Primary Sources

This was painted during the middle of the Temperance movement.  People started to protest against alcohol because of all the drunken violence and domestic abuse.  This painting supports the Temperance movement and is advertising the abolishment of alcohol.  This painting tries to teach the viewer how bad alcohol is for your body, and how it can slowly kill you by ruining your organs.  This painting does not, however, show the full story of the Temperance movement.  People’s main argument to why alcohol should be banished is because of the domestic violence and abuse in homes.  Fathers would regularly get drunk and beat their wives and children.  I believe that this painting was another way to attempt to convince people to stop using alcohol. Maybe the painter thought that if people didn't care about what they were doing to their family, the viewers would listen to the harm they were doing to themselves.

Whipple and Damrell. The victim of ardent Spirits.  1837-1841. Teach us History. http://teachushistory.org/Temperance/ps-victim.htm.  1/15/15.