INSANITY.

It is, therefore, a very serious thing for a man to take into his body any substance which, on reaching that wonderfully delicate organ—­the brain, sets up therein a diseased action; for, diseased mental action is sure to follow, and there is only one true name for mental disease, and that is insanity.  A fever is a fever, whether it be light or intensely burning; and so any disturbance of the mind’s rational equipoise is insanity, whether it be in the simplest form of temporary obscurity, or in the midnight of a totally darkened intellect.

We are not writing in the interest of any special theory, nor in the spirit of partisanship; but with an earnest desire to make the truth appear.  The reader must not accept anything simply because we say it, but because he sees it to be true.  Now, as to this matter of insanity, let him think calmly.  The word is one that gives us a shock; and, as we hear it, we almost involuntarily thank God for the good gift of a well-balanced mind.  What, if from any cause this beautiful equipoise should be disturbed and the mind lose its power to think clearly, or to hold the lower passions in due control?  Shall we exceed the truth if we say that the man in whom this takes place is insane just in the degree that he has lost his rational self-control; and that he is restored when he regains that control?

In this view, the question as to the hurtfulness of alcoholic drinks assumes a new and graver aspect.  Do they disturb the brain when they come in contact with its substance; and deteriorate it if the contact be long continued?  Fact, observation, experience and scientific investigation all emphatically say yes; and we know that if the brain be disordered the mind, will be disordered, likewise; and a disordered mind is an insane mind.  Clearly, then, in the degree that a man impairs or hurts his brain—­temporarily or continuously—­in that degree his mind is unbalanced; in that degree he is not a truly rational and sane man.

We are holding the reader’s thought just here that he may have time to think, and to look at the question in the light of reason and common sense.  So far as he does this, will he be able to feel the force of such evidence as we shall educe in what follows, and to comprehend its true meaning.

NO SUBSTANCE AFFECTS THE BRAIN LIKE ALCOHOL.

Other substances besides alcohol act injuriously on the brain; but there is none that compares with this in the extent, variety and diabolical aspect of the mental aberrations which follow its use.  We are not speaking thoughtlessly or wildly; but simply uttering a truth well-known to every man of observation, and which every man, and especially those who take this substance in any form, should, lay deeply to heart.  Why it is that such awful and destructive forms of insanity should follow, as they do, the use of alcohol it is not for us to say.  That they do follow it, we know, and we hold, up the fact in solemn warning.