Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-30-2024

Publication Title

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Volume

98

Issue

2

First Page

175

Last Page

204

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2024.a937503

Abstract

After discovering in 1811 that alcohol existed as a discrete chemical substance in all intoxicating drinks, physicians reconsidered the individual’s responsibility for becoming a compulsive drinker. Looking to science and medicine for legitimacy, temperance reformers ascribed a deleterious agency to alcohol and personified it as an agent of physiological destruction. Alcohol destroyed the body and transformed natural alimentary desires into a compulsive artificial appetite for alcohol. Reformers, prohibitionists, and physicians were troubled that alcohol possessed the ability to destroy the physical capacity for the power of choice. Ascribing agency to alcohol destabilized long-standing understandings of intemperance as a vice and imbued habitual drunkenness with medical meanings. However, most professionals remained anxious about absolving the habitual drunkard of all responsibility, especially for taking the first drink. An inchoate attempt to capture the medical and moral dilemmas of compulsion, habitual drunkenness represents a conceptual missing link in the genealogy of addiction.

Comments

This is a preprint of an accepted article scheduled to appear in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 98, no. 2 (Summer 2024). It has been copyedited but not paginated. Further edits are possible. Please check back for final article publication details.

Copyright © 2024 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 98, Issue 2, April 30, 2024, pages 175-204.

Download

Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Included in

History Commons

Share

COinS