If you read primary sources of the time, you get a lot of references to people drinking water, so I think the reasoning that they did it because of unsafe water is a bit of a myth. I think they drank it because they liked it. There were no other ways to escape - no drugs, no internet, no TV.
If you read primary sources of the time, you get a lot of references to people drinking water, so I think the reasoning that they did it because of unsafe water is a bit of a myth. I think they drank it because they liked it. There were no other ways to escape - no drugs, no internet, no TV.
Well.
1. You also get a lot of references to people dying in cholera, so...
2. It was believed at the time that strong drink kept bad health away.
3. To some extent no.2 is true. Adding alcohol to water reduces bacterial growth (when a ship went to sea practically all the water it carried contained alcohol to some degree). Consuming gin, wine and tequila have also shown to have some effect on improving the survival rate from many of the common common water contaminants such as cholera, listeria etc.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
Also note that constant, regular consumption of various forms of cocaine and opium was considered quite normal for the upper classes in both Europe and the USA, both men and women; generally the working class couldn't afford them or didn't have access to the specialized shops that sold them in the large cities, so heavy drinking was a working man's pasttime.
Watching a great video about why Operation Barbarossa failed but why they thought it would work, narrated by a dude with a lovely crisp German accent, who has a delightful turn of phrase;
"In hindsight it is obvious why Operation Barbarossa failed, yet in hindsight winning the lottery is also quite easy"
Everyone else was drinking just as much. Partiallly because alcohol was one of the few ways that you could have safe drinking water (the other being boiling it, which was one reason why coffee and tea was popular), partially because it was cheap, partially because the workdays were long. Most agricultural or industrial work didn't require much attention, so plenty of people were constantly buzzed (but generally not flat out drunk).
The lower alcohol consumption during the 20th century was very much due to workhours being shorter and requiring more mental focus.
Everyone else was drinking just as much. Partiallly because alcohol was one of the few ways that you could have safe drinking water (the other being boiling it, which was one reason why coffee and tea was popular), partially because it was cheap, partially because the workdays were long. Most agricultural or industrial work didn't require much attention, so plenty of people were constantly buzzed (but generally not flat out drunk).
The lower alcohol consumption during the 20th century was very much due to workhours being shorter and requiring more mental focus.
Don’t forget our good friend prohibition
If compared to countries that didn't have prohibition it was remarkably ineffective with the exception that it was a very hard hit against US wine and brewery culture...and it probably influenced the US as a country that overall consumed beer rather than wine.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
It was common for workers (including sailors) who engaged in heavy physical labor to drink more than 10 imperial pints (5.7 liters) of small beer during a workday to quench their thirst. Small beer was also drunk for its nutrition content; it might even have bits of wheat or bread suspended in it. Erasmus Darwin, in his A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education, in Boarding Schools of 1797, thought that "For the drink of the more robust children water is preferable, and for the weaker ones, small beer ...".[5] Larger educational establishments like Eton, Winchester, and Oxbridge colleges ran their own breweries.[6]
Watching a great video about why Operation Barbarossa failed but why they thought it would work, narrated by a dude with a lovely crisp German accent, who has a delightful turn of phrase;
"In hindsight it is obvious why Operation Barbarossa failed, yet in hindsight winning the lottery is also quite easy"
It was common for workers (including sailors) who engaged in heavy physical labor to drink more than 10 imperial pints (5.7 liters) of small beer during a workday to quench their thirst. Small beer was also drunk for its nutrition content; it might even have bits of wheat or bread suspended in it. Erasmus Darwin, in his A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education, in Boarding Schools of 1797, thought that "For the drink of the more robust children water is preferable, and for the weaker ones, small beer ...".[5] Larger educational establishments like Eton, Winchester, and Oxbridge colleges ran their own breweries.[6]
The low alcohol beer was likely what they were drinking but that doesn't matter if that is mainly what you're drinking. Small beer ranges from .5 to 2.8% ish and regular beer from 4% to 6%. 12oz at 5% is the same as 1.5 oz of hard liquor. At the bottom ranges those people were still drinking 2+ shots/day if they were drinking 10 imperial pints at 1%. That right there is over 4 gallons of alcohol/year for someone who consumes that much every day.
