03.01. Alcohol: a Physical and Mental Evil,

Alcohol: a Physical and Mental Evil,

ALL the interests of humanity are endangered by the use of alcohol. From this evil there is no certain release, except in total abstinence. To prove these statements, and to show some tan­gible means of escape, are my objects in writing. I begin these examinations with its results on man’s body. That alcohol is an enemy to man’s body is clearly seen in the bloated forms and blistered faces, and the hot, poisoned breath of those who drink. Physical blemishes and premature deaths sufficiently attest that it is a blighting curse on the physical power of those who use it. And yet, scarcely a score of years ago, physicians were pre­scribing alcohol for many purposes. It was good in almost any disease, and indispensable as a tonic. A failing appetite or feebleness had to be rem­edied with whisky or brandy or wine, according to the tastes of the physician and the patient. Whether the one or the other of these was recommended, alcohol was that which was sought after.

We insert here a table showing the percentage of alcohol in certain liquors, taken from a work by the celebrated French chemist, Thenard:

It would be easy to follow out the list of Amer­ican drinks, and give the per cent of alcohol in each, but for the fact that there is no regular­ity in American manufacture. Scotch whisky is given at 54.32 percent But American man­ufacture, in its best showing, will not rise above 44 percent

These drinks were valued as tonics and helps in proportion to the alcohol they were supposed to contain. The physiologist and the chemist have been at work to discover the facts. This work they have performed with a patience and energy that remove their decision from the plane of mere guess-work. Such experiments as the following lead the way. Dr. Figg relates the following ex­periment:

"To each of two bulldogs, six months old, five ounces of cold roast mutton, cut into squares, were given, the meat being pressed into the esophagus without contact with the teeth. An elastic catheter was then passed into the stomach of one of them, and one ounce and a quarter of proof spirit injected. After some hours had elapsed, both animals were killed. In the case where the meat had been administered by itself, it had disappeared; in the other, the pieces were as angular as when swallowed."

Again he says:

"If a pound of raw beef, cut square, be immersed for twelve hours in a pint of proof spirit, it will be found, when weighed again, to have lost four ounces three drachms. If the surface be examined with a micro­scope, it will be found covered with pointed tufts of a coffee-brown color, and the whole structure consider­ably condensed. This loss of substance, and this con­densation of tissue, are attributable to the removal of water, and the brown deposit to the caustic influence of the alcohol on the albuminous element of the beef." In a given time the British troops in India have furnished a test. They were arranged in three classes: Abstinent, temperate, and intemperate. Their mortalities were as follows: Abstinent, eleven deaths for every one thousand; temper­ate, or moderate drinkers, twenty-three to the thousand; intemperate, or those who would get drunk, forty-four to the thousand. The next witness will be nearer home—the late Samuel Miller, D.D., of Princeton, New Jersey. For sixteen years he had followed the advice of his physicians, in drinking one or two glasses of sour wine daily. "During all this time," he says, "my health was delicate. More than six years ago, when approaching my sixtieth year, I broke off at once. The experiment had not pro­ceeded more than a month before I became sat­isfied that my abstinence was very strikingly beneficial. My appetite was more uniform, my digestion improved, my strength increased, my sleep more comfortable, and all my mental exercises more clear, pleasant; and successful."

Dr. Macnish, in his Anatomy of Drunkenness, relates the following experiment made by Dr. Hunter upon two of his children of about the same age, both of them having been previously unaccustomed to wine. To one he gave every day a full glass of sherry; to the other he gave an orange. In the course of a week a very marked difference was perceptible in the pulse, urine and evacuations from the bowels of the two children. The pulse of the first child was raised, the urine high colored, and the evacuations destitute of their usual quantity of bile. In the other child no change whatever was produced. He then reversed the experiment, giving to the first the orange, and to the second the wine, and the results corresponded; the child who had the orange continued well, and the system of the other got straightway into dis­order, as in the first experiment.

