“What an awful disease!” exclaimed one of the listeners.

“You may well call it an awful disease,” returned the doctor, who, under the influence of a few glasses of wine, was more inclined to talk than usual.  “It has been named the mother of diseases.  Its death-roll far outnumbers that of any other.  When it has fairly seized upon a man, no influence seems able to hold him back from the indulgence of his passion for drink.  To gratify this desire he will disregard every consideration affecting his standing in society, his pecuniary interests and his domestic relations, while the most frightful instances of the results of drinking have no power to restrain him.  A hundred deaths from this cause, occurring under the most painful and revolting circumstances, fail to impress him with a sense of his own danger.  His understanding will be clear as to the cases before him, and he will even condemn the self-destructive acts which he sees in others, but will pass, as it were, over the very bodies of these victims, without a thought of warning or a sense of fear, in order to gratify his own ungovernable propensity.  Such is the power of this terrible malady.”

“Has the profession found a remedy?”

“No; the profession is almost wholly at fault in its treatment.  There are specialists connected with insane and reformatory institutions who have given much attention to the subject, but as yet we have no recorded line of treatment that guarantees a cure.”

“Except,” said one of his listeners, “the remedy of entire abstinence from drinks in which alcohol is present.”

The doctor gave a shrug: 

“You do not cure a thirsty man by withholding water.”

His mind was a little clouded by the wine he had taken.

“The thirsty man’s desire for water is healthy; and if you withhold it, you create a disease that will destroy him,” was answered.  “Not so the craving for alcohol.  With every new supply the craving is increased, and the man becomes more and more helpless in the folds of an enslaving appetite.  Is it not true, doctor, that with few exceptions all who have engaged in treating inebriates agree that only in entire abstinence is cure possible?”

“Well, yes; you are probably right there,” Dr. Angler returned, with some professional reserve.  “In the most cases isolation and abstinence are no doubt the only remedies, or, to speak more correctly, the only palliatives.  As for cure, I am one of the skeptics.  If you have the diathesis, you have the danger of exposure always, as in consumption.”

“An occasion like this,” remarked the other, “is to one with a dypso-maniac diathesis like a draft of cold, damp air on the exposed chest of a delicate girl who has the seeds of consumption in her lungs.  Is it not so, doctor?”

“Yes, yes.”

“There are over three hundred persons here to-night.”

“Not less.”

“In so large a company, taking society as we have it to-day, is it likely that we have none here with a hereditary or acquired love of drink?”