172 / 220
172
What Shall We Drink?
drank or drink (even sometimes intemperately) have come
our greatest geniuses of poetry,art, music,science,literature,
philosophy, politics, statecraft, mathematics, astronomy,
drama,war,invention,exploration, yes, and even of rehgion.
Hardly a hmnan activity can be named in which some
drinker has not stood pre-eminent—in manufactm-e, trade,
business and the industrial arts. By drinker, of comse,I do
not mean drunkard.
One must be bigoted, indeed, to combat the superabun
dant evidence of the centuries.
This book is not a defender of unbridled orgies or revelry.
Farfrom it. One need not become besotted to enjoy drinking.
For the weak brothers and sisters of the glass who do not,
or will not, drink moderately, there can be only pity or con
tempt. But because these comparative few persist in being
intemperate is no reason why the vast majority of human
kind should be placed in straitjackets of tyrannical prohibi-
tionism.
Entirely aside from the moral aspects of drinking, which
are capable of more than one interpretation,lie other features
of the question apparently ignored by fanatical reformers. I
refer to the medicinal value of Hquor, without which no book
on the subject of drinking could be complete.
During the period of Prohibition,it was possible to obtain
liquor legally through a doctor's prescription. Even the
authorities who declared that no one could drink—legally—
were forced to concede the life-saving quaUties of good liquor.
For instance, beers, ales, wines and liquors aU have valu
able medical qualities and have been prescribed down through
the centuries in cases of colds, fevers, poisoning, wounds and
anemia. They also form essential bases of tonics. Beer and
ale especially are excellent in their action on the elimination
processes of the human body. Given the choice between
them and the often habit-forming laxatives which are making
fortunes for patent medicine manufacturers, give me beer or
ale!
In colds,nothing is more likely to afford that blood stimu
lation needed to overcome congestion,than a good hot punch
—any of those in this book—or any of the other hot drinks