Benjamin Rush, “A Moral and Physical Thermometer: Or, a Scale of the Progress of Temperance and Intemperance,” 1790

A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush (1746–1813) was a prominent politician and doctor in Philadelphia. In his work examining the effects of alcohol, he classified the types of behavior likely to accompany different kinds of drink. Drinks with little alcohol, such as wine or “small beer,” had benign or even positive effects, he argued, while stronger drinks, especially those with rum, led to sickness in mind, body, and morals. A version of this diagram first appeared in An Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors on the Human Body and the Mind (1790) and was widely reprinted in the antebellum period.

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Source: Benjamin Rush, 1746–1813, author/U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).

Evaluating the Evidence

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