Part 7 (1/2)
”It is by no means claimed that in this stage the subject is free from responsibility as regards the consequences of his acts, or that his case is to be looked upon as beyond all attempts at reclamation. Quite to the contrary. This is the stage for active interference. Restraint, prohibition, quarantine, anything may be resorted to, to arrest the farther advance of the disease. Instead of being taught that the habit of occasional drinking is merely a moral _lapsus_ (not the most powerful restraining motive always), the subject of it should be made to understand that it is the commencement of a malady, which, if unchecked, will overwhelm him in ruin, and, compared with which, cholera and yellow fever are harmless. He should be impressed with the fact that the early stage is the one when recuperation is most easy--that the will then has not lost its power of control, and that the fatal propensity is not incurable. The duty of prevention, or avoidance, should be enforced with as much earnestness and vigor as we are required to carry out sanitary measures against the spread of small-pox or any infectious disease. The subject of inebriety may be justly held responsible, if he neglects all such efforts, and allows the disease to progress without a struggle to arrest it.
”The formative stage of inebriety continues for a longer or shorter period, when, as is well known, more frequent repet.i.tions of the practice of drinking are to be observed. The impulse to drink grows stronger and stronger, the will-power is overthrown and the entire organism becomes subject to the fearful demands for stimulus. It is now that the stage of confirmed inebriation is formed, and _dypso-mania_ fully established. The constant introduction of alcohol into the system, circulating with the fluids and permeating the tissues, adds fuel to the already enkindled flame, and intensifies the propensity to an irresistible degree. Nothing now satisfies short of complete intoxication, and, until the unhappy subject of the disease falls senseless and completely overcome, will he cease his efforts to gratify this most insatiable desire.”
Dr. Alexander Peddie, of Edinburgh, who has given twenty years of study to this subject, remarked, in his testimony before a Committee of the House of Commons, that there seemed to be ”a peculiar elective affinity for the action of alcohol on the nervous system after it had found its way through the circulation into the brain,” by which the whole organism was disturbed, and the man rendered less able to resist morbid influences of any kind. He gave many striking instances of the growth and power of appet.i.te, which had come under his professional notice, and of the ingenious devices and desperate resorts to which dypsomaniacs were driven in their efforts to satisfy their inordinate cravings. No consideration, temporal or spiritual, had any power to restrain their appet.i.te, if, by any means, fair or foul, they could obtain alcoholic stimulants. To get this, he said, the unhappy subject of this terrible thirst ”will tell the most shameful lies--for no truth is ever found in connection with the habitual drunkard's state. He never yet saw truth in relation to drink got out of one who was a dypsomaniac--he has sufficient reason left to tell these untruths, and to understand his position, because people in that condition are seldom dead drunk; they are seldom in the condition of total stupidity; they have generally an eye open to their own affairs, and that which is the main business of their existence, namely, how to get drink. They will resort to the most ingenious, mean and degrading contrivances and practices to procure and conceal liquor, and this, too, while closely watched; and will succeed in deception, although fabulous quant.i.ties are daily swallowed.”
Dr. John Nugent gives a case which came within his own knowledge, of a lady who had been
A MOST EXEMPLARY NUN
for fifteen or twenty years. In consequence of her devotion to the poor, attending them in fevers, and like cases, it seemed necessary for her to take stimulants; these stimulants grew to be habitual, and she had been compelled, five or six times, to place herself in a private asylum. In three or four weeks after being let out, she would relapse, although she was believed to be under the strongest influences of religion, and of the most virtuous desires. There had been developed in her that disposition to drink which she was unable to overcome or control.
The power of this appet.i.te, and the frightful moral perversions that often follow its indulgence are vividly portrayed in the following extract, from an address by Dr. Elisha Harris, of New York, in which he discusses the question of the criminality of drunkenness.
”Let the fact be noticed that such is the lethargy which alcoholism produces upon reason and conscience, that it is sometimes necessary to bring the offender to view his drunken indulgence as a crime. We have known a refined and influential citizen to be so startled at the fact that he wished to destroy the lives of all persons, even of his own family, who manifested unhappiness at his intemperance, that seeing this terrible criminality of his indulgence, instantly formed, and has forever kept, his resolutions of abstinence. We have known the hereditary dypsomaniac break from his destroyer, and when tempted in secret by the monstrous appet.i.te, so grind his teeth and clinch his jaws in keeping his vows to taste not, that blood dripped from his mouth and cold sweat bathed his face. That man is a model of temperance and moral power to-day. And it was the consciousness of personal criminality that stimulated these successful conflicts with the morbid appet.i.te and the powers of the alcohol disease that had fastened upon them. Shall we hesitate to hold ourselves, or to demand that communities shall hold every drunkard--not yet insane--responsible for every act of inebriety?