Granted 10 imperial pints is a lot of liquid but even then if you're drinking one quarter of that not including recreational drinking you're already at 1.15 gallons/year. Once you consider that there wasn't much else to do and you consider that all the small beer would likely increase your tolerance its not surprising that we got to hilarious levels of consumption.
The rest was likely a result of industrialization reducing alcohol prices.
I like low-alcohol beer, I like the taste and I hate getting drunk. I'd be in favour of "small beer" coming back. Kombucha is basically "small beer" made with tea.
It's also that there were few medical solutions to chronic pain, and a whole lot of jobs that could cause it. So being regularly buzzed was also rather necessary for some folks to keep earning a living.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
It's also that there were few medical solutions to chronic pain, and a whole lot of jobs that could cause it. So being regularly buzzed was also rather necessary for some folks to keep earning a living.
Yeah, they didn't have so much as aspirin for pain.
Not to mention anxiety, depression and all those other things we have a myriad of helps for. And people in the past had a lot of misery to numb - the child mortality rate was shocking. Most parents would be bereaved, most people would remember dead childhood friends and siblings.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
When did opiates become widely available? Early 19th century?
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
When did opiates become widely available? Early 19th century?
I think they were too expensive and rare for most random working folk. They had to be imported from exotic places. Not cheap. Alcohol, however, can be brewed anywhere.
Opioids were the kind of thing you got when injured in war rather than took regularly for your bad back, unless you were rich.
miller lite actually has more than twice as much alcohol; even 3.2 beer is a lot more potent
tbh it'd be hard to have enough 'small beer' to even get drunk, though I suppose folks back then made a run at it
They probably wouldn’t get much a healthy buzz let alone drunk from it. All you would do is increase your tolerance while increasing total consumption and (maybe? I don’t actually know how liver processing works) wearing out your liver
When did opiates become widely available? Early 19th century?
Opium has been around for thousands of years, but morphine was extracted from the opium poppy in the early 19th
Well. NOT in western medicine. While Opium had been reintroduced into Europe during the crusades (Anatolia grew basicly most of the opium consumed in Europe and the middle east) we can thank Paracelsus* (16th century) for reintroducing it into medicine...for various things. It remained the only true effective painkiller for the following 300 years until we developed effective alternatives.
* Aka Theophrastus von Hohenheim. Alchemist, medical iconoclast, astrologer, father of toxicology, really smart guy, and extremely full of himself. The name Paracelsus, which basicly means "better than celsus" (a roman philsopher). His most famous habit is that after he became a professor at the university of basel he regularily held bonfires where he burned copies of famous medical texts to show how little he respected them.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Watching a great video about why Operation Barbarossa failed but why they thought it would work, narrated by a dude with a lovely crisp German accent, who has a delightful turn of phrase;
"In hindsight it is obvious why Operation Barbarossa failed, yet in hindsight winning the lottery is also quite easy"
Pray tell, what video is this?
Judging by the quoted sentence, I think it's this one.
Where was all the medieval reefer at, big fuckin sticky bowl will ease your scabies or whatever terrible health problem you definitely have
I feel that the history of the world would have gone very differently if marijuana had spread faster and replaced booze for Europeans. It’s a weed so it can grow in poor soil, meaning that land used for fermentation ingredients could have been used for food. It grows fine in the European climate unlike opium. It has less addictive qualities, meaning that the perennial European problem of a certain proportion of the population being unproductive sots would not have happened - a constantly stoned pothead could have still done a peasant’s job. It provokes less violence, so the streets of early European cities wouldn’t have been such war zones.
Probably a lot more killing rather than a lot less, let's be honest. That's how they got all those young German boys to cruise through Eastern Europe killing millions after all, dope them up on speed and suddenly charging that Red Army MG position and killing everyone inside seems much more exciting and much less horrifically terrifying.
The Enlightenment and Revolutionary periods of Europe were driven in part by caffeine. Its the difference between a population that drinks away their problems vs a population that is getting tweaked.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I always wondered, with the prevalence of alcohol (even the low alcohol stuff), how many babies had cognitive problems due to FAS. Or was it as big of no-no for pregnant women to drink?
You have to drink quite a lot to get a baby with FAS. Low levels of alcohol are actually fairly safe, certainly one you're past the first trimester.