Prize fighters themselves, however intemperate some of them may habitually be, when they pre­pare for a match and go into training, practice total abstinence. A gentleman once said to Tom Sayers, the champion of England, "Well, Tom, of course in training you must take a great deal of nourishment, such as beefsteak, Barclay’s stout, or pale ale?" "I’ll tell you what it is, sir," an­swered Sayers, "I’m no teetotaler, and in my time have drunk a great deal more than is good for me; but when I’ve any business to do, there’s nothing like water and the dumb-bells."

Such facts as these, being observed everywhere, have led to the most untiring research after truth respecting the result of alcohol on the human system.

Professor Liebig was the first to discover the power of alcohol to displace the natural and healthy water-constituent of all animal tissues. When these are dipped into alcohol, more than one-half of the water is displaced. In the bladder, for one volume of alcohol retained by it, three volumes of water have been displaced.

It is an error to suppose that, after a good din­ner, a glass of spirits or beer assists digestion, or that any liquor containing alcohol, or even bitter beer, can in any way assist digestion. Mix some bread and meat with gastric juice, place them in a phial, and keep the phial in a sand-bath at the slow heat of 98 degrees—which is the heat of the stomach—occasionally shaking briskly the con­tents to imitate the motion of the stomach; you will find after six or eight hours the whole con­tents blended in a mass as for a poultice. If to another phial of food and gastric juice, treated in the same way, you add a glass of pale ale or a quantity of alcohol, at the end of seven or eight hours, or even some days, the food is scarcely acted upon at all. The explanation of this is that alcohol has the peculiar power of chemically affect­ing or decomposing the gastric juice by precip­itating one of its principal constituents, pepsine, rendering its solvent properties much less effi­cacious. Hence, alcohol cannot be considered either as a food or a solvent for food, for it refuses to act with the gastric juice.

It is a remarkable fact, says Dr. Dundas Thomp­son, that alcohol, when added to the digestive fluid, produces a white precipitate, so that the fluid is no longer capable of digesting animal or vegetable matter. The use of alcoholic stimu­lants, say Drs. Todd and Bowman, retards digestion by coagulating the pepsine, an essential element of the gastric juice, and thereby interfering with its action. Were it not that wine and spirits are rapidly absorbed, the introduction of these into the stomach, in any quantity, would be a com­plete bar to the digestion of food, as the pepsine would be precipitated from the solution as quickly as it was formed by the stomach.

Some years ago, the Directors of the Scottish Temperance League, anxious to have a work of high authority on the Medical View of the Temper­ance Question, applied to Professor Miller, of the University of Edinburgh and Surgeon to the Queen, to prepare a treatise on the subject. The learned Professor cordially complied with their re­quest, and presented his manuscript as a gift to the League, by which it was published. In 1873 the work had already gone through nineteen editions in Scotland.

Some time before, a prize of one hundred guineas (about $500) had been awarded to Pro­fessor Carpenter of the University of London, for his work on the Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors, as the best out of fifteen competing works on the same subject. The award was made by a com­mittee of three of the most eminent physicians of the day—they were Dr. Roupell, Physician to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London; Dr. Guy, Professor of Forensic Medicine, King’s College, London; and Dr. John Forbes, himself the author of a valuable little medical treatise on intemper­ance, and Physician to the Queen’s Household, to Prince Albert, and the Duke of Cambridge. In reading the work of Dr. W.B. Carpenter, it should be remembered that he completed his work in 1849, now about thirty years ago, and although the Professor was then far in advance of public practice respecting the use of alcohol, yet his decisions are not as clear as those of Drs. Rich­ardson and Condie, and the great majority of our more recent authors. Dr. Carpenter recommended the use of alcohol as a medicine when properly guarded, while most others discourage it; and many excellent physiologists and chemists have declared that it is never received into the stomach either of a sick man, or a well man, but with in­jurious results. It should be borne in mind, too, that when Dr. Carpenter wrote his essay the poisoned liquors of today were unknown. There­fore, when I quote the Doctor, I feel that I am quoting from an authority to which no liquor man can object. In the author’s preface he tells us to what con­clusions his investigations led him:

"In the first place—That from a scientific examin­ation of the modus operandi of alcohol upon the human body, when taken in a poisonous dose, or to such an ex­tent as to produce intoxication, we may fairly draw in­ferences with regard to the specific effects which it is likely to produce, when repeatedly taken in excess, but not to an immediately fatal amount.

