Anyway, I liked Franklin's description of all the drinking that went on at a printing-house in London:
At my first admission into this printing-house I took to working at press, imagining I felt a want of the bodily exercise I had been us'd to in America, where presswork is mix'd with composing. I drank only water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great guzzlers of beer. On occasion, I carried up and down stairs a large form of types in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands. They wondered to see, from this and several instances, that the Water-American, as they called me, was stronger than themselves, who drank strong beer! We had an alehouse boy who attended always in the house to supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o'clock, and another when he had done his day's work. I thought it a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he suppos'd, to drink strong beer, that he might be strong to labor. I endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made; that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread; and therefore, if he would eat that with a pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer.We hear lots of excuses for drinking nowadays, but never that one. Hilarious. How could people get anything done, drinking like that?
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I believe that it was pretty common for people in many places in the world to go through life with a constant low-level beer/wine buzz well into the 19th century, since potable water was hard to come by. According to a friend who lived in Russia for several years, it's still the case there-- beer is considered by many people to be basically non-alcoholic (at least among the crowd he ran with).
Ulykwong: A mildly alcoholic brew made from stale, fermented Pocky that's quite popluar in the lower-rent suburbs of Beijing.
Ahh Chimay, now that's good
Now there's anti depressants, pain killers, muscle relaxers, anti seizure, panic disorder, bladder control, meds and that's just me.
I can't drink beer and get along very well though
How could people get anything done, drinking like that?
Short answer: Experience. Lots and lots of experience.
Hey! Look at me. I just figured out how to use the HTML tags. And I'm not even drinking!
Yah, Bissage, but can you link?
How could people get anything done, drinking like that?
Why do you think the industrialized world has seen such huge productivity gains over time?
We work fewer days per week than was common 'back in the day', frequently shorter days, take more vacation and sick time, and goof off on the internet. And we're able to do this and STILL get more accomplished just because we took at least one third of Dean Wormer's advice: "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life."
Actually it's not necessarily wrong logic (although the beer needs to be a bit weak) historically. Beer was probably how a lot of ancient workers got safe drinking water and has a long history of being used to pay workers for hard labor.
I'm coming straight out of reading a little book called "A History of the World in Six Cups" which portrayed beer as sort of the workingman's friend, so, maybe I'm a little biased at the moment. But Franklin may have it wrong.
Man oh man is this topic making me want to have a good old-fashioned 3-martini lunch today.
I worked in a touristy bar and grill in New Orleans right after college, and I found that I usually made better tips if I loosened up with a drink or two during the shift. Especially if those drinks were shots done with customers.
Icepick: No. But maybe I'll work my way up to it, eventually. I've just started commentating and understand neither the technique nor the etiquette. I'll go slow.
I don't want to be perceived as overreaching.
I love Franklin's Autobiography. Franklin on vegetarianism:
...in my first voyage from Boston, being becalm'd off Block Island, our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food, and on this occasion consider'd, with my master Tryon, the taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had, or ever could do us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a greatlover of fish, and, when this came hot out of the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you." So I din'd upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
Beer isn't so great during work, but it makes after-work so much better, and I wouldn't be surprised if that correlates to higher productivity the next day.
All of you relying on the theory that the water of the time was undrinkable, how do you figure Franklin drinking water and doing just fine?
I'm thinking Ben Franklin had the better idea as to which flag we should adopt as our national standard, as well.
As far as choleric water v a frothy tankard of ale, choose ale (clean water v ale, choose clean water)
My grandparents travelled a great deal, and that was my grandfather's trick, he would never drink the local water, but he would drink bottled beer.
He claims it saved him all sorts of stomach upset.
One of my colleagues runs marathons. When she needed to move her performance up to be more competitive, her doctor advised her to stop being vegetarian, and enjoy a nice rare steak every week, and drink plenty of Guinness. It worked.
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