Benjamin Rush The Effects Of Ardent Spirits Upon Man Summary

In 1805, Benjamin Rush, a physician from Philadelphia, wrote an essay titled "The Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon Man". Rush's writing reflected the changing attitudes towards distilled alcohol at the time, especially among the US medical community. Rush's article drew upon ideas from a century earlier; at the beginning of the eighteenth century, medical practitioners began taking a more scientific approach to medicine. Scientists and doctors like Rush felt that the American public needed to be made aware of the health hazards inherent in alcohol consumption. Rush's argument against the consumption of ardent spirits was not only scientific, but also moral. At the end of his essay, Rush described the moral evils that resulted from the use of distilled spirits such as fraud, theft, uncleanliness and murder (Runes 339). Not long after Rush began writing about alcohol's detrimental effects on moral and physical health, he began a correspondence with the Boston Minister Jeremy Belknap. The physician and the minister soon became collaborators, using a mixture of scientific and moral claims in their fight against the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

The teaming up of the minister and the physician is emblematic

The final part of Rush's essay dealing with morals and value judgments is based in pathos. Both logos and pathos played an important role in Temperance and Prohibition era propaganda, although ultimately, pathos proved to be the most widely used rhetorical method. Temperance and Prohibition era propaganda appealed to emotion through religious language, drawing upon the prevalent morals and values of the times. Both the Temperance Movement and Prohibition Era coincided with periods of intense religious fervor in the US. These religious revivals were steeped in Puritan moral codes which in turn served as the basis for the underlying ideology of antiliquor