Secondly—That the consequences of the excessive use of alcoholic liquors, as proved by the experience of the medical profession, and universally admitted by medical writers, being precisely such as the study of its effects in poisonous and immediately-fatal doses would lead us to anticipate, we are further justified in expect­ing that the habitual use of smaller quantities of these liquors, if sufficiently prolonged, will ultimately be at­tended, in a large proportion of cases, with conse­quences prejudicial to the human system—the morbid actions thus engendered being likely rather to be chronic, than acute, in their character.

Thirdly—That as such morbid actions are actually found to be among the most common disorders of per­sons advanced in life, who have been in the habit of taking ’a moderate’ allowance of alcoholic liquors, there is very strong ground for regarding them as in a great degree dependent upon the asserted cause; although the long postponement of their effects may render it impossible to demonstrate the existence of such a connection.

Fourthly—That the preceding conclusion is fully borne out by the proved results of the ’moderate’ use of alcoholic liquors, in producing a marked liability to the acute forms of similar diseases in hot climates, where their action is accelerated by other conditions; and also by the analogous facts now universally admitted in re­gard to the remotely-injurious effects of slight excess in diet, imperfect aeration of blood, insufficient repose, and other like violations of the laws of health when habitually practiced through a long period of time.

Fifthly—That the capacity of the healthy human system to sustain as much bodily or mental labor as it can be legitimately called upon to perform, and its power of resisting the extremes of heat and cold, as well as other depressing agencies, are not augmented by the use of alcoholic liquors; but that on the other hand, their use, under such circumstances, tends positively to the impairment of that capacity.

Sixthly—That where there is a deficiency of power on the part of the system to carry on its normal actions with the energy and regularity, which constitute health, such power can rarely be imparted by the habitual use of alcoholic liquors; its deficiency being generally consequent upon some habitual departure from the laws of health, for which the use of alcoholic liquors cannot compensate; and the employment of such liquors, al­though with the temporary effect of palliating the dis­order, having not merely a remotely-injurious effect per se, but also tending to mask the action of other morbific causes, by rendering the system more tolerant of them.

Seventhly—That, consequently, it is the duty of the medical practitioner to discourage, as much as pos­sible, the habitual use of alcoholic liquors in however ’moderate’ a quantity, by all persons in ordinary health, and to seek to remedy those slight departures from health, which result from the ’wear and, tear’ of active life, by the means which shall most directly remove or antagonize their causes, instead of by such as simply palliate their effects.

Eighthly—That whilst the habitual use of alcoholic liquors, even in the most moderate amount, is likely (except in a few rare instances) to be rather injurious than beneficial, great benefit may be derived in the treatment of disease from the medicinal use of alcohol in appropriate cases; but that the same care should be employed in the discriminating selection of those cases as would be taken by the conscientious practitioner in regard to the administration of any other powerful remedy which is poisonous in large doses."

Now, if I understand the Professor’s conclu­sions, they are—

It is very certain, from all this, that in the mind of Dr. Carpenter, alcohol is not a food, and cannot be used as a beverage, except in very rare cases, without evil results; and, while it may be used as a medicine, it must be managed with great skill and caution.

Certain it is, if alcohol is a medicine, it is not a food. And it is just as certain that no man ought ever to take so powerful a medicine except upon the prescription of a physician,

It is clear, then, that no man should use alcohol as a beverage, nor should he ever prescribe it for himself, nor for anyone else, unless he is a practicing physician. It should be remembered, too, that the scientific decisions that prove it to be unwise and unsafe to use alcohol as a food or a beverage not only rule out the brandies, whiskies, and gin, but wine, ale, porter, beer, sherry, champagne, cider, etc.; for these are mainly sought for the alcohol which they contain. In the conclusion of his preface, Dr. Carpenter shows that the scientific hosts were adopting his views; that "upward of two-thousand of whom, in all grades and degrees—from the court physi­cians and leading metropolitan surgeons, who are conversant with the wants of the upper ranks of society to the humble country practitioner, who is familiar with the requirements of the arti­san in his workshop and the laborer in the field—have signed the following certificate We, the undersigned, are of the opinion:

1. That a very large proportion of human misery, including poverty, disease, and crime, is induced by the use of alcoholic or fermented liquors as beverages.

