Now, there are men so constituted that they are able, for a long series of years, or even for a whole lifetime, to hold this appetite within a certain limit of indulgence.  To say “So far, and no farther.”  They suffer ultimately from physical ailments, which surely follow the prolonged contact of alcoholic poison with the delicate structures of the body, many of a painful character, and shorten the term of their natural lives; but still they are able to drink without an increase of appetite so great as to reach an overmastering degree.  They do not become abandoned drunkards.

NO MAN SAFE WHO DRINKS.

But no man who begins the use of alcohol in any form can tell what, in the end, is going to be its effect on his body or mind.  Thousands and tens of thousands, once wholly unconscious of danger from this source, go down yearly into drunkards’ graves.  There is no standard by which any one can measure the latent evil forces in his inherited nature.  He may have from ancestors, near or remote, an unhealthy moral tendency, or physical diathesis, to which the peculiarly disturbing influence of alcohol will give the morbid condition in which it will find its disastrous life.  That such results follow the use of alcohol in a large number of cases, is now a well-known fact in the history of inebriation.  During the past few years, the subject of alcoholism, with the mental and moral causes leading thereto, have attracted a great deal of earnest attention.  Physicians, superintendents of inebriate and lunatic asylums, prison-keepers, legislators and philanthropists have been observing and studying its many sad and terrible phases, and recording results and opinions.  While differences are held on some points, as, for instance, whether drunkenness is a disease for which, after it has been established, the individual ceases to be responsible, and should be subject to restraint and treatment, as for lunacy or fever; a crime to be punished; or a sin to be repented of and healed by the Physician of souls, all agree that there is an inherited or acquired mental and nervous condition with many, which renders any use of alcohol exceedingly dangerous.

The point we wish to make with the reader is, that no man can possibly know, until he has used alcoholic drinks for a certain period of time, whether he has or has not this hereditary or acquired physical or mental condition; and that, if it should exist, a discovery of the fact may come too late.

Dr. D.G.  Dodge, late Superintendent of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, speaking of the causes leading to intemperance, after stating his belief that it is a transmissible disease, like “scrofula, gout or consumption,” says: 

“There are men who have 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 the will that led to the disease obstructs its removal.