 84
Horkey Beer, The … 256
Horses’ Feet Washed with Ale … 402
Hospitality in England in Early Times … 183, 190
Hot Pint … 237
Hot Pot … 388
_How Mault doth deale with Everyone_, a Ballad … 301
Huff-cap … 156
Huff-cup … 421
Hugmatee … 385
Hum-cup … 158, 388
Humming Ale … 158
Humpty-Dumpty … 385
Humulus Japonicus … 82
Hungerford Park, A Beer Cup … 391
Hymele … 66
Hypocras … 384
I.
Ind, Coope & Co., Messrs. … 351
Inn-keepers, Anecdotes of … 192
Ireland, Malt Liquors in … 30
Isaak Walton on Barley Wine … 191
J.
Jillian of Berry, Ale-wife … 128
Johnson, Dr. … 182, 209
_Jolly Good Ale and Old_ … 11
K.
Kentish Hop Gardens, Origin of … 70
Kent, Restrictive Enactment on Malting and Brewing in … 110
_King James and the Tinkler_, a Ballad … 405
Knock-me-down … 385
L.
Laboragol … 164
Labouring Classes, Advantage of Ale to … 425, 433
Lager Beer … 179
Lamb-Ales … 272
Lambswool … 381
_Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth, The_ … 117
_Lamentations of the Porter Vat, etc._ … 371
Leet Ales … 272
Licensing Laws in Ancient Times … 113
_Little Barley-Corn, The_, a Ballad … 303
London Ale … 160
_London Chanticleers, The_, Song from … 306
London Taverns … 183
Lord of the Tap … 105
Loving-Cup, The … 384
Lupuline … 80, 86
_Lupus Salictarius_ … 65
M.
Magpie and Crown, The … 221
Malt Liquor _v._ Cheap French Wines … 10
Malt, Medicinal Preparations of … 417
Malt, Sermon on … 289
Malting and Brewing by Women Servants in 1610, 47
Malting in Early Times … 120
Manchester Ale … 162
Mary-Ales … 273
Maule, Mr. Justice, Anecdote of … 376
May-Day Customs … 241–5
Measures, Legislation concerning … 101
Medical Opinions, Ancient and Modern, on Ale and Beer
… 403, 408, 419, 433
Mermaid in Bread Street, The … 206
_Merry Bagpipes_, The … 251
_Merry Fellows, The_, a Song … 290
_Merry Hoastess, The_, a Ballad … 308
Meux’s, Bursting of the Great Vat, etc. … 368, 371
Midsummer-Ales … 272
Mitre, Fleet Street, The … 210
Monasteries, Entertainment at … 183
_Monday’s Work_, a Ballad … 326
Monks as Brewers and Beer-drinkers … 37, 41, 50, 96, 285
Morocco, A Strong Ale … 169
Moss Ale, Irish … 176
Mother-in-Law … 392
Mother Louse, Ale-wife … 129
Muggling … 290
Mug House Club, The … 213
Mulled Ale … 378
Mum … 172
N.
_Newcastle Beer_ … 168
Newcastle Cloak … 116
_Newe from Bartholomew Fayre_ … 203
Newnton, Curious Custom at … 271
Nippitatum: Strong Ale … 157
Norfolk Ales—Norfolk Nog … 171
Northdown Ale … 162, 171, 385
North, Florence, Ale-wife … 215
Norwegian Beer … 180
_Nottingham Ale_ … 162, 167, 210
O.
October Club, The … 212
_Ode to Sir John Barleycorn_ … 20
Old Ale, The: an Anecdote … 15
Old Parr … 421
Origin of Ale … 25, 42
_Origin of Beer, The_ … 29
Origin of Inns, The … 185
P.