Certainly, it is not cruel or unjust to deal thus with drunkenness. It is not the prison we open, but conscience.”
The danger in which those stand who have an
INHERITED PREDISPOSITION TO DRINK,
is very great. Rev. I. Willett, Superintendent of the Inebriate's Home, Fort Hamilton, Kings County, New York, thus refers to this cla.s.s, which is larger than many think: ”There are a host of living men and women to be found who never drank, and who dare not drink, intoxicating liquors or beverages, because one or both of their parents were inebriates before they were born into the world; and, besides, a number of these have brothers or sisters who, having given way to the inherited appet.i.te, are now pa.s.sing downward on this descending sliding scale. The greater portion of them have already pa.s.sed over the bounds of self-control, and the varied preliminary symptoms of melancholy, mania, paralysis, ideas of persecution, etc., etc., are developing. As to the question of responsibility, each case is either more or less doubtful, and can only be tested on its separate merits. There is, however, abundant evidence to prove that this predisposition to inebriety, even after long indulgence, can, by a skillful process of medication, accompanied by either voluntary or compulsory restraint, be subdued; and the counterbalancing physical and mental powers can at the same time be so strengthened and invigorated as in the future to enable the person to resist the temptations by which he may be surrounded. Yea, though the powers of reason may, for the time being, be dethroned, and lunacy be developed, these cases, in most instances, will yield to medical treatment where the surrounding conditions of restraint and careful nursing are supplemental.
”We have observed that in many instances the fact of the patient being convinced that he is an hereditary inebriate, has produced beneficial results. Summoning to his aid all the latent counterbalancing energies which he has at command, and clothing himself with this armor, he goes forth to war, throws up the fortifications of physical and mental restraint, repairs the breaches and inroads of diseased appet.i.te, regains control of the citadel of the brain, and then, with shouts of triumph, he unfurls the banner of 'VICTORY!'”
Dr. Wood, of London, in his work on insanity, speaking on the subject of hereditary inebriety, says:
”Instances are sufficiently familiar, and several have occurred within my own personal knowledge, where the father, having died at any early age from the effects of intemperance, has left a son to be brought up by those who have severely suffered from his excesses, and have therefore the strongest motives to prevent, if possible, a repet.i.tion of such misery; every pain has been taken to enforce sobriety, and yet, notwithstanding all precautions, the habits of the father have become those of the son, who, never having seen him from infancy, could not have adopted them from imitation. Everything was done to encourage habits of temperance, but all to no purpose; the seeds of the disease had begun to germinate; a blind impulse led the doomed individual, by successive and rapid strides, along the same course which was fatal to the father, and which, ere long, terminated in his own destruction.”
How great and fearful the power of an appet.i.te which cannot only enslave and curse the man over which it gains control, but send its malign influence down to the second and third and fourth generations, sometimes to the absolute
EXTINGUISHMENT OF FAMILIES!
Morel, a Frenchman, gives the following as the result of his observation of the hereditary effects of drunkenness:
”_First generation_: Immorality, depravity, excess in the use of alcoholic liquors, moral debas.e.m.e.nt. _Second generation_: Hereditary drunkenness, paroxysms of mania, general paralysis. _Third generation_: Sobriety, hypochondria, melancholy, systematic ideas of being persecuted, homicidal tendencies. _Fourth generation_: Intelligence slightly developed, first accessions of mania at sixteen years of age, stupidity, subsequent idiocy and probable extinction of family.”
Dr. T.D. Crothers, in an a.n.a.lysis of the hundred cases of inebriety received at the New York Inebriate Asylum, gives this result: ”Inebriety inherited direct from parents was traced in twenty-one cases. In eleven of these the father drank alone, in six instances the mother drank, and in four cases both parents drank.
”In thirty-three cases inebriety was traced to ancestors more remote, as grandfather, grandmother, etc., etc., the collateral branches exhibiting both inebriety and insanity. In some instances a whole generation had been pa.s.sed over, and the disorders of the grandparents appeared again.
”In twenty cases various neurosal disorders had been prominent in the family and its branches, of which neuralgia, ch.o.r.ea, hysteria, eccentricity, mania, epilepsy and inebriety, were most common.
”In some cases, a wonderful periodicity in the outbreak of these disorders was manifested.
”For instance, in one family, for two generations, inebriety appeared in seven out of twelve members, after they had pa.s.sed forty, and ended fatally within ten years. In another, hysteria, ch.o.r.ea, epilepsy and mania, with drunkenness, came on soon after p.u.b.erty, and seemed to deflect to other disorders, or exhaust itself before middle life. This occurred in eight out of fourteen, extending over two generations. In another instance, the descendants of three generations, and many of the collateral branches, developed inebriety, mental eccentricities, with other disorders bordering on mania, at about thirty-five years of age.
In some cases this lasted only a few years, in others a lifetime.”