“Again, we find in another class of persons, those who have had healthy parents, and have been educated and accustomed to good social influences, moral and social, but whose temperament and physical constitution are such, that, when they once indulge in the use of stimulants, which they find pleasurable, they continue to habitually indulge till they cease to be moderate, and become excessive drinkers.  A depraved appetite is established, that leads them on slowly, but surely, to destruction.”

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.