An early edition of Franck’s treatise “On the horrible vice of drunkennness”, which is one of the first to deal with the alcohol abuse and has a very modern tone; first published by Steiner in 1531.
Franck did not disapprove of modest intake, a little drinking is healthy and a means to keep fit: “The sun is not evil for being worshipped by idolaters. Gold is not bad because some men are driven to the gallows by it. Flowers are not poison because of the poison spiders make out of them.” However, and in this he is not that different from tee-totallers and abolitionists in the 19th and 20th centuries, he does see the dangers inherent in over-indulgence and it is in particular over consumption of wine (a vice which he accuses the French of having imported into Germany).
He is alive both to the physical effects on the alcoholic both male and female: “A bad, untimely old age; stupid, dull head; vertigo; trembling of the hands; podagra; dropsy; and as the saying goes, water on the brain.” He is however more concerned about the social effects: “Bacchus killed more men than Mars” and “More men get drowned in the glass than in the sea.” But Franck did not attribute all these deaths to the direct effect of wine. The modern idea of lowered disease resistance due to excessive use of alcohol was quite explicitly expressed by him. “Although not all die in the fullness of wine, they have, at least, spoilt nature… .” He estimated that every tenth death “has something to do with drinking”. Franck points out the great individual differences in the reactions to alcoholic intoxication. “This man sings; that man weeps. One man wants to fight and the other one wishes to count the money he does not even have. One man becomes abusive., the other one meticulously polite. One man boasts and another one belittles himself. One man falls asleep, another one vomits. If these men are not fools, I do not know what a fool is.”
Below the fine woodcut by Hans Weiditz on the title-page is an apt quotation from St Luke’s Gospel (chapter 21 v. 34): “And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and care of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares”
Some contemporary marginalia mostly in pale red ink. The tract clearly formed part of a s**ammelband (No.9, paginated 674-748 in an early hand); last few leaves repaired at inner margin.
VD16 F2151. Kaczerowsky A14. See E M Jellinek. ‘Sebastian Franck. On the horrible vice of Drunkenness… A Document of the Refomation Period on Inebriety.’ The quotations are taken from this. In Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, vol. II, no 2 , September 1941, pp. 391-395, in the volume entitled Classics of the Alcohol Literature, persistent URL https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-36h3-cw77
