As a follow-up to Robin Room's recollection about Susanna Barrow's story of
the fighting abilities of soldiers after imbibing alcohol, I wanted to
point out that this was a classic experiment taken up by the temperance
movement at the very beginning of this century, and copied in Germany and
other countries.  The original was a 1903 investigation in the Swedish
army, carried out by Lieutenant Bengt Boy, testing the marksmanship of
soldiers on days when they drank only water, and when they drank alcoholic
beverages.  The Bavarian army, after being pestered by Professor Emil
Kraepelin, grudgingly agreed to duplicate the experiment, and had soldiers
shoot a total of 34,000 rounds on 16 consecutive days, but came to the
conclusion that drinking alcohol made no difference whatever to their
marksmanship. "Our squads, trained to strict discipline and will power,
resisted the influence of the proffered dose almost entirely. It may be a
different matter with less well-trained soldiers (perhaps those of
Lieutenant Boy"!

More on this in my still-to-be-completed book on alcohol in Germany.

And the outline for the course I am teaching this semester on "Alcohol in
History" can be seen on my homepage, as a contribution to that discussion.

Best wishes,
Geoffrey Giles






Professor Geoffrey J. Giles

Department of History
P.O. Box 117320
University of Florida
Gainesville FL 32611-7320

Phone: (352)-392-0271
Fax:   (352)-379-0935
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Home pages: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ggiles/