2. That the most perfect health is compatible with total abstinence from all such intoxicating beverages, whether in the form of ardent spirits, or as wine, beer, ale, porter, cider, etc., etc.

3. That persons accustomed to such drinks may with perfect safety, discontinue them entirely, either at once, or gradually, after a short time.

4. That total and universal abstinence from alcoholic beverages of all sorts would greatly contribute to the health, the prosperity, the morality, and the happi­ness of the human race."

Ninety-six physicians of Montreal, Canada, twenty-four of whom were professors and demon­strators in medical schools, in February, 1873, signed the following paper:

"Total abstinence from intoxicating liquors, whether fermented or distilled, is consistent with, and conducive to, the highest degree of physical and mental health and vigor." The National Medical Association of the United States, at their Convention in Detroit, June, 1874, which was attended by more than four hundred physicians, resolved:

"That in view of the alarming prevalence and ill-effects of intemperance, with which none are so familiar as members of the medical profession, and which have called forth from English physicians the voice of warn­ing to the people of Great Britain concerning the use of alcoholic beverages, we, as members of the medical profession of the United States, unite in the declaration that we believe that alcohol should be classed with other powerful drugs; that when prescribed medicinally, it should be done with conscientious caution, and a sense of great responsibility.

"That we would welcome any change in public senti­ment that would confine the use of intoxicating liquors to the uses of science, art, and medicine." The substance of this has been adopted by one hundred and twenty-four physicians in New York City and vicinity. Among them are such men as Dr. Willard Parker, Alonzo Clark, Prof. E.R. Peaslee, Prof. Alford C. Post, Dr. Edward Dela­field; John M. Cuyler, Medical Director in the United States Army; Stephen Smith, President, and Elisha Harris, Secretary of the American Health Association.

Dr. Benjamin W. Richardson, in his "Cantor Lectures," says of alcohol that it "is neither food nor drink suitable for his (man’s) natural de­mands." Its application as an agent that shall enter the living organization is properly limited by the learning and skill possessed by the physi­cian—a learning that in itself admits of being re­cast and revised in many important details, and, perhaps, in principles. In a still more recent work, "The Diseases of Modern Life," he says of the physician that he "can find no place for alcohol as a necessity of life.... In whatever direction he turns his attention to determine the value of alcohol to man beyond the sphere of its value as a drug, which he at times may prescribe, he sees nothing but a void; in whatever way he turns his atten­tion to determine the persistent effects of alcohol, he sees nothing but disease and death; mental dis­ease, mental death; physical disease, physical death." (Pp. 209, 210.) From the report of the International Medical Congress, held in Philadelphia, September, 1876, on the paper read by Dr. Hunt, on "Alcohol in its therapeutic relations as a food and a medicine," I quote the following:

"First—Alcohol is not shown to have a definite food-value by any of the usual methods of chemical analysis or physiological investigation.

"Second—Its use as a medicine is chiefly as a car­diac stimulant, and often admits of substitution.

"Third—As a medicine it is not well fitted for self-prescription by the laity, and the medical profession is not accountable for such administration or for the enor­mous evils resulting therefrom.

"Fourth—The purity of alcoholic liquors is, in gen­eral, not as well assured as that of articles used for medicine should be. The various mixtures, when used as a medicine, should have a definite and known compo­sition, and should not be interchanged promiscuously."

Dr. Cartwright, of New Orleans, in 1853, thus writes to the Boston Medical Journal:

"The yellow fever came down like a storm upon this devoted city, with 1,127 dram-shops, in one of the four parts into which it has been divided. It is not the citi­zen proper, but the foreigners, with mistaken notions about the climate and country, who are the chief sup­porters of these haunts of intemperance. About five thousand of them died before the epidemic touched a single citizen or a sober man, so far as I can get at the facts."

