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Date:          Thu, 13 May 1999 15:36:01 -0700
Reply-to:      VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society
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From:          Christine Alfano <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:       Re: brandy (again)
To:            [log in to unmask]

One of the chief opponents of the Temperance Movement during Victorian
times was the medical establishment, which traditionally insisted that
alcohol was not only the most effective medicine in most cases, but also
was necessary to maintain health (the correlative would be the medical
reports a few years back that suggested that a glass of wine or two a day
is healthier for you than no alcohol at all).  Temperance tales often
depict a crisis point for a teetotaller as being when he would get sick or
injured and the doctor would press brandy or a cordial upon him as a
medicine -- of course the total abstainer would refuse to take anything
alcoholic and would nevertheless heal remarkably well by just drinking
water (or so the tracts claimed).

Another interesting note about brandy/cordials as medicine: the Temperance
Movement insisted that most female drunkards became intemperate after being
prescribed wine/brandy/cordials by a doctor ... they would first take the
prescribed dosage, but then become so dependent on it that they would
secretly sneak money to the hired help to run out to the local gin-shop to
buy alcohol.  Keep in mind that women were prescribed alcohol not only for
illness/injury but also while nursing and just for "nerves": considering
that invalidism or infirmity in general was practically cultivated among
"elite" woman, you could see how a lot of middle-class women ended up
dipping a little too often into the brandy.

You could look at *Middlemarch* for an interesting fictional depiction of
the debate over medicinal alcohol: Lydgate represents the new school of
medicine (no-alcohol) and his philosophy is (mistakenly) blamed for the
death of Raffles (actually, alcohol administered as medicine hastens
Raffles' death).

- Christine
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Christine Alfano
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