ABSOLUTE WITHDRAWAL OF ALL INTOXICANTS FROM THE PATIENT,
no matter how long he may have used them; and the second in the necessity of his entire abstinence therefrom after leaving the institution. The cure never places a man back where he was before he became subject to the disease; and he can never, after his recovery, taste even the milder forms of alcoholic beverage without being exposed to the most imminent danger of relapse.
The great value of an asylum where the victim of intemperance can be placed for a time beyond the reach of alcohol is thus stated by Dr. Carpenter: "Vain is it to recall the motives for a better course of conduct, to one who is already familiar with them all, but is destitute of the will to act upon them; the seclusion of such persons from the reach of alcoholic liquors, for a sufficient length of time to free the blood from its contamination, to restore the healthful nutrition of the brain and to enable the recovered mental vigor to be wisely directed, seems to afford the only prospect of reformation: and this cannot be expected to be permanent, unless the patient determinately adopts and steadily acts on the resolution to abstain from that which, if again indulged in, will be poison, alike to his body and to his mind."
In the study of inebriety and the causes leading thereto, much important information has been gathered by the superintendents and physicians connected with these establishments. Dr. D.G. Dodge, late Superintendent of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, read a paper before the American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, in 1876, on "Inebriate Asylums and their Management," in which are given the results of many years of study, observation and experience. Speaking of the causes leading to drunkenness, he says:
"Occupation has a powerful controlling influence in developing or warding off the disease. In-door life in all kinds of business, is a predisposing cause, from the fact that nearly the whole force of the stimulant is concentrated and expended upon the brain and nervous system. A proper amount of out-door exercise, or labor, tends to throw off the stimulus more rapidly through the various functional operations of the system. Occupation of all kinds, mental or muscular, assist the nervous system to retard or resist the action of stimulants—other conditions being equal. Want of employment, or voluntary idleness is the great nursery of this disease."
TOBACCO.
"The use of tobacco predisposes the system to alcoholism, and it has an effect upon the brain and nervous system similar to that of alcohol. The use of tobacco, if not prohibited, should be discouraged. The treatment of inebriates can never be wholly successful until the use of tobacco in all forms is absolutely dispensed with.
"Statistics show that inebriety oftenest prevails between the ages of thirty and forty-five. The habit seldom culminates until thirty, the subject to this age generally being a moderate drinker; later in life the system is unable to endure the strain of a continued course of dissipation.
"Like all hereditary diseases, intemperance is transmitted from parent to child as much as scrofula, gout or consumption. It observes all the laws in transmitting disease. It sometimes overleaps one generation and appears in the succeeding, or it will miss even the third generation, and then reappear in all its former activity and violence. Hereditary inebriety, like all transmissible diseases, gives the least hope of permanent cure, and temporary relief is all that can generally be reasonably expected.
"Another class possesses an organization which may be termed an alcoholic idiosyncrasy; with them the latent desire for stimulants, if indulged, soon leads to habits of intemperance, and eventually to a morbid appetite, which has all the characteristics of a diseased condition of the system, which the patient, unassisted, is powerless to relieve, since the weakness of will that led to the disease obstructs its removal.