“The formative stage of inebriety continues for a longer or shorter period, when, as is well known, more frequent repetitions of the practice of drinking are to be observed.  The impulse to drink grows stronger and stronger, the will-power is overthrown and the entire organism becomes subject to the fearful demands for stimulus.  It is now that the stage of confirmed inebriation is formed, and dypso-mania fully established.  The constant introduction of alcohol into the system, circulating with the fluids and permeating the tissues, adds fuel to the already enkindled flame, and intensifies the propensity to an irresistible degree.  Nothing now satisfies short of complete intoxication, and, until the unhappy subject of the disease falls senseless and completely overcome, will he cease his efforts to gratify this most insatiable desire.”

Dr. Alexander Peddie, of Edinburgh, who has given twenty years of study to this subject, remarked, in his testimony before a Committee of the House of Commons, that there seemed to be “a peculiar elective affinity for the action of alcohol on the nervous system after it had found its way through the circulation into the brain,” by which the whole organism was disturbed, and the man rendered less able to resist morbid influences of any kind.  He gave many striking instances of the growth and power of appetite, which had come under his professional notice, and of the ingenious devices and desperate resorts to which dypsomaniacs were driven in their efforts to satisfy their inordinate cravings.  No consideration, temporal or spiritual, had any power to restrain their appetite, if, by any means, fair or foul, they could obtain alcoholic stimulants.  To get this, he said, the unhappy subject of this terrible thirst “will tell the most shameful lies—­for no truth is ever found in connection with the habitual drunkard’s state.  He never yet saw truth in relation to drink got out of one who was a dypsomaniac—­he has sufficient reason left to tell these untruths, and to understand his position, because people in that condition are seldom dead drunk; they are seldom in the condition of total stupidity; they have generally an eye open to their own affairs, and that which is the main business of their existence, namely, how to get drink.  They will resort to the most ingenious, mean and degrading contrivances and practices to procure and conceal liquor, and this, too, while closely watched; and will succeed in deception, although fabulous quantities are daily swallowed.”

Dr. John Nugent gives a case which came within his own knowledge, of a lady who had been

A MOST EXEMPLARY NUN

for fifteen or twenty years.  In consequence of her devotion to the poor, attending them in fevers, and like cases, it seemed necessary for her to take stimulants; these stimulants grew to be habitual, and she had been compelled, five or six times, to place herself in a private asylum.  In three or four weeks after being let out, she would relapse, although she was believed to be under the strongest influences of religion, and of the most virtuous desires.  There had been developed in her that disposition to drink which she was unable to overcome or control.