All I was ever taught in church, seminary and all that, was the basic stories. Joseph as a boy being so brave through surgery on his leg where he didn't want to be sedated by alcohol because he already knew then that it was bad...

Quoted from becca

Had me wondering the exact same thing... :-)
The story we were taught was like this:

When Joseph was a young boy, he had some trouble with his legs. Can't remember exactly what, but he needed pretty serious surgery. So the doctor told him to drink to numb the pain but the brave boy did not want that. He just wanted his mother to hold him, and he suffered through the surgery on his leg without a peep or complaint...
brave brave joseph.. there were pictures and all supporting this story..

Insights anyone?

Try offering whisky to a child. return and report if they liked it or if they even sipped/tasted it once they got a whiff.

Not that big a deal, him refusing the alcohol.

As significant as kids refusing to eat broccoli



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2013 10:09AM by wowbagger.

Exactly. When I was little, I was offered a taste of watered-down spirits, probably whiskey. I think the aim was to make me dislike it for life. It worked!

Beer worked the other way, though.

http://www.bookofmormonbookoflies.com/pdfs/LucySmithBiographicalSketchesofJosephSmith.pdf

Page 61, chapter XVI

Thank you! Interesting read.

1. It is on the following pages after 61.
2. The story is so complete it appears contrived. If one finds the burial of JS the skeleton should show the missing bone fragments with the healed lower leg. Note that a few pages later the book relates JS first vision in quotation marks just as it is in the PoGP.

Lucy Mack wrote the original draft in 1844 which would have been something like 30 years after the incident.

This wasn't published until 1853 - I believe by Orson Pratt. Lucy's original draft actually didn't even mention the first vision at all - it was edited in later.

I believe there is other evidence besides this book of things written about J.S. having the serious leg infection.

However, yes, it certainly seems plausible that a mother's recollection of her son's reactions 30 years later - now considered to be a prophet may be rather skewed.

I personally have found Lucy's 1844 manuscript to be very flawed with regard to dates, but it doesn't seem very skewed to me at all. Her facts, where verifiable, line up with history quite well, even when they go against the general mormon view of the time. Sometimes she seems to waffle and correct herself, seemingly as if she just recognized that her memory is in error of what the church teaches, but even then her waffling is pretty apparent. I trust Lucy's 1844 account (not the 1853 version), and it has been a valuable resource to me in helping recognize Joseph's deceipt - even towards his own mother.

The part I question is if Joseph Smith's dialogue was quite as heroic as she gives him credit for with the leg. I suspect it got a little "pumped up" in a doting mother's mind over 30 years.

read history of the church volume 7 page 101

this is John Taylor's personal account of Carthage.

"sometime after dinner we sent for wine. It has been reported by some this was taken as sacrament. It was no such thing. our spirits were generally don't in heavy and it was sent for to Levi this I think it was Captain Jones who went after it but they would not suffer for him to return. I believe we all drink the wine and gave some to 1 or 2 of the prison guards with all of us felt unusually Dole and languid with a remarkable depression of spirits"

Remember John Taylor later became the profit

Sorry... Sent for to revive us (not Levi)

Recipe for young Morgbots to follow the WoW:

At age 7: smoke an entire Camel non-filter

At age 8: Take 2 shots from a Jose Cuervo bottle

At age 9: Drink a cup of espresso dark


Not sure how to properly curtail Masturbation (Not part of the WoW)

All that JS didn't drink was, in my opinion, post death scrubbing of the record.

Water, until the modern methods of sanitation was a 'dangerous' concept. People in that day were inebriated. Beer (not the bottled stuff you pick up at Sabu's Mini Mart), was the beverage of choice. Also that dreaded 'coffee and tea.' Back then, they believed the addition of the coffee/tea was good. The alcohol in home brews (1 to 2 percent) was known to kill all the little nasties, what they did not realize it was the boiling of the water that killed the nasties. A person walking up to a stream, river or body of water and drinking was more often than not sentence for getting sick or dying.