Thus it is evident that when a man uses alcohol as a beverage he does so in the face of the scientific world. And even in its use as a medi­cine it probably kills ten to where it ever cures one. In the yellow fever of 1878 it was employed as a medicine (so far as reported) to the loss of every case. Let the laity then, at least, keep their hands from this accursed poison.

Those who would have it appear that alcohol is a profitable stimulant make a free use of the name of Dr. Periera, and yet he stated, in answer to a question addressed to him concerning this very point, that "in my Materia Medica I have char­acterized alcohol as a powerful, subtle, and corro­sive poison. If I had to point out," he adds, "the injurious qualities of alcohol, I could soon prove that, though it evolves heat in burning, it is an obnoxious and most expensive fuel."

Dr. Lionel S. Beale, M.D., F.R.S., Physician to King’s College Hospital, says: "Alcohol does not act as food, does not nourish tissue; nay, more," he adds, "it cuts short the life of rapidly growing cells, or causes them to live more slowly."

Dr. Markham, in the British Medical Journal, 1864, summed up the question as follows:

"The chemical theories upon which the extensive use of alcohol has been based, in disease and health, have at length been found untenable. Alcohol is not a supporter of combustion. It does not pre­vent the wear and tear of tissues. Part and prob­ably the whole of it escapes from the body, and none of it, so far as we know, is assimilated or serves for the purpose of nutrition. It is, there­fore, not a food in the eye of science."

Even Prof. Von Moleschott says:

"Alcohol does not effect and direct restitution. It does not de­serve the name of an alimentary principle."

Dr. T.K. Chambers, in his "Clinical Lectures," says:

"It is clear that we must cease to regard alcohol as in any sense an aliment, inasmuch as it goes out as it went in, and does not, as far as we know, leave any of its substance behind it." The eminent French chemists, Lallemand, Perrin and Duroy, in October, 1860, declared that "facts establish, from a physiological point of view, a line of demarcation between alcohol and food."

Dr. Monroe, in a treatise upon the "Physiolog­ical effects of Alcohol," says: "Every writer upon toxicology has classified alcohol as a narcotic or a narcotico-acrid poison. For proof, I refer you to the works of Prof. Orfila, Dr. Pereira, Prof. Christison, Dr. Taylor, and other eminent authorities. "Alcohol," he goes on to say, "is a power­ful narcotic poison, and if a large dose be taken no antidote is known to its effect." He then goes on to prove that by its action upon the saliva, the gastric juice, the chyme, the albumen, the pepsin, and the blood, alcohol is always a "rank and deadly poison."

Dr. T.K. Chambers, physician to the Prince of Wales, says: "It is clear that we must cease to regard alcohol as in any sense a food."

Dr. Markham says, in summing up certain lengthy and able discussions in the British med­ical journals upon the question, "Is alcohol food or physic?" "we are bound in conscience to boldly declare the logical and inevitable conclusion that alcohol is not food; that if its imbibition be of service, it is so only to man in an abnormal condition, and that ordinary social indulgence in alcoholic drinks is, medically speaking, very un­physiological and prejudicial."

Prof. E.L. Youmans, in his essay entitled "Alcohol and the Constitution of Man," says:

"There is but one word in our language which describes the relation of alcohol to the human system, and that word is poison." And near the close of his article he declares that "there is no escape from the conclusion that alcohol, in what­ever form or quantity, is a poison in all the common cases of its employment."

Nearly all our modern physiologists tell us that alcohol cannot assist in the digestion of food, neither can it be digested. Hence, at least as a food or a beverage, it must always be not only useless but injurious. To show its power over the body and mind of man, I will make one quotation from John B. Gough:

