Selections from an American History Collection
Assembled by Peter Pappas
www.peterpappas.com

 

Lesson 6  Document 10

The Moral Thermometer from Benjamin Rush's An Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors on the Human Body and the Mind. Boston: Thomas and Andrews, 1790.
Rush first published his Inquiry as a newspaper article in 1784. Its anti-alcohol message was hugely popular, and the book, in various editions, sold more than 170,000 copies by 1850. According to Rush, "A people corrupted with strong drink cannot long be a free people." He hoped to start a temperance movement so that by the 20th century " a drunkard…will be as infamous in society as a liar or a thief, and the use of spirits as uncommon in families as a drink made of a solution of arsenic or a decoction of hemlock."

http://www.librarycompany.org/ArdentSpirits/Temperance-medicine.html

 

 

 

 

Selections from an American History Collection
Assembled by Peter Pappas
www.peterpappas.com

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