Among these patients a great number are driven to the asylum by the abuse of alcoholic drinks. Some of these are simple alcoholics, i.e., those who owe their insanity entirely to excessive drinking; the others make up the numerous group of degenerates, who are for the most part descendants of alcoholics, and on whom fall all the forms of physical, intellectual, and moral degradation.
For these last, alcohol has been but the touch of the trigger which has put in action their disposition towards insanity; the attack of mania, when past, leaves revealed psychic troubles, which, but for the turning of the balance by alcohol, would have remained in the latent condition, but which, once developed, remain often for a much longer time; so we see the increase in the number of these patients—occasional drunkards—keeping pace with that of chronic alcoholics.
These will specially call forth the interest of the members of the Eugenic Congress. From the clinical point of view they exhibit great importance; for showing as they do all the episodic syndromes of degeneracy, all the mental forms of it may be seen—maniacal, melancholic, idiotic: insanities polymorphous or systematic, fixed ideas, monomanias connected with words or numbers, every sort of phobia, obsession, impulse, and symptomatic manifestation of great importance. When their objective lies in sexual perversion, theft, arson, murder, etc., these various states raise the most delicate questions whether from the point of view of philosophy, psychology, sociology, or forensic medicine.
This class of society, in the grip of this poison, is unfortunately not sterile; their miserable descendants come to dock in the asylum; so much so that if we mass together the various elements, if we add the unfortunates permanently disabled, such as epileptics, and the increasing crowd of feeble-minded, idiotic, tuberculous children, the mind recoils aghast at the gravity of the danger. The necessity of an implacable war against alcoholism, which crowds our asylums, our hospitals, and our homes with insane persons, and sends a constant stream to our prisons and reformatories—such a war must be the principal aim of the Eugenics Congress.
For long the evil genius of mankind, alcoholism has to-day laid its clutch on women, and the admission figures now show their numbers on the increase every year.
Such are the lessons which may be learnt from the report of Magnan and Fillassier.
(Abstract.)
By Dr. Agnes Bluhm, Berlin.