Prestwich P E
Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
Addiction. 1997 Oct;92(10):1255-63.
Paul-Maurice Legrain was the most prominent, yet least representative, figure in the late nineteenth century French temperance movement. He founded the first popular temperance organization and was France's leading expert in the treatment of alcoholics. Yet Legrain advocated total abstinence from alcohol, a concept that, even among French temperance supporters, was considered foreign and fanatical. Permanently on the margins of the temperance movement, Legrain campaigned for abstinence within the trade union movement and developed the production of fruit juice. He was also instrumental in establishing the first public facility for the treatment of alcoholics. His life-long efforts to convince the French of the virtues of abstinence may illustrate the dangers of an uncritical acceptance of foreign models, but his openness to these different ideas resulted in unique insights and opportunities.
