CURES FOR DRUNKENNESS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2478, 14 August 1903, Page 6

CURES FOR DRUNKENNESS.

Professor W. L Brown, L.R.C.P., L. K.U.S., etc., has issued his address on the subject of inebriety among the ancients, and how they cured it, in one part of which he deals with Ihc penalties imposed. " The Egyptians were cmel task-masters," he says, "to those who offended against the social law. They flogged them mercilessly and with the stick. They picked them from the earth and imprisoned them for drunkenness. The drunkard suffered no end of barbarity in that country. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, suffered the oddest puuishment for his indulgence in too much liquor. ' His body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds' claws.' " In Greece in past ages inebriety was more common than at present ; the wine was stronger, and perhaps not so pure. The au cient Grecian was therefore regulated and penalised for excess. Some lawgivers prohibited the use of more drink than was necessary for health. Some sages restricted drinking to three cups—one for health, one for cheerfulness, one for sleep ; Lycurgus, the Spartan, prohibited drinking except for the specific purpose of quenching thirst. He cut off the legs of drunkards, and destroyed all the vines he could. Solon condemned an archon to death for being drunk, and the Senate of Areopagus penalised men for standing too long at the wine-bar. Pittacus, the sage of Mytelene, indicted double punishment for a crime committed in drink. Nowadays the Greek drinker is not held ie ponsible, and the vice of drunkenness is at present very rare in Greece. History tells us that every form of prohibition, torture, disgrace, even death itself, have been the portion from ancient times till now of the unhappy habitual inebriate. From time to time outbursts of popular righteousness, or fanaticism, have overwhelmed him. Sultan Soliman I. caused molten lead to be peared down the throats of what he called " obstinate drunkards." From this extremity the inebriate has suffered every shade of iniquity, cruelty, and indignity at the hands of pious and pretentious legislators. The inadequacy of penal restriction can nowhere receive belter illustration than the penal laws which have been enacted from the earliest periods of our country's history. Our own country has played a vigorous part in religious repressive impositions. For it appears that in the Christian ages and in Christian countries the custom of partaking of alcoholic liquors grew to such an extent, that canonical regulations had to be laid down to check it at a very early period. Probably the first liquor law of this country was that canon of St. Gildai (the wise) (latter half of sixth century), which at the close of the sixth century sent the drunken monk supperless lo bed. St. David was still more severe. He imposed three days' penance for the first offence and forty days if it were repeated. Theodore of Canterbury (668-693) extended the law to laymen, who got fifteen days' penance for drunkenness. From this to the principle of prohibition was bnt a step. The Saxon King Edgar (959-971)instiiuted it by reducing the number of alehouses in the villages and instituting the custom of pegging the huge drinkingcups then in use. He made it a penal offence for anyone to drink beyond the peg. Thiß " drinking to the peg " was not everything that cou d be desired by the rigid prohibitionists of that time, and was so unsuccessful in the case of the priests that St. Anselm (died 1079) took a stand and forbade priests either te go to "drinking bouts" or to "drink to pegs.'' A further development of this took place in King John's reign when hte Scot ale or shot houses were interdicted. Other prohibitive measures were found in ignominous and disgraceful treatment meted out lo inebriates. The corporations in those early ages had far more extensive power of dealing with drunkenness than they have at the present day, and they sought out many strange inventions to cure the drunkard. The local control was the most absolute in every respect that could be imagined, and the " cares " they adopted were various and strange but never very effective. The Corporation of Newcastle invented a jacket by taking a barrel with one end knocked out, placing toe inebriate's head through a hole in the other end and compelling him to promenade the streets like a man in a circular sandwich. Besides this they used the filthy hurdle of Edward I.'s time to drag the poor creature through the open- sewers and cesspools of the towns and "streetsthat are most dirty." Public ducking of offenders in dirty water was much in vogue four centaries ago. A newspaper describes such an event even in 1745:—" Laßt week a woman that keeps the ' Queen's Head ' alehouse at Kingston, Surrey, was ordered by the Court to be ducked, and accordingly placed in the chair and ducked in the river Thames, under Kingston Bridge, in presence of two or three thousand people." The tucking stool or "Cock Stule'' was used for drunken women even in this century. Jane Cnrran was punished in I his way not more than eighty years ago at Lcominsler.Herts. It was also used at Kingston on Thames in 1738. In James I.'s time, and long before the stocks was a favourite punishment, and in latter days mafly drunken people, among whom we rosy mention the immortal Pickwick, were wheeled into the pound to await there the filthy tokens of the playful disposition of the English manyheaded. This might also be called the filth treatment of drunkenness.