Our society is quite paranoid about pregnancy outcomes.
You have to drink quite a lot to get a baby with FAS. Low levels of alcohol are actually fairly safe, certainly one you're past the first trimester.
Our society is quite paranoid about pregnancy outcomes.
A lot of stuff around both pregnancy and young babies is based in "We aren't exactly sure on this point, so we are gonna be SUPER SUPER conservative".
From alcohol during pregnancy to which side to sleep your newborn on, they recommend the most insanely safe option just to be sure.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, alcohol was commonly used as a tocolytic, a method to stop preterm labor. The method originated with Dr. Fritz Fuchs, the chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Cornell University Medical College.[67][68] Doctors recommended a small amount of alcohol to calm the uterus during contractions in early pregnancy or Braxton Hicks contractions. In later stages of pregnancy, the alcohol was administered intravenously and often in large amounts. "Women experienced similar effects as occur with oral ingestion, including intoxication, nausea and vomiting, and potential alcohol poisoning, followed by hangovers when the alcohol was discontinued."[69] Vomiting put the mother at a high risk for aspiration and was "a brutal procedure for all involved." [67] Because the alcohol was being given intravenously, the doctor could continue giving the treatment to the mother long after she had passed out, resulting in her being more intoxicated than would otherwise be possible. Such heavy intoxication is highly likely to contribute to FASD.[67]
Historical references
Anecdotal accounts of prohibitions against maternal alcohol use from Biblical, ancient Greek, and ancient Roman sources[70] imply a historical awareness of links between maternal alcohol use and negative child outcomes.[33] For example, in the Bible, Judges 13:4 (addressed to a woman who was going to have a baby) reads: "Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean" (ESV). In 1725 British physicians petitioned the House of Commons on the effects of strong drink when consumed by pregnant women saying that such drinking is “…too often the cause of weak, feeble, and distempered children, who must be, instead of an advantage and strength, a charge to their country.”[71] There are many other such historical references. In Gaelic Scotland, the mother and nurse were not allowed to consume ale during pregnancy and breastfeeding (Martin Martin). Claims that alcohol consumption caused idiocy were part of the Teetotalism's message in the 19th century,[72] but such claims, despite some attempts to offer evidence, were ignored because no mechanism could be advanced.[73]
The earliest recorded observation of possible links between maternal alcohol use and fetal damage was made in 1899 by Dr. William Sullivan, a Liverpool prison physician who noted higher rates of stillbirth for 120 alcoholic female prisoners than their sober female relatives; he suggested the causal agent to be alcohol use.[74] This contradicted the predominating belief at the time that heredity caused intellectual disability, poverty, and criminal behavior, which contemporary studies on the subjects usually concluded.[47] A case study by Henry H. Goddard of the Kallikak family—popular in the early 1900s—represents this earlier perspective,[75] though later researchers have suggested that the Kallikaks almost certainly had FAS.[76] General studies and discussions on alcoholism throughout the mid-1900s were typically based on a heredity argument.[77]
Prior to fetal alcohol syndrome being specifically identified and named in 1973, only a few studies had noted differences between the children of mothers who used alcohol during pregnancy or breast-feeding and those who did not, and identified alcohol use as a possible contributing factor rather than heredity.[47]
You have to drink quite a lot to get a baby with FAS. Low levels of alcohol are actually fairly safe, certainly one you're past the first trimester.
Our society is quite paranoid about pregnancy outcomes.
Constantly supping on even low-alcohol ales is likely to take you past those limits.
Rules have always been different for women - in this case for good reason. Women have always been expected not to get drunk.
An illumination of a scene from the 'Skylitzes Chronicle', depicting a Thracesian woman killing a Varangian who tried to rape her, whereupon his comrades praised her and gave her his possessions.
Very graceful slaying posture
Hobnail on
Broke as fuck in the style of the times. Gratitude is all that can return on your generosity.
An illumination of a scene from the 'Skylitzes Chronicle', depicting a Thracesian woman killing a Varangian who tried to rape her, whereupon his comrades praised her and gave her his possessions.
Very graceful slaying posture
Her spear grip could use work, but whatever gets the job done.
Posts
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Well.
