The remodeling power or alcohol is marvelous, and typically appalling. It looks to open a manner of entrance into the soul for all categories of foolish, insane or malignant spirits, who, so long because it remains involved with the brain, are ready to hold possession. Men of the kindest nature when sober, act usually like fiends when drunk. Crimes and outrages are committed, that shock and shame the perpetrators when the excitement of inebriation has passed away. Referring to this subject, Dr. Henry Munroe says:
“It seems from the experience of Mr. Fletcher, who has paid a lot of attention to the cases of drunkards, from the remarks of Mr. Dunn, in his ‘Medical Psychology,’ and from observations of my very own, that there is some analogy between our physical and psychical natures; for, because the physical half of us, when its power is at an occasional ebb, becomes vulnerable of morbid influences which, in full vigor, would jump over it while not result, therefore when the psychical (synonymous with the ethical ) part of the brain has its healthy operate disturbed and deranged by the introduction of a morbid poison like alcohol, the individual therefore circumstanced sinks in depravity, and “becomes the helpless subject of the forces of evil, “which are powerless against a nature free from the morbid influences of alcohol.”
Totally different persons are affected in different ways by the same poison. Indulgence in alcoholic drinks may act upon one or more of the cerebral organs; and, as its necessary consequence, the manifestations of functional disturbance will follow in such of the mental powers as these organs subserve. If the indulgence be continued, then, either from deranged nutrition or organic lesion, manifestations formerly developed only throughout a work of intoxication could become permanent , and terminate in insanity or dypso-mania. M. Flourens initial got wind the fact that bound morbific agents, when introduced into the current of the circulation, tend to act primarily and specially on one nervous centre in preference to that of another, by virtue of some special elective affinity between such morbific agents and bound ganglia. So, within the tottering gait of the tipsy man, we tend to see the influence of alcohol upon the functions of the cerebellum within the impairment of its power of co-ordinating the muscles.
Bound writers on diseases of the mind make especial allusion to that type of insanity termed ‘dypsomania’, in which someone has an unquenchable thirst for alcoholic drinks a tendency as decidedly maniacal as that of homicidal mania ; or the uncontrollable need to burn, termed pyromania ; or to steal, referred to as kleptomania.
Homicidal mania.
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The various tendencies of homicidal mania in numerous individuals are typically only nursed into action when the current of the blood has been poisoned with alcohol. I had a case of a one that, whenever his brain was thus excited, told me that he experienced a most uncontrollable need to kill or injure some one; so abundant therefore, that he may at times hardly restrain himself from the action, and was obliged to refrain from all stimulants, lest, in an unlucky moment, he would possibly commit himself. Townley, who murdered the young lady of his affections, for that he was sentenced to be imprisoned in a very lunatic asylum forever, poisoned his brain with brandy and soda-water before he committed the rash act. The brandy stimulated into action sure portions of the brain, which acquired such a power as to subjugate his will, and hurry him to the performance of a frightful deed, opposed alike to his higher judgment and his ordinary desires.
As to pyromania , some years ago I knew a laboring man in a very country village, who, whenever he had had a few glasses of ale at the general public-house, would chuckle with delight at the thought of firing sure gentlemen’s stacks. Yet, when his brain was free from the poison, a quieter, better-disposed man could not be. Unfortunately, he became addicted to habits of intoxication; and, one night, beneath alcoholic excitement, fired some stacks belonging to his employers, for which, he was sentenced for fifteen years to a penal settlement, where his brain would never once more be alcoholically excited.
Kleptomania.
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Next, I will give an example of kleptomania . I knew, many years ago, a terribly clever, industrious and gifted young man, who told me that whenever he had been drinking, he could hardly face up to, the temptation of stealing something that came in his way; however that these feelings never troubled him at different times. One afternoon, when he had been indulging along with his fellow-workmen in drink, his can, sadly, was overpowered, and he took from the mansion where he was operating some articles of price, for which he was accused, and afterwards sentenced to a term of imprisonment. When set at liberty he had the great fortune to be placed among some kind-hearted persons, vulgarly known as teetotallers ; and, from conscientious motives, signed the PLEDGE, now on top of twenty years ago. From that time to the current moment he has never experienced the overmastering desire that therefore often beset him in his drinking days to require that which was not his own. Moreover, no pretext on earth might currently entice him to style of any liquor containing alcohol, feeling that, below its influence, he would possibly again fall its victim. He holds an influential position within the town where he resides.