_Panala Alacatholica_ … 412
_Panegyric on Ale_ … 165
_Panegyric on Oxford Ale_ … 13
Parnell, Paul, A Great Beer Drinker … 59
Parsons, Humphrey, Brewer and Lord Mayor … 149
_Parson, The_, a Ballad … 287
Parsonage Alehouses … 187
Parting Cup, The … 389
Pasteur’s Discoveries … 441
_Patent Brown Stout_ … 369
Peg-tankards … 97, 394
Pennilesse Pilgrimage, Taylor’s … 162, 169, 190
_Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden_ … 73
Pharaoh … 158
_Philosopher’s Banquet_, Extract from … 44
Pig Drinking Ale out of a Jug … 15
Pledging … 383
Pliny on German Beer … 28
Plough Monday … 240
Plum-pudding Weighing 1,000 lbs., The … 203
_Pointes of Good Huswiferie_, Extract from … 56
Pope Innocent III., Anecdote of … 36
Porter at Oxford … 367
Porter Drinkers, Actors and Actresses as … 374
Porter in Ireland … 373
Porter, Origin of … 365
Porter, Professor Wilson on … 370
Posset Ale … 385
_Pot of Porter oh ! A_ … 376
Proverbs of Hendyng (thirteenth century) … 38
Purl … 387, 389
_Pye upon the Pear Tree Top, The_ … 256
Q.
Queen Elizabeth’s Breakfast … 275
_Quod Petis Hic Est_ … 328
R.
_Rape of Lucrece, The_ … 204
Receipts for Keeping and Flavouring Homebrew … 62
Rents Paid in Ale … 35
Rheumatism cured by New Ale … 416
_Robin Rough, the Plowboy_ … 426
Rouen, English Beer at, in 1582, 113
_Roxburghe Ballads_, The … 295
Ruddle … 388
Rumyng, Eleanor … 126, 216, 223
Russia, Burton Ale Exported to … 338
Russia, Burton Beer in … 181
S.
Salt & Co., Messrs. … 353
Saxon Leechdoms … 151
Scarcity of labour in fourteenth century … 39
Scot-Ales … 98, 267, 272
Scotch Ales … 169, 170, 171
Scotland, Ale Brewing and Selling in Early Times … 129
Scotland, Assize of Ale, etc., in … 129
Scurvy cured by Ale … 418
_Senchus Mor_, References to Ale in the … 30
Shakspere and Ale … 203, 270, 428
Shandy Gaff … 392
Sheep-shearing Customs and Songs … 250
Sicera … 26
Sign of the Red Lion, The, an Anecdote … 229
Signboard and Alehouse Poetry … 211, 223–7
Signboard Artists … 228
Signboards … 214–20
_Sir John Barley-corne_, The Ballad … 295
_Skelton’s Ghost_ … 110, 153
Small Beer … 159, 160, 277, 284
Smoke Question in London, Early Mention of the … 146
_Songs of the Session_, Extract from … 14
_Sonnet on Christmas_ … 262
Spiced Ale … 382
St. Dunstan, Legend of … 97
Steen, Jan, Brewer, temp. Chas. II. … 148
Stephony … 385
Stickback … 385
Stiffle … 385
Stout … 374
Strength of Malt Liquors Compared … 154
Sugar Beer … 177
Sulphuring of Hops … 81
Sunday Closing in Early Times … 115
Superstitions relating to Beer and Ale … 278
Swanne Taverne, The, by Charing Cross … 207
Swift’s _Polite Conversation_ on Homebrew … 59
_Symposii Ænigmata_, A Saxon Riddle … 34
T.
Tabard, The … 200
Tapstere, The Chester … 125
Taverns of Old London … 188, 203
Taxes on Ale … 38
Taylor’s, John, Signboard … 211
Temperance Drinks … 373
Temperance _v._ Total Abstinence … 14, 19, 423, 429
Tewahdiddle … 389
Thames Water used in Brewing … 122
Thrale’s Brewery … 340, 368
_Time’s Alterations, or the Old Man’s Rehersal_ … 396
Timothy Burrell, Extracts from the Journal of … 59
_Tinker’s Song_, Herrick’s … 291
Tithe Ale … 172, 273
Toasting … 383
_Toby Philpot_ … 399
Toll on Ale … 35
_Toper, drink, and help the house_ … 15
Treacle Beer … 177
_Treatise of Walter de Biblesworth_ … 47
Trinity Audit … 165
Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co., Messrs. … 355, 366
Tumbrel, Punishment of the … 100
Tusser on Hops … 76
Twelfth-day Customs … 238
Typhus-fever, Malt Liquor beneficial in … 419
V.
