In wintry Britain of 1950, specifically the virtual eve of Christmas, a doctor wrote a “A Toast to Bacchus” in the British Medical Journal. Need I add the title was ironic.
The writer went unnamed, probably from prudence given his subject matter. Let’s call him, in a phrase of the day, Dear Doctor.*
In measured, mid-century English fashion he lamented the passing of alcohol as, if not quite medicine, an aid and comfort in hospitals, and benign resort for the prescription pad.
By his time medicine had pretty much given up that alcohol had any therapy value. But his essay shows vestiges of an older time, when alcohol, even “different wines” as he said, were prescribed for various ailments.
He felt beer had both vitamin and caloric value, particularly when food was short (why not turn its grain into food, then?). As to stout for nursing mothers, he was a proponent.
A backdrop to his piece is, the implementation in 1948 of the N.H.S., i.e., universal health care in Britain – to which the great majority of doctors were opposed.
See background on the doctors’ stance in the website of the Socialist Health Association.
Nonethless the measure, which originated in the 1942 Beveridge Report, passed, boosted by the postwar Labour government.
In this light Dear Doctor foresaw a quelling effect on alcohol in the physician’s quiver. He wrote no more beer would course on hospital floors.
Henceforth, he said more reading material (“journals”) would be available. Not quite the same thing.
In an interesting phrase he considered the modern welfare state an inheritor of the “Puritan tradition”.
In his words:
Talk about drink is apt to raise passions quite as fierce as those let loose by the actual consumption of liquor. The literature is immense, the debate endless. Yet medical opinion has never been against the drinking of wine and ale within reason. Hospital residents have often been served with free beer as part of their emoluments, hospital patients have often had stout prescribed as part of their diet, and textbooks sometimes indicate what wine may be allowed. It may be that the National Health Service will change this too. At least one hospital is in future to provide its residents with free journals instead of free drink, and whisky, in spite of the patient’s plea, is not available on an E.C.10. “Dr. A., Please Sir would you kindly leave a prescription for me to get some Benedictine and surgical spirit. Thank you,” and: “Dear Dr. B., I am writing on behalf of my sister, and as she has got a very bad cold, and also as I have heard that it is possible to have a prescription for whisky under the National Health Scheme, I hope you will give her son one.. . .” How many of us there are who get appeals of this kind! The modern planned State is the direct inheritor of the Puritan tradition. Yet a little of Merrie England still lingers on in the season from Christmas to New Year, and its symbol is the glass that cheers.
So it all came down finally to Christmas, the one time left people could let go. Of course beer and pubs continued in society. But as Dear Doctor noted, and this has not really changed, beer was now weaker than in the past.
With strong beer and the old cheap gin by the wayside, sobriety would more or less rule year-round, save a Bacchic revival at Christmas.
In this, he was prophetic, but not overly so. He would be amazed I think to know that in Canada and perhaps elsewhere, managed alcohol programs exist, to treat the state of extreme alcoholism to which sadly many are subject.
This involves dispensing alcohol – wine, for the programs I’ve read about – in measured amounts. This lessens the risk of DTs and other serious impacts from the addiction.
The University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research studies the operation and effectiveness of MAPS in Canada, see details in this page.
Indeed Britain itself was among the pioneering nations to prescribe heroin to drug-addicts, the history of which even precedes the 1950 article.
The Transform Drug Policy website offers good information on current state and history.
This of course, and the MAPS, are not quite the same as allowing patients a pint of beer in a care ward; still, there are analogies.
Perhaps a closer one is government-run wine and liquor stores, with appealing decor and product displays, legion in modern Canada.
State-run alcohol shops existed in some countries in Dear Doctor’s time, as he had to know, but they had a clinical aspect. So did Canada’s version, now consigned to social policy’s dustbin.
So what do we take from this? Many things change that once seemed immutable truths. In a way we are back to the earlier period Dear Doctor remembered, despite continuance of the welfare state.
If hospitals still don’t provide stout on ward, one doesn’t have to importune dear doctor for a prescription. Liquor is available (not free of course) at the corner shops, with your pint of milk and bag of crisps. At all hours, more or less.
So too beer and stout, in fact more kinds, in a greater variety, than one English district could offer in 1950.
Alcohol, on the other hand, is considered a risk to the pregnant and progeny-to-be, and should be avoided. And its calories today are pretty much regarded as empty.
We live, we learn, but most important I think, everything changes finally, or more often than not.
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*The phrase is remembered in the 1960s Rolling Stones song of the name.