TOBACCO.

“The use of tobacco predisposes the system to alcoholism, and it has an effect upon the brain and nervous system similar to that of alcohol.  The use of tobacco, if not prohibited, should be discouraged.  The treatment of inebriates can never be wholly successful until the use of tobacco in all forms is absolutely dispensed with.

“Statistics show that inebriety oftenest prevails between the ages of thirty and forty-five.  The habit seldom culminates until thirty, the subject to this age generally being a moderate drinker; later in life the system is unable to endure the strain of a continued course of dissipation.

“Like all hereditary diseases, intemperance is transmitted from parent to child as much as scrofula, gout or consumption.  It observes all the laws in transmitting disease.  It sometimes overleaps one generation and appears in the succeeding, or it will miss even the third generation, and then reappear in all its former activity and violence.  Hereditary inebriety, like all transmissible diseases, gives the least hope of permanent cure, and temporary relief is all that can generally be reasonably expected.

“Another class possesses 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 will that led to the disease obstructs its removal.

“The second class may be subdivided as follows:  First, those who have had healthy and temperate parents, and have been educated and accustomed to good 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.

“Temperaments have much to do with the formation of the habit of excessive drinking.  Those of a nervous temperament are less likely to contract the habit, from the fact that they are acutely sensitive to danger, and avoid it while they have the power of self-control.  On the other hand, those of a bilious, sanguine and lymphatic temperament, rush on, unmindful of the present, and soon become slaves to a depraved and morbid appetite, powerless to stay, or even to check their downward course.”

As we cannot speak of the treatment pursued in inebriate asylums from personal observation, we know of no better way to give our readers correct impressions on the subject, than to quote still farther from Dr. Dodge.  “For a better understanding,” he says, “of the requisite discipline demanded in the way of remedial restraint of inebriates, we notice some of the results of chronic inebriation affecting more particularly the brain and nervous system—­which, in addition to the necessary medical treatment, necessitates strict discipline to the successful management of these cases.”