Get the latest tech news

Blurred Forms: An Unsteady History of Drunkenness (2014)

With the invention of gin and the rise of temperance movements, the history of alcohol accelerated.

Thomas Wilson, the Bishop of Sodor and Man, who also spoke in opposition to the increased consumption of gin, pointed out the ways in which drinking seemed to emaciate the drunkard, essentially reducing the body to a skeleton. While Rush’s efforts against the consumption of alcohol certainly stood at the forefront of the emerging temperance movement, he, as well as other physicians, did attempt to convey some understanding of how drinking affected the human body. One would suppose, from the marred and scarred, and sometimes awfully disfigured forms and faces of men who have indulged in intoxicating drinks, which are to be seen everywhere and among all classes of society, that there would be no need of other testimony to show that alcohol is an enemy to the body.

Get the Android app