Dr. Angier joined the two men at this moment, and heard the last remark.  The speaker added, addressing him: 

“Your professional experience will corroborate this, Dr. Angier.”

“Corroborate what?” he asked, with a slight appearance of evasion in his manner.

“We were speaking of the effects of intemperance on the more cultivated and refined classes, and I said that it mattered little as to the social condition; the hurt of drink was the same and the disturbance of normal conditions as great in one class of society as in another, that a confirmed inebriate, when under the influence of intoxicants, lost all idea of respectability or moral responsibility, and would act out his insane passion, whether he were a lawyer, an army officer or a hod-carrier.  In other words, that social position gave the wife of an inebriate no immunity from personal violence when alone with her drunken husband.”

Dr. Angier did not reply, but his face became thoughtful.

“Have you given much attention to the pathology of drunkenness?” asked one of the gentlemen.

“Some; not a great deal.  The subject is one of the most perplexing and difficult we have to deal with.”

“You class intemperance with diseases, do you not?”

“Yes; certain forms of it.  It may be hereditary or acquired like any other disease.  One man may have a pulmonary, another a bilious and another a dypso-maniac diathesis, and an exposure to exciting causes in one case is as fatal to health as in the other.  If there exist a predisposition to consumption, the disease will be developed under peculiar morbific influences which would have no deleterious effect upon a subject not so predisposed.  The same law operates as unerringly in the inherited predisposition to intemperance.  Let the man with a dypso-maniac diathesis indulge in the use of intoxicating liquors, and he will surely become a drunkard.  There is no more immunity for him than for the man who with tubercles in his lungs exposes himself to cold, bad air and enervating bodily conditions.”

“A more serious view of the case, doctor, than is usually taken.”

“I know, but a moment’s consideration—­to say nothing of observed facts—­will satisfy any reasonable man of its truth.”

“What do you mean by dypso-mania as a medical term?”

“The word,” replied Dr. Angier, “means crazy for drink, and is used in the profession to designate that condition of alcoholic disease in which the subject when under its influence has no power of self-control.  It is characterized by an inordinate and irresistible desire for alcoholic liquors, varying in intensity from a slight departure from a normal appetite to the most depraved and entire abandonment to its influence.  When this disease becomes developed, its action upon the brain is to deteriorate its quality and impair its functions.  All the faculties become more or less weakened.  Reason, judgment, perception, memory and understanding lose their vigor and capacity.  The will becomes powerless before the strong propensity to drink.  The moral sentiments and affections likewise become involved in the general impairment.  Conscience, the feeling of accountability, the sense of right and wrong, all become deadened, while the passions are aroused and excited.”