_Village Alehouse, The_ … 186
Vinegar made from Malt Liquor … 403
W.
Wadlow, Sim … 208
Wages Paid Anciently in Ale … 36
_Warme Beere_, Verses in Commendation of … 410
_Warrington Ale_ … 168
Wassail Bowl, The … 380
Wassailing … 234
Wassailing the Fruit Trees … 236
Weddyn Ales … 272
Welsh Ales … 30, 171
Weobley Ale … 127, 171
Wheat Malt, Ancient Use of … 105
Whitbread & Co., Messrs. … 359, 368
White Ale, Devonshire … 163
Whitington and the London Brewers … 135
Whitsuntide Ales and Customs … 246, 267
_Will Russell_, a Ballad … 195
_Wine, Beer, Ale and Tobacco; a Dialogue_ … 72
“Wine is but Single Broth” … 9
Women Brewers … 124
X.
X, Origin of the Symbol … 113
Y.
Yorkshire Ale … 161
_Yorkshire Ale, The Praise of_: A Poem … 312
Z.
Zythum … 28
[Illustration]
Transcriber’s Note.
Original spelling and grammar have been generally retained, with some
exceptions noted below. Original printed page numbers are shown like
this: {52}. Original small caps are now uppercase. Italics look _like
this_. Footnotes have been relabeled 1–75, and moved from within
paragraphs to nearby locations between paragraphs. The transcriber
produced the cover image and hereby assigns it to the public domain.
Superscripted letters are shown as for examples: “y^e”, or “Ma^{tie.}”.
Original page images are available from archive.org—search for
“cu31924029894759”.
The poetry indents are approximately correct in limited circumstances.
The indents were measured and adjusted using a monospace font: “Adobe
Source Code Pro”. Variable-width fonts will look less accurate.
Page ii. The third word of the caption seems to read “Bremhouſe”
(printed in what appears to the transcriber to be a variety of bastard
script), but has been rendered herein in the more likely “Brewhouſe”.
Page 25. Changed “What ha h been” to “What hath been”.
Page 27. Changed “οινος”—wherein the omicron was accented with psili
and perispomeni—to “οἶνος”.
Page 35. In the phrase “pay as toll to the lord gallons of ale”, a
number was missing.
Page 35n. The footnote read “1 The translation is taken from _Nineteen
Centuries of Drink in England_.”, but there was no anchor on the page.
Possibly this note refers to the _Symposium Ænigmata_ that ends at the
top of the page.
Page 38. The first footnote on the page had no anchor. A new anchor was
installed after the word “male,”, on the second line of the poem.
Page 49. Closing quotation mark was added after the line “Parlom ore de
autre chose.”
Page 74, 79. These full-page illustrations have been moved out of
their original locations inside poems to nearby locations below or
above, and the corresponding page numbers have been removed. Full-page
illustrations likewise situated in other places in the book have been
likewise treated.
Page 85. Full stop was added after “sometimes when opium failed”.
Page 100n. There was no anchor for the footnote; a new one has been
inserted after the word “brewster” at the top of the page.
Page 180n. The footnote had no anchor. A new anchor has been inserted
for this note, on page 179.
Page 184. Changed “religous” to “religious”.
Page 208n. The last word, partially illegible, is herein rendered
“out.”.
Page 235. The phrase “bring us a bowl of the bes” was changed to “bring
us a bowl of the best,”.
Page 264. Changed “carry ing over hilland dale” to “carrying over hill
and dale”.
Page 284. Changed “trusted, as we bear” to “trusted, as we hear”, and
“strirre” to “stirre”.
Page 325n. A new footnote anchor was inserted after “he that made, made
two.”.
Page 342. Full stop added after “dilutes his clay”.
Page 433. Changed “to live in a wine-growing, country will” to “to live
in a wine-growing country, will”.
Page 435. Changed “alcholic” to “alcoholic”.
Page 449. Changed “Weobly Ale” to “Weobley Ale”.
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