I have known some girls of excellent position in society, who, when a dinner or supper-party, and once having taken sundry glasses of wine, might not withstand the temptation of taking home any little article not their own, when the chance offered; and who, in their sober moments, have returned them, as if taken by mistake. We have a tendency to have many instances recorded in our police reports of gentlemen of position, underneath the influence of drink, committing thefts of the most paltry articles, afterwards returned to the homeowners by their friends, that can solely be accounted for, psychologically, by the actual fact {that the} will had been for the time fully overpowered by the refined influence of alcohol.
Loss of mental clearness.
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Alcohol, whether or not taken in giant or little doses, immediately disturbs the natural functions of the mind and body, is now conceded by the foremost eminent physiologists. Dr. Brinton says: ‘Mental acuteness, accuracy of conception, and delicacy of the senses, are all so far opposed by the action of alcohol, as that the utmost efforts of every are incompatible with the ingestion of any moderate amount of fermented liquid. Indeed, there is scarcely any calling which demands skillful and exact effort of mind and body, or that requires the balanced exercise of the many faculties, that does not illustrate this rule. The mathematician, the gambler, the metaphysician, the billiard-player, the author, the artist, the physician, would, if they could analyze their expertise aright, typically concur in the statement, that a single glass can often suffice to require , thus to talk, the sting off each mind and body , and to reduce their capability to one thing below what is comparatively their perfection of work.
A train was driven carelessly into one of the principal London stations, running into another train, killing, by the collision, six or seven persons, and injuring many others. From the evidence at the inquest, it appeared {that the} guard was reckoned sober, solely he had had 2 glasses of ale with a devotee at a previous station. Currently, reasoning psychologically, these two glasses of ale had probably been instrumental in commencing the sting from his perceptions and prudence, and manufacturing a carelessness or boldness of action which would not have occurred beneath the cooling, temperate influence of a beverage free from alcohol. Many persons have admitted to me that they were not the identical after taking even one glass of ale or wine that they were before, and may not thoroughly trust themselves once they had taken this single glass.
Impairment of memory.
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An impairment of the memory is among the first symptoms of alcoholic derangement.
“This,” says Dr. Richardson, “extends even to forgetfulness of the most typical things; to names of familiar persons, to dates, to duties of daily life. Strangely, too,” he adds, “this failure, like that which indicates, within the aged, the era of second childishness and mere oblivion, does not extend to the things of the past, however is confined to events that are passing. On previous memories the mind retains its power; on new ones it requires constant prompting and sustainment.”
In this failure of memory nature provides a solemn warning that imminent peril is at hand. Well for the habitual drinker if he heed the warning. Should he not do thus, symptoms of a a lot of serious character will, in time, develop themselves, as the brain becomes a lot of and a lot of diseased, ending, it could be, in permanent insanity.
Mental and moral diseases.
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Of the mental and moral diseases that too often follow the regular drinking of alcohol, we have painful records in asylum reports, in medical testimony and in our daily observation and experience. These are therefore full and varied, and thrust thus constantly on our attention, {that the} wonder is that men don’t seem to be afraid to run the terrible risks concerned even in what’s referred to as the moderate use of alcoholic beverages.
In 1872, a choose committee of the House of Commons, appointed “to think about the simplest arrange for the control and management of habitual drunkards,” called upon some of the foremost eminent medical men in Great Britain to grant their testimony in answer to a massive number of questions, embracing each topic inside the vary of inquiry, from the pathology of inebriation to the sensible usefulness of prohibitory laws. In this testimony abundant was said regarding the impact of alcoholic stimulation on the mental condition and ethical character. One physician, Dr. James Crichton Brown, who, in 10 years’ experience as superintendent of lunatic asylums, has paid special attention to the relations of habitual drunkenness to insanity, having rigorously examined 5 hundred cases, testified that alcohol, taken in excess, made different kinds of mental disease, of that he mentioned four categories: 1. Mania a potu , or alcoholic mania. 2. The monomania of suspicion. 3. Chronic alcoholism, characterized by failure of the memory and power of judgment, with partial paralysis typically ending fatally. 4. Dypsomania, or an irresistible probing for alcoholic stimulants, occuring very frequently, paroxysmally, and with constant liability to periodical exacerbations, when the craving becomes altogether uncontrollable. Of this latter form of disease, he says: “This is often invariably associated with a bound impairment of the intellect, and of the affections and the moral powers .”
