A DANGEROUS DELUSION.
In this chapter, our chief purpose is to show the growth and awful power of an appetite which begins striving for the mastery the moment it is indulged, and against the encroachments of which no man who gives it any indulgence is absolutely safe. He who so regards himself is resting in a most dangerous delusion. So gradually does it increase, that few observe its steady accessions of strength until it has acquired the power of a master. Dr. George M. Burr, in a paper on the pathology of drunkenness, read before the "American Association for the Cure of Inebriates," says, in referring to the first indications of an appetite, which he considers one of the symptoms of a forming disease, says: "This early stage is marked by an occasional desire to drink, which recurs at shorter and shorter intervals, and a propensity, likewise, gradually increasing for a greater quantity at each time. This stage has long been believed to be one of voluntary indulgence, for which the subject of it was morally responsible. The drinker has been held as criminal for his occasional indulgence, and his example has been most severely censured. This habit, however, must be regarded as the first intimation of the approaching disease—the stage of invasion, precisely as sensations of mal-aise and chills usher in a febrile attack.
"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 repetitions 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 appetite, 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 appetite, 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 quantities 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 appetite, 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 appetite, 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 appetite 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."