When Philadelphian Dr. Benjamin Rush published his 
"moral thermometer" in the late 18th
century, he set the American temperance movement into motion. The thermometer
was a visual depiction of the horrors that awaited drunkards, and it placed
both moderate drinkers and abstainers on the moral high ground. The earliest
printed works of the movement focused on alcohol’s bad influence
on 
health, including the immediate effects of
drunkenness (like vomiting and headache) and the perceived long-term effects
of chronic drinking (like delirium tremens, spontaneous human combustion,
madness, and death). When the movement blossomed in the early 1830s, medical
arguments made up a powerful element in encouraging temperance, and many
doctors belonged to temperance organizations.
The Moral Thermometer from Benjamin Rush's An
Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors on the Human Body and the
Mind. Boston: Thomas and Andrews, 1790.
Rush first published his Inquiry as a newspaper article in 1784.
Its anti-alcohol message was hugely popular, and the book, in various
editions, sold more than 170,000 copies by 1850. According to Rush, "A
people corrupted with strong drink cannot long be a free people."
He hoped to start a temperance movement so that by the 20th century "
a drunkard…will be as infamous in society as a liar or a thief, and
the use of spirits as uncommon in families as a drink made of a solution
of arsenic or a decoction of hemlock."
This cartoon shows a man vomiting while a dozen doctors debate his condition. A black female servant knows the problem is drunkenness, but the doctors ignore her.
Exhibit Tour