“Figures cannot represent the actual loss to society, nor can we compute the gain from a single case cured and returned to normal life and usefulness.  Inebriety is sapping the foundation of our Government, both State and National, and unless we can provide means adequate to check it, we shall leave a legacy of physical, moral and political disease to our descendants, that will ultimately wreck this country.  Inebriate asylums will do much to check and relieve this evil.”

We conclude this chapter, which is but an imperfect presentation of the work of our inebriate asylums, by a quotation from the Quarterly Journal of Inebriety, for September, 1877.  This periodical is published under the auspices of “The American Association for the Cure of Inebriates.”  The editor, Dr. Crothers, says:  “We publish in this number, reports of a large number of asylums from all parts of the country, indicating great prosperity and success, notwithstanding the depression of the times.  Among the patients received at these asylums, broken-down merchants, bankers, business men, who are inebriates of recent date, and chronic cases that have been moderate drinkers for many years, seem to be more numerous.  The explanation is found in the peculiar times in which so many of the business men are ruined, and the discharge of a class of employees whose uncertain habits and want of special fitness for their work make them less valuable.  Both of these classes drift to the inebriate asylum, and, if not able to pay, finally go to insane hospitals and disappear.

“Another class of patients seem more prominent this year, namely, the hard-working professional and business men, who formerly went away to Europe, or some watering-place, with a retinue of servants; now they appear at our retreats, spend a few months, and go away much restored.  The outlook was never more cheery than at present, the advent of several new asylums, and the increased usefulness of those in existence, with the constant agitation of the subject among medical men at home and abroad, are evidence of great promise for the future.  Of the Journal we can only say that, as the organ of the American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, it will represent the broadest principles and studies which the experience of all asylums confirm, and independent of any personal interest, strive to present the subject of inebriety and its treatment in its most comprehensive sense.”

CHAPTER IX.

REFORMATORY HOMES.

Differing in some essential particulars from inebriate asylums or hospitals for the cure of drunkenness as a disease, are the institutions called “Homes.”  Their name indicates their character.  It is now about twenty years since the first of these was established.  It is located at 41 Waltham Street, Boston, in an elegant and commodious building recently erected, and is called the “Washingtonian Home.”