Heart Beat: "Vulgoque veritas iam attributa vino est" - Pliny the ElderA sort of in vino veritas I suppose. This column is not all about alcohol. As I write it, another official body is looking into the so-called national predilection with the topic, writes Maurice Neligan.
It will doubtless come up with recommendations for some action or other that will be buried in the graveyard of similar endeavours.
With great diffidence I might suggest to those compiling the latest effort that they read the voluminous published literature on the subject, including the many references in the Bible. I suppose it's possible to come up with something new but in this case I doubt it.
At Christmas I acquired a great treasure. It is a copy of the seventh edition of Neligan's Medicines edited by Dr Rawdon McNamara in 1867. John Moore Neligan (1815-63) was a Dublin physician who challenged the incumbent, Sir Dominic Corrigan, for the presidency of the Royal College of Physicians.
Dr Corrigan was then completing his plans to relocate the college to its present location in Kildare Street. The vote was tied at 14 votes each and Sir Dominic had no problem in using his casting vote to retain his position.
It's a large book and I noticed under the heading "Stimulants" that there was a lengthy description of the therapeutic uses of alcohol. In dealing with the treatment of fevers, he avers, "some patients do not require any; some are positively injured by it; in many cases it is our great remedy and must be given in any quantity that may be required". He adds that the temperate benefit most and "its ill effects are the most apparent in the habitual drunkard". I think it was the case that if the cure failed, at least you would die happy.
Part of the work could have been written today: "to urge the entire abolishment of alcoholic beverages, on account of the numbers of wretched victims of an inordinate indulgence in them, we so frequently meet with, is but to argue from their abuse to their use". He felt "that wine is to the exhausted brain what food is to the exhausted body" and he had no hesitation in recommending it for the then equivalent of the white collar worker.
He did not think that it was called for in the case of the "physical labourer, in whom I consider the habitual of alcoholic spirits is worse than uncalled for". Presumably he meant that the lower orders might lose the run of themselves, as my late mother would have put it.
He was not blind to the deleterious effects of drink, be it constant imbibing or binge drinking. Stomach pumps figure in the treatment of the former, while the treatment of delirium tremens is described for the latter. It's all there - the medicinal properties of sherry, Madeira, port, claret, burgundy, malt liquors and champagne. No mention that each bottle should carry a government health warning. Things were different in those days. An enthusiastic physician prescribing from this formulary might well have some crowded surgeries. No breathalyser then, no being drunk in charge of a horse; however then, as now, there were highest authorities gazing sceptically at the hapless wretch as he stammered that the doctor had prescribed the medicine. I wouldn't dare try that one.
Attitudes to drink vary over the cultures and the years and one constant is false penitence. Samuel Pepys wrote "Thanks be to God, since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time in idle company." Conversely, little repentance was exhibited by Pepys's contemporary Henry Aldritch in his translation from the Latin:
"There are five reasons why men drink
Good wine, a friend, or being dry
Or lest you should be, by and by
Or any other reason why."
Speaking at the launch of the 15th proceedings of the Blackrock Society last week brought up other times in this community. Before the building of the Kingstown-Dublin railway in 1833, both Blackrock and Booterstown were major holiday resorts. Ball's History of the County Dublin (1902) relates: "Blackrock became celebrated for its immense consumption of claret and spirituous liquors."
Lord Townshend, viceroy from 1767 to 1772, spent his summers at Rockfield on the outskirts of the town. Apparently he was a man for a good party and contemporary accounts speak of revelry and dissipation. He had the reputation of being an "eight bottle man".
The mind boggles - how would you set about translating that into units per week? Townshend had 14 children by two wives and lived to the age of 83. He mustn't have smoked or maybe it was watered wine; possibly though, he just had the right genes.
The famous diarist and socialite Mrs Delany told of a visit to a house in Booterstown in 1732 followed by a dance into the small hours in which she consumed more "peck and booze". Mrs Delany nee Granville was 44 years of age when she married the Rev Patrick Delany, fellow of Trinity and professor of Oratory and History there. Rev Delany said of his wife "she was fair as the moon, clear as the sun, but terrible as an army with banners". Sounds kind of familiar.
Mrs Delany lived to 88 and her husband to 83. They took the high life in their stride in those days, unbothered by the health fascists, gurus, call them what you like, of subsequent years.
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.
