“Whenever any person shall have become an habitual drunkard, a dypsomaniac, or so far addicted to the intemperate use of narcotics or stimulants as to have lost the power of self-control, the Court of Probate for the district in which such person resides, or has a legal domicil, shall, on application of a majority of the selectmen of the town where such person resides, or has a legal domicil, or of any relative of such person, make due inquiry, and if it shall find such person to have become an habitual drunkard, or so far addicted to the intemperate use of narcotics or stimulants as to have lost the power of self-control, then said court shall order such person to be taken to some inebriate asylum within this State, for treatment, care and custody, for a term not less than four months, and not more than twelve months; but if said person shall be found to be a dypsomaniac, said term of commitment shall be for the period of three years:  provided, however, that the Court of Probate shall not in either case make such order without the certificate of at least two respectable practising physicians, after a personal examination, made within one week before the time of said application or said commitment, which certificate shall contain the opinion of said physicians that such person has become, as the case may be, a dypsomaniac, an habitual drunkard, or has, by reason of the intemperate use of narcotics or stimulants, lost the power of self-control, and requires the treatment, care and custody of some inebriate asylum, and shall be subscribed and sworn to by said physicians before an authority empowered to administer oaths.”

LOSS TO THE STATE IN NOT ESTABLISHING ASYLUMS

In a brief article in the Quarterly Journal of Inebriety, for 1877, Dr. Dodge thus emphasizes his views of the importance to the State of establishing asylums to which drunkards may be sent for treatment:  “Every insane man who is sent to an asylum, is simply removed from doing harm, and well cared for, and rarely comes back to be a producer again.  But inebriates (the hopeful class) promise immeasurably more in their recovery.  They are, as inebriates, non-producers and centres of disease, bad sanitary and worse moral surroundings.  All their career leads down to crime and poverty.  The more drunkards, the more courts of law, and almshouses, and insane asylums, and greater the taxes.  Statistics show that from fifty to sixty per cent. of crime is due to drunkenness; and we all know how large poverty is due to this cause.  Drunkenness is alone responsible for from twenty to twenty-five per cent. of all our insane.

“We assert, and believe it can be proved, that reclaiming the drunkard is a greater gain to the State, practical and immediate, than any other charity.

“It is a low estimate to say it costs every county in the State three hundred dollars yearly to support a drunkard; that is, this amount, and more, is diverted from healthy channels of commerce, and is, practically, lost to the State.  At an inebriate asylum, but little over that amount would, in a large majority of cases, restore them as active producers again.