Until Louis Pasture 'invented' the term germs, no one really knew 'what' was in the water (or other beverages) only that there was something. Pasture 'invented' Pasteurization not to make water 'clean and pure' as much as it was done for the benefit of French wine makers so they could control the fermentation process and control the flavor of wine. As most 'inventions' or processes, the side benefits far exceeded its original intent.

It was also widely held knowledge that milk could keep for three or four days longer if it were brought just below a boil point to kill all the little nasties. People knew that 'stuff' was there, they just really did not know what to call it.

Go to that wonderful part of the planet...India Along the banks of the Brahma Sutra or the Ganges and you will see people in one section gutting fish and dumping the offal into the river, walk a few feet and you will see someone washing clothing; meanwhile someone is allowing a cow to 'sheet' in the same water supply. About 100 feet or so from all this and someone is taking a swig. No wonder those people have a life expectancy of 45 or so. However, they are 'used' to the water and have a dietary intake of foods that will, to a degree kill some of the intestinal parasites.

A fellow teacher went, for the first time, to his 'fatherland' to visit his grandparents in New Delhi. When he came back he thanked his parents for LEAVING. The whole place smelled, raw sewerage was thrown in the streets, and he said everyone looked sick.

markrichards Wrote:


did you watch " how beer saved the world" ?

Being a good TBM, I will admit, I never had a drink in H.s. When I went off to play pro baseball at the tender age of 18 (S.F. Giants farm team in Fresno) there was beer in the clubhouse after games, home or away.

Yes, I drank the beer because the water in places we would go would make one sick; or I should say it made ME sick. Bottled water was not the ubiquitous item it is today.

BEER DID SAVE THE WORLD!!!!

I still have four bottles from two super bowls ago in my fridge.

The problem of clean water still affects a great deal of the world. "Montezuma's revenge" is largely a matter of contaminated water. If the bad water doesn't kill the people young it is because they develope an immunity. Order Perrier if you are in a third world country.....or order spirits. And make sure you have all your vaccinations.

Deeper analysis of any of the little faith-promoting stories about JS is fun. Hagiography is what it's called. Everything is bent to be all puppies and rainbows with cherubs flying above.

The one about JS being tarred and feathered is especially amusing to analyze. They leave out the child seduction and potential castration parts.

Yes, very interesting indeed.

And may have been an alcoholic. It would explain (to me) JS' attitude about alcohol.

Jospeh was a frequent drinker, I believe his journals mention having beers etc. I find it funny that after receiving the WOW he continued to drink... yet as a boy he didn't drink when there was no WOW. How's that for mixed up?

I am deeply curious why the church would use this story at all to promote the WoW. I mean, if a GA goes in for surgury do they tell the doc "no thanks" on the anisthetic and super powerful painkillers after? Most of todays pain killers and anisthetics make a glass of whisky look like tap water. I can imagine just how many primary teachers impart this story with a bloodstream full of powerful mood altering drugs every Sunday.

So, don't drink booze even if its medically necessary to keep you from thrashing around and having an artery severed during some field sugury, but by all means take some oxy when you get your boob job.

Hahaha sooo true!!
I am so quoting this

My TBM sister cringes every time she hears this story. A couple of conferences ago someone used the story in a talk(don't remember who). She wrote them a letter and told them that everyone knew that story wasn't true, and that JS drank all the time. She asked them to please stop telling that story. I'm amazed she did that.

Read "Hearts Made Glad," a whole book about Joseph Smith's drinking:

http://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Made-Glad-charges-Intemperance/dp/B0006CJK4E

http://www.utlm.org/booklist/titles/heartsmadeglad_xb137.htm

In my opinion MYTH!!

BTW, when BY was giving instructions for the trek west, among the items the Saints were required to bring along were coffee, tea and whisky. see the 7-volume (I think) History of the Church. When I was in seminary many years ago the list was included, but those items were replaced by elipses...