Clio: Revista de Pesquisa Histórica (Dec 2006)
MODERATION AND EXCESS; USE AND ABUSE: THE MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE ABOUT ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES.
Abstract
This article draws a broad panel of the tradition of therapeutic use of alcoholics in Western societies, highlighting the contextualization of two important theories formulated during the nineteenth century: alcohol-food, attributed to Liebig, and Todd's potion. It also focuses on the changes in medicine and criticism of alcoholics in the second half of that century, addressing the link between medicine and alcoholism in the industrial society that constituted it when the capitalist process of labor was introduced . Here, the theories of degeneration and heredity that so deep scars left in these societies stand out.
