“Because there is pain”: Alcoholism, temperance and the Victorian physician

The effects of beverage alcohol and its use in therapeutics were matters of continuing debate for the medical profession in Victorian Canada. Practitioners, many of whom perceived alcoholism as a disease, were instrumental in the early organisation of the temperance movement. However, as the temperance movement gained momentum, the medical profession was unable to appropriate alcohol abuse as a medical concern, as it had drug addiction. At the same time, threats to its professional autonomy, differing class and ethnic loyalties, and disagreement were the vogue of alcohol, therapy, divided the profession and publicly illuminated inconsistencies in its position. The profession consequently failed to gain public support for the exclusive medical management of alcoholism.