"For three days I endured more agony than pen could describe, even were it guided by the hand of a Dante. Who can tell the horrors of that horrible mal­ady, aggravated as it is by the almost ever-abiding con­sciousness that it is self-sought? Hideous faces ap­peared on the walls and on the floors; foul things crept along the bed-clothes, and glaring eyes peered into mine. I was at one time surrounded by millions of monstrous spiders, which crawled slowly over every limb; whilst beaded drops of perspiration would start to my brow, and my limbs would shiver until the bed rat­tled again. Strange lights would dance before my eyes, and then suddenly the very blackness of darkness would appall me by its dense gloom. All at once, whilst gazing at a frightful creation of my distempered mind, I seemed struck with sudden blindness. I knew a candle was burning in the room, but I could not see it. All was so pitchy dark. I lost the sense of feeling, too, for I en­deavored to grasp my arm in one hand, but conscious­ness was gone. I put my hand to my side, my head, but felt nothing, and still I knew my limbs and frame were there. And then the scene would change. I was falling—falling swiftly as an arrow far down into some terrible abyss; and so like reality was it, that as I fell, I could see the rocky sides of the horrible shaft, where mocking, gibing, mowing, fiend-like forms were perched; and I could feel the air rushing past me, making my hair stream out by the force of the unwholesome blast. Then the paroxysm sometimes ceased for a few moments, and I would sink back on my pallet drenched by perspira­tion, utterly exhausted, and feeling a dreadful certainty of the renewal of my torments."

It is very common for the defenders of alcohol to say that all this is the abuse rather than the use of alcohol. Be it so; but what cannot be used by such a man as Gough without the abuse is not a thing to recommend for men in general, nor is it safe to be used by them. Many a young man is heard to boast of his self-control and conse­quent safety from the possibilities of drunkenness. He says: "I can take a drink or I can let it alone."

Charles Lamb, in his "Confessions of a Drunk­ard," says:

"Is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence and the excess which kills you? For your sake, gentle reader, and that you may never attain to my experience, with pain I must utter the dreadful truth that there is none—none that I can find."

There may be a time in life when this can be done. But if anyone continues to drink intox­icants regularly, that time will pass away. There are two reasons why this is so.

Dr. Hutcheson, in the "Report of the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum," for 1844, writes from close ob­servation respecting oinomania or wine mania, or an uncontrollable thirst for intoxicating drinks. (See pp. 39-44 of the Report.) He says, "The disease appears in three forms—the acute, the periodic, and the chronic." Of the periodic form he says

"In some cases it occurs whenever the individual par­takes of stimulants. In these, total abstinence is the only remedy. Like the form about to be mentioned, it is frequently hereditary, derived from a parent disposed to insanity or addicted to intemperance. In such cases the probability of cure is very small. The individual thus affected abstains for weeks or months from all stim­ulants, and frequently loathes them for the same period. But by degrees he becomes uneasy, listless and de­pressed, feels incapable of application or restless, and at last begins to drink till he is intoxicated. He awakes from a restless sleep, seeks again a repetition of the in­toxicating dose, and continues the same course for a week or longer."

Under the third form of this disease our author says:

"Of all the forms of oinomania the most common is the chronic. The causes of this are injuries of the head, diseases of the heart, hereditary predisposition, and in­temperance. This is by far the most incurable form of the malady. The patient is incessantly under the most overwhelming desire for stimulants. He will disregard every impediment, sacrifice comfort and reputation, withstand the claims of affection, consign his family to misery and disgrace, and deny himself the common necessaries of life to gratify his insane propensity. In the morning morose and fretful, disgusted with himself, and dissatisfied with all around him, weak and tremu­lous, incapable of any exertion either of mind or body, his first feeling is a desire for stimulants, with every fresh dose of which he recovers a certain degree of vigor, both of body and mind, till he feels compar­atively comfortable.... And, unless absolutely secluded from all means of gratifying his propensity, the patient continues the same course till he dies, or becomes an imbecile." As alcohol is not digestible, it acts immediately upon the blood, and through it influences the entire system, until the lungs, liver, kidneys, nerves, brain, stomach, etc., etc., are diseased by this acrid poison. He is an unwise person who will tamper with it. A man may thus become diseased very gradually, and hardly realize his con­dition till all hope of his salvation is gone. But few men ever come to know themselves as con­firmed drunkards. Everyone else will know it first. He thinks that he has been a little unsteady at times, and very sick at others, while the people have said: " He gets as drunk as a brute at least once a week, and frequently has touches of de­lirium tremens."

