The 19th century was an age of high consumption of alcohol--compared with the late twentieth century, but not with the 18th century--plus consumption of opium and cocaine, both of which were legally available. The ravages caused to the human body by excessive alcohol or drugs were poorly understood, and physicians regularly prescribed narcotics as painkillers; some even recommended heavy alcohol consumption. Governments did little to control alcohol or opium sales in 1800. Laissez-faire capitalism, which opposed government restrictions on the market, perpetuated that situation. Furthermore, alcohol taxes kept most governments in business. In 1870 Britain had virtually no income tax but raised 35 percent of its total revenue on alcohol taxes. In Ireland, 54 percent of all government revenue was raised by taxes on alcohol. End-of-the-century Russia raised even more income through a government monopoly on vodka.

Heavy drinking was socially acceptable. William Pitt the Younger frequently addressed Parliament while drunk; on important occasions, he stepped behind the speaker's chair and induced vomiting before making a critical speech. Even the more puritanical Gladstone drank a sherry mixture in Parliament, to ease his way through three-hour speeches. Another prime minister made himself light-headed with ether before speaking, and a fourth took a jolt of opium dissolved in alcohol. If the rich and powerful behaved that way, it is hardly surprising that people who lived in a world of epidemic disease, short life expectancy, seventy-to-eighty-hour workweeks, no welfare legislation or retirement, and minimal diets found solace and sociability in cafes, pubs, and beer halls.

A variety of records reveal the extent of 19th century drinking. The Antwerp study found that beer consumption in the 1820s averaged two bottles per day (twenty-three ounces) for every man, woman, and child in the population, plus approximately one bottle of wine and one bottle of gin each per month; by the 1850s nearly 10 percent of all calories consumed in the city came from alcohol. A similar survey of France in 1900 found a per capita annual consumption rate of 180 liters of wine (240 standard bottles), 27 liters of beer (more than three cases of 12-ounce bottles), and 4.7 liters of distilled spirits (more than 5 bottles of alcohol). Those averages include the entire population. If one excludes children below the age of fourteen (more than 30 percent of the population in 1900), every adult in France had to consume 325 bottles of wine per year; clearly, a significant portion of the population drank more than a bottle per day, all year long, much of it distilled to make a rough brandy. A study of Russia found that spending on vodka exceeded total spending for education, books, oil, gifts, priests, the poor, weddings, and funerals, which may explain why the government chose to tax vodka instead of books.

Such drinking led to efforts to control sales of alcoholic beverages. The first European temperance society was organized in Ireland in 1818, and such groups spread across the British Isles during industrialization. Many motives could be discerned behind the temperance campaign: Some reformers were motivated by religious morality and saw drinking as sinful; others acted from the perspective of social class--sometimes to help families in poverty, sometimes in fear of the poor and crime, sometimes angry about alcohol and absenteeism from work. Although the upper classes were notoriously heavy drinkers, most reformers agreed with employers that drink was "the curse of [the] working class." British law regulated the opening hours of alehouses in 1828 and began the licensing of pubs in 1830. Scottish clergymen won the first prohibition of alcohol--no sales on Sundays--in 1853. . . .

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