Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [16]
According to an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal,2 a Philadelphia physician named Benjamin Rush, a contemporary of Franklin, penned an article titled “Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors on the Human Body and the Mind.” Part of the article was a “moral thermometer” that linked drink with points on a scale of intemperance. At the top of his scale, Rush placed water, milk, and molasses, which he associated with health, wealth, and happiness. Wine, port, and beer were farther down, delivering cheerfulness and nourishment “when taken only at meals and in moderate quantity.” Spirits and morning drams, at the bottom, delivered “dropsy, epilepsy and apoplexy,” leading to “obscenity, fraud and the workhouse or a whipping.”
Did Rush influence Franklin, or was it vice versa? Did they compare “moral thermometers”? If they did, I like to think they might have done so over a wee dram, just enough for cheerfulness and not nearly so much that a whipping or the workhouse would follow.
Was Rush the inspiration for Franklin’s Temperance, and if so, did that provide any answer to what Franklin meant (and, in turn, what I should have been doing)? Of course, Rush and Franklin must have known each other. Philadelphia was not so big in the late eighteenth century that two learned men would not have encountered each other. Rush’s article sold 170,000 copies and is credited with starting the American temperance movement. If Franklin was influenced, what did he take from Rush?
The answer is in the same editorial. Temperance, the editorial declares, is often confused with abstinence. “Abstinence is an extreme and rigid state that sometimes results in prohibition and condemnation; temperance, on the other hand, is a process of self restraint and moderation, the middle road. Plato regarded temperance as one of the cardinal virtues of a society and of an individual.”3
That helped. I had been wary of the big T because I was thinking of abstinence, which has far too monastic a quality for me. I could live with being temperate, so long as I was not asked to abstain. Besides, who can argue with Ben Franklin and Plato? I resolved to do better.
But then night fell.
Snacks called to me as darkness descended. Like alcohol and smoking and gambling for others, snacking is a rest stop on my personal road to perdition. Not only do I do it with alarming regularity, but I have created new and innovative ways to make foods bad for me. On Night 3, it was one of my favorite fixes for late-night munchies. I took the humble cracker and a block of cheddar—very old cheddar. I cut the strips as thick as a two by four, then arranged the crackers around a plate and lay mounds of these thick slabs of artery-clogging goodness over them so that they became no more than a rumor—a memory under cheese. I then microwaved these bad boys until the cheese had melted enough that it was soft and gooey and the oils had leached onto the plate.
{ Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.}
I was weak. I was intemperate. I was sad. I was full of cheesy cholesterol.
But I would not be defeated in the first week of the virtues. I would carry on, be temperate, and lead a virtuous life (at least for thirteen weeks). Out, out, damn cheddar!
Four Less-Than-Temperate Days Later
Temperance week had come and gone. Had I been temperate? Would Ben be proud?
I had done, at best, okay. No great failures, but no overwhelming success either. I read somewhere that a habit takes about six to twelve weeks to develop, so I suppose I shouldn’t have expected the habit of Temperance to be hardwired into my brain just yet. I was only slightly consoled by the fact that my biggest failures during the week were