If there is any such thing as the use of alcohol as a beverage without its abuse, it is safe to say that very few men ever attain to it. Of all the men who have used it even "moderately," ninety-nine out of every one hundred have been injured by it. Hence there remains no reason why it should be tolerated, seeing that it is an evil and not a blessing. Or, if there are benefits to be derived by its use, its evils counterbalance them a hundred times. It is idle to talk of the "use and not the abuse," when it is clear that the wisest and most determined men are unable to so control them­selves while using it. We cannot judge of it by some imaginary use which we suppose might be made of it, but in the light of the real facts in its history it is to be condemned. THE USE OF ALCOHOL INDUCES INSANITY.

Dr. Hutcheson makes the following tabular re­port of the Asylum in Glasgow:

In 1843 a large number of patients were intro­duced from Arran of whom no report was made respecting the origin of their lunacy. These were either put into the list of those coming from hereditary descent or the unknown. No doubt many of these were from intemperance. Also those all the time marked unknown contain a large percent who have lost the balance of mind be­cause of the use of alcohol. I think, therefore, that it is not unreasonable to suppose that one-third of the inmates of that institution had been thus lost to the world and themselves either because of their own intemperance or that of their parents. An accurate report from our American Asy­lums would exhibit the work of rum in a fright­fully large number of cases. Not only insanity, but mental debility and idiocy, are the result of the influence of alcohol. Dr. Car­penter, in his work or. "Alcoholic Liquors," pp. 48, 49, thus writes of "Mental Debility in the Offspring:"

"It is scarcely necessary to accumulate further proof in support of the assertion, that of all the single cases of insanity, habitual intemperance is the most potent, and that it aggravates the operation of other causes. We have now to show that it has a special tendency to produce idiocy, insanity, or mental debility, in the offspring. Looking to the decided tendency to hereditary predisposition in the ordinary forms of insanity; look­ing also to the fact that perverted or imperfect condi­tions of the nutritive functions established in the parent are also liable to manifest themselves in the offspring (as shown in the transmission of the gouty and tuber­cular diatheses), we should expect to find that the offspring of habitual drunkards would share with those of lunatics in the predisposition to insanity, and that they would, moreover, be especially prone to intemperate habits. That such is the case is within the knowledge of all who have enjoyed extensive opportunities of ob­servation; and the fact has come down to us sanctioned by the experience of antiquity. Thus Plutarch says: ’One drunkard begets another;’ and Aristotle remarks that, ’Drunken women bring forth children like unto themselves.’"

Dr. W.A.F. Browne, the resident physician of the Crichton Lunatic Asylum, at Dumfries, makes the following statements:

"The drunkard not only injures and enfeebles his own nervous system, but entails mental disease upon his family. His daughters are nervous and hysterical; his sons are weak, wayward, eccentric, and sink insane under the pressure of excitement, of some unforeseen exigency, or of the ordinary calls of duty. At present I have two patients who appear to inherit a tendency to unhealthy action of the brain from mothers addicted to drinking; and another, an idiot, whose father was a drunkard." The author has learned from Dr. Hutcheson that the results of his observations are precisely in accordance with the foregoing. On this point, however, the most striking fact that the writer has met with is contained in the "Report on Idiocy," lately made by Dr. Howe to the Legislature of Massachusetts:

"The habits of the parents of three hundred of the idiots were learned; and one hundred and forty-five, or nearly one-half, are reported as ’known to be habitual drunkards.’ Such parents, it is affirmed, give a weak and lax constitution to their children; who are, conse­quently, deficient in bodily and vital energy, and pre­disposed, by their very organization, to have cravings for alcoholic stimulants. Many of these children are feeble and live irregularly. Having a lower vitality, they feel the want of some stimulation. If they pursue the course of their fathers, which they have more temp­tation to follow, and less power to avoid, than the chil­dren of the temperate, they add to their hereditary weakness, and increase the tendency to idiocy in their constitution; and this they leave to their children after them. The parents of case No. 62 were drunkards, and had seven idiotic children."

See, also, American Journal of Medical Sciences, April, 1849, page 437