1. You also get a lot of references to people dying in cholera, so...
2. It was believed at the time that strong drink kept bad health away.
3. To some extent no.2 is true. Adding alcohol to water reduces bacterial growth (when a ship went to sea practically all the water it carried contained alcohol to some degree). Consuming gin, wine and tequila have also shown to have some effect on improving the survival rate from many of the common common water contaminants such as cholera, listeria etc.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
"In hindsight it is obvious why Operation Barbarossa failed, yet in hindsight winning the lottery is also quite easy"
Don’t forget our good friend prohibition
If compared to countries that didn't have prohibition it was remarkably ineffective with the exception that it was a very hard hit against US wine and brewery culture...and it probably influenced the US as a country that overall consumed beer rather than wine.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer
Pray tell, what video is this?
The low alcohol beer was likely what they were drinking but that doesn't matter if that is mainly what you're drinking. Small beer ranges from .5 to 2.8% ish and regular beer from 4% to 6%. 12oz at 5% is the same as 1.5 oz of hard liquor. At the bottom ranges those people were still drinking 2+ shots/day if they were drinking 10 imperial pints at 1%. That right there is over 4 gallons of alcohol/year for someone who consumes that much every day.
Granted 10 imperial pints is a lot of liquid but even then if you're drinking one quarter of that not including recreational drinking you're already at 1.15 gallons/year. Once you consider that there wasn't much else to do and you consider that all the small beer would likely increase your tolerance its not surprising that we got to hilarious levels of consumption.
The rest was likely a result of industrialization reducing alcohol prices.
tbh it'd be hard to have enough 'small beer' to even get drunk, though I suppose folks back then made a run at it
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Yeah, they didn't have so much as aspirin for pain.
Not to mention anxiety, depression and all those other things we have a myriad of helps for. And people in the past had a lot of misery to numb - the child mortality rate was shocking. Most parents would be bereaved, most people would remember dead childhood friends and siblings.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Opium has been around for thousands of years, but morphine was extracted from the opium poppy in the early 19th
I think they were too expensive and rare for most random working folk. They had to be imported from exotic places. Not cheap. Alcohol, however, can be brewed anywhere.
Opioids were the kind of thing you got when injured in war rather than took regularly for your bad back, unless you were rich.
They probably wouldn’t get much a healthy buzz let alone drunk from it. All you would do is increase your tolerance while increasing total consumption and (maybe? I don’t actually know how liver processing works) wearing out your liver
Well. NOT in western medicine. While Opium had been reintroduced into Europe during the crusades (Anatolia grew basicly most of the opium consumed in Europe and the middle east) we can thank Paracelsus* (16th century) for reintroducing it into medicine...for various things. It remained the only true effective painkiller for the following 300 years until we developed effective alternatives.
* Aka Theophrastus von Hohenheim. Alchemist, medical iconoclast, astrologer, father of toxicology, really smart guy, and extremely full of himself. The name Paracelsus, which basicly means "better than celsus" (a roman philsopher). His most famous habit is that after he became a professor at the university of basel he regularily held bonfires where he burned copies of famous medical texts to show how little he respected them.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Judging by the quoted sentence, I think it's this one.
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
I feel that the history of the world would have gone very differently if marijuana had spread faster and replaced booze for Europeans. It’s a weed so it can grow in poor soil, meaning that land used for fermentation ingredients could have been used for food. It grows fine in the European climate unlike opium. It has less addictive qualities, meaning that the perennial European problem of a certain proportion of the population being unproductive sots would not have happened - a constantly stoned pothead could have still done a peasant’s job. It provokes less violence, so the streets of early European cities wouldn’t have been such war zones.
middle east was really bogarting the stash back then.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
WoW
Dear Satan.....
Our society is quite paranoid about pregnancy outcomes.
A lot of stuff around both pregnancy and young babies is based in "We aren't exactly sure on this point, so we are gonna be SUPER SUPER conservative".
From alcohol during pregnancy to which side to sleep your newborn on, they recommend the most insanely safe option just to be sure.
Constantly supping on even low-alcohol ales is likely to take you past those limits.
Rules have always been different for women - in this case for good reason. Women have always been expected not to get drunk.
Very graceful slaying posture
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Her spear grip could use work, but whatever gets the job done.