January 30, 1900

Albany, New York

Prohibition, Temperance Movement

In 1861, the Boston Temperance Alliance exclaimed that "alcohol in the living body [was] not a servant or a friend, but a disturber, a foe; in a single word,...a narcotic poison." The idea of prohibition has been around since colonial times, spear-headed by a man named Dr. Benjamin Rush who argued in 1784 that excessive alcohol consumption was harmful to both the human body and mind. These ideas were...