1656 HEALTH 1^ed Drinking Water in 1600s England BEER WINE Opium Medicine Short

Richard Short’s “Of Drinking Water” is a rare, 17^th-century treatise on health and well-being in 1600s England. Published in 1656, Short’s popular work was written at a time when the majority of drinking water was not safe for most people and was distrusted as a regular drink (Pope). In fact, one of the chapters found in this treatise was called “That our English beer is better then [sic] water”. This chapter was not on the taste and preference of the two beverages, but rather on the safety of consuming one over the other. Other topics considered by Short included:

·        Elderly and children are to avoid drinking water

·        The virtues of drinking English beer

o   “experience that beer is healthful”

·        Consuming opium and poppy along with water

·        That wine is absolutely better than water

·        Effects of water on heart palpitations, gout, and dropsy

Item number: #24969

Price: $2500

SHORT, Richard

Peri psychroposias, of drinking water against our novelists, that prescribed it in England : whereunto is added, peri thermoposias, of warm drink, and is an answer to a treatise of warm drink, printed at Cambridge

London: Printed for John Crook ..., 1656. First edition.

Details:

·       Collation: Complete with all pages

o   [32], 173, [1]

·       References: Wing S 3528; Norman 1943; ESTC R33813; Peter Pope, “Historical Archaeology and the Demand for Alcohol in 17^th-century Newfoundland”

·       Language: English

·       Binding: Leather; tight and secure

·       Size: ~6in X 3.75in (15cm x 9.5cm)

·       Exceedingly rare, valuable, and desirable with auction records at over $3500

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24969