"In this innovative book on the attitudes toward and consumption of alcohol, Rod Phillips surveys a 9,000-year cultural and economic history, uncovering the tensions between alcoholic drinks as healthy staples of daily diets and as objects of social, political, and religious anxiety. In the urban centers of Europe and America, where it was seen as healthier than untreated water, alcohol gained a foothold as the drink of choice, but it has been regulated by governmental and religious authorities more than any other commodity. As a potential source of social disruption, alcohol created volatile boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable consumption and broke through barriers of class, race, and gender. Phillips follows the ever-changing cultural meanings of these potent potables and makes the surprising argument that some societies have entered "post-alcohol" phases."--Jacket.

Books about the global history of alcohol almost never give attention to India. But a wide range of texts provide plenty of evidence that there was a thriving culture of drinking in ancient and medieval India, from public carousing at the brewery and drinking house to imbibing at festivals andweddings. There was also an elite drinking culture depicted in poetic texts (often in an erotic mode), and medical texts explain how to balance drink and health. Not everyone drank, however, and there were sophisticated religious arguments for abstinence.The first book on alcohol in pre-modern India, An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian Religion and History uses a wide range of sources from the Vedas to the Kamasutra to explore drinks and styles of drinking, as well as rationales for abstinence from the earliest Sanskrit written records through thesecond millennium CE. McHugh begins by surveying the intoxicating drinks that were available, including grain beers, palm toddy, and imported wine, detailing the ways people used grains, sugars, fruits, and herbs over the centuries to produce an impressive array of liquors. He outlines myths andepics that explain how drink came into being and how it was assigned the ritual and legal status it has in our time. The book also explores Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain moral and legal texts on drink and abstinence, as well as how drink is used in some Tantric rituals, and translates in full a detaileddescription of the goddess Liquor, Sura, Cannabis, betel, soma, and opium are also considered. Finally, McHugh investigates what has happened to these drinks, stories, and theories in the last few centuries.An Unholy Brew brings to life the overlooked, complex world of brewing, drinking, and abstaining in pre-modern India, and offers illuminating case studies on topics such as law and medicine, even providing recipes for some drinks.

The book offers a comprehensive look at Native American drinking using the Indians of Sioux City, Iowa and the Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) tribe of Nebraska as examples. It starts with an overview of the manner in which anthropologists and historians have described and interpreted heavy drinking in situations of culture contact and then moves to examine a number of issues relevant to contemporary Indians: How does alcohol figure in their life styles? How do people see themselves in terms of drinking and explain their life choices? How and why do individuals behave as they do when drunk? Is problem drinking best seen as a disease or a bad habit? Do Indian people carry genetic traits that put them at greater risk for alcoholism than other people? What approaches work best to prevent and treat problem drinking? As part of this examination, the spread of the Peyote religion among the Winnebago in the early 1900s is examined and lessons are drawn that can be applied to the present day. The data for this study were collected during a year-long ethnographic field study among the Indians of Sioux City and from later archival historical research. Data from recent genetic studies are integrated into the text. The theoretical approach underlying both the ethnographic and historical research is one that places the emphasis on achieving an "insider's view" of the behavioral patterns and culture. The question to answer is not "How does alcohol use look to middle-class, mainstream Americans?" but "How do the Indians themselves see and evaluate drinking?" A related theoretical assumption driving the inquiry is that a researcher should expect to find diversity within the population, that is, it is no longer assumed that a society is a homogenous collection of individuals all sharing one or two personality types. Instead, a society should be seen as an organization of diversity with problem drinkers constituting a variety of biopsychological types shaped by multiple sociocultural factors. For too long, researchers working with Native Americans have operated with unintended ethnocentrism coloring their results. This book joins those studies that aim for an insider's view of Native American drinking patterns and life styles and that reflect the true diversity to be found within their communities.

Religion and Alcohol: Sobering Thoughts is an intriguing and thought-provoking collection of ten essays divided into two main parts. The first part focuses on the use or prohibition of alcohol in various religious traditions, with chapters exploring the Christian New Testament, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and tribal religions. The second half of the book considers alcohol in its historical context, with chapters examining drinking in medieval monasticism, Victorian England, the American South, and films, as well as the influence of movements such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Handbook of Religion and Health has become the seminal research text on religion, spirituality, and health, outlining a rational argument for the connection between religion and health. The Second Edition completely revises and updates the first edition. Its authors are physicians: a psychiatrist and geriatrician, a primary care physician, and a professor of nursing and specialist in mental health nursing. The Second Edition surveys the historical connections between religion and health and grapples with the distinction between the terms ''religion'' and ''spirituality'' in research and clinical practice. It reviews research on religion and mental health, as well as extensive research literature on the mind-body relationship, and develops a model to explain how religious involvement may impact physical health through the mind-body mechanisms. It also explores the direct relationships between religion and physical health, covering such topics as immune and endocrine function, heart disease, hypertension and stroke, neurological disorders, cancer, and infectious diseases; and examines the consequences of illness including chronic pain, disability, and quality of life. Finally, the Handbook reviews research methods and addresses applications to clinical practice. Theological perspectives are interwoven throughout the chapters. The Handbook is the most insightful and authoritative resource available to anyone who wants to understand the relationship between religion and health.

The WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care provide health-care workers (HCWs), hospital administrators and health authorities with a thorough review of evidence on hand hygiene in health care and specific recommendations to improve practices and reduce transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to patients and HCWs. The present Guidelines are intended to be implemented in any situation in which health care is delivered either to a patient or to a specific group in a population. Therefore, this concept applies to all settings where health care is permanently or occasionally performed, such as home care by birth attendants. Definitions of health-care settings are proposed in Appendix 1. These Guidelines and the associated WHO Multimodal Hand Hygiene Improvement Strategy and an Implementation Toolkit (http://www.who.int/gpsc/en/) are designed to offer health-care facilities in Member States a conceptual framework and practical tools for the application of recommendations in practice at the bedside. While ensuring consistency with the Guidelines recommendations, individual adaptation according to local regulations, settings, needs, and resources is desirable. This extensive review includes in one document sufficient technical information to support training materials and help plan implementation strategies. The document comprises six parts.

This book explores the significance of alcohol in the Middle East and Maghreb as a powerful catalyst of social and political division. It shows that the solidarities and polarities created by disputes over alcohol are built on arguments far more complex than oppositions on religion or consumption alone. In a region in which alcohol is banned by Islamic rules, yet allows its production and consumption, alcohol has always been contentious. However, this volume examines the different forms of social authority – religious, cultural and political – to offer a new understanding of drinking behaviours in the Middle East and North Africa. It suggests that alcohol, being at the same time an import and product of local industry, epitomises the tensions inherent to the conforming of Islamic societies to global trends, which seek to redefine political communities, social hierarchies and gender roles. The chapters challenge common misconceptions about alcohol in this region, arguing instead that medical discourses on alcohol dependency hide stances on national independence in an imperialist context; that the focus on religion also tends to conceal disputes on alcohol as a social struggle; and that disputes on inebriation are more about masculinity than judging private leisure. In doing so, the volume presents alcohol as a way of grasping the power relations that structure the societies of the Middle East and Maghreb.