RESULTS OF CHRONIC INEBRIATION.

“We have alcoholic epilepsy, alcoholic mania, delirium tremens, tremors, hallucinations, insomnia, vertigo, mental and muscular debility, impairment of vision, mental depression, paralysis, a partial or total loss of self-respect and a departure of the power of self-control. Many minor difficulties arise from mere functional derangement of the brain and nervous system, which surely and rapidly disappear when the cause is removed.”

The general rule, on the reception of a patient, is to cut off at once and altogether the use of alcohol in every form.  “More,” says the doctor, “can be done by diet and medicine, than can be obtained by a compromise in the moderate use of stimulants for a limited period.”  It is a mistake, he adds, to suppose “that any special danger arises from stopping the accustomed stimulus.  Alcohol is a poison, and we should discontinue its use at once, as it can be done with safety and perfect impunity, except in rare cases.”

To secure all the benefits to be derived from medical treatment, “we should have,” says Dr. Dodge, “institutions for the reception of inebriates, where total abstinence can be rigidly, but judiciously enforced for a sufficient length of time, to test the curative powers of absolute restraint from all intoxicating drinks.  When the craving for stimulants is irresistible, it is useless to make an attempt to reclaim and cure the drunkard, unless the detention is compulsory, and there is complete restraint from all spirituous or alcoholic stimulants.”

REMOVAL FROM TEMPTATION.

In regard to the compulsory power that should inhere in asylums for the cure of drunkenness, there is little difference of opinion among those who have had experience in their management.  They have more faith in time than in medicine, and think it as much the duty of the State to establish asylums for the treatment of drunkenness as for the treatment of insanity.  “The length of time necessary to cure inebriation,” says Dr. Dodge, “is a very important consideration.  A habit covering five, ten, fifteen or twenty years, cannot be expected to be permanently eradicated in a week or a month.  The fact that the excessive use of stimulants for a long period of time has caused a radical change, physically, mentally and morally, is not only the strongest possible proof that its entire absence is necessary, but, also, that it requires a liberal allowance of time to effect a return to a normal condition.  The shortest period of continuous restraint and treatment, as a general rule, should not be less than six months in the most hopeful cases, and extending from one to two years with the less hopeful, and more especially for the class of periodical drinkers, and those with an hereditary tendency.”