Dr. Alexander Peddie, a physician of over thirty-seven years’ observe in Edinburgh, gave, in his evidence, many exceptional instances of the moral perversions that followed continued drinking.
Relation between insanity and drunkenness.
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Dr. John Nugent said that his expertise of twenty-six years among lunatics, led him to believe that there’s a terribly close relation between the results of the abuse of alcohol and insanity. The population of Eire had decreased, he said, 2 millions in twenty-five years, but there was the same quantity of insanity currently that there was before. He attributed this, during a nice measure, to indulgence in drink.
Dr. Arthur Mitchell, Commissioner of Lunacy for Scotland, testified {that the} excessive use of alcohol caused a massive amount of the lunacy, crime and pauperism of that country. In some men, he said, habitual drinking ends up in different diseases than insanity, because the effect is often in the direction of the proclivity, however it is certain that there are many in whom there’s a clear proclivity to insanity, who would escape that dreadful consummation but for drinking; excessive drinking in many persons determining the insanity to which they are, anyways, predisposed . The kids of drunkards, he more said, are in a larger proportion idiotic than different youngsters, and in a larger proportion become themselves drunkards; they’re conjointly in a very larger proportion prone to the normal styles of acquired insanity.
Dr. Winslow Forbes believed that within the habitual drunkard the whole nervous structure, and the brain especially, became poisoned by alcohol. All the mental symptoms that you see accompanying normal intoxication, he remarks, result from the poisonous effects of alcohol on the brain. It is the brain that is especially effected. In temporary drunkenness, the brain becomes in an abnormal state of alimentation, and if this habit is persisted in for years, the nervous tissue itself becomes permeated with alcohol, and organic changes take place in the nervous tissues of the brain, manufacturing that frightful and dreadful chronic insanity that we see in lunatic asylums, traceable entirely to habits of intoxication . A large proportion of frightful mental and brain disturbances can, he declared, be traced to the drunkenness of parents.
Dr. D.G. Dodge, late of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, who, with. Dr. Joseph Parrish, gave testimony before the committee of the House of Commons, said, in one among his answers: “With the excessive use of alcohol, functional disorder will invariably appear, and no organ can be a lot of seriously affected, and probably impaired, than the brain. This can be shown in the inebriate by a weakened intellect, a general debility of the mental schools , a partial or total loss of self-respect, and a departure of the power of self-command; all of which, acting together, place the victim at the mercy of a depraved and morbid appetite, and build him utterly powerless, by his own unaided efforts, to secure his recovery from the disease which is destroying him.” And he adds: “I’m of opinion that there’s a “nice similarity between inebriety and insanity.
“I’m decidedly of opinion that the former has taken its place within the family of diseases as prominently as its twin-brother insanity; and, in my opinion, the day is not far distant when the pathology of the former will be as fully understood and as successfully treated because the latter, and even more successfully, since it’s more among the reach and bounds of human control, that, wisely exercised and scientifically administered, could forestall curable inebriation from verging into attainable incurable insanity.”
General impairment of the faculties.
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Dr. Richardson, speaking of the action of alcohol on the mind, offers the following unhappy image of its ravages:
“An analysis of the condition of the mind induced and maintained by the free daily use of alcohol as a drink, reveals a singular order of facts. The manifestation fails altogether to reveal the exaltation of any reasoning power in a useful or satisfactory direction. I have never met with an instance in which such a claim for alcohol has been made. Quite the opposite, confirmed alcoholics constantly say that for this or that employment, requiring thought and attention, it is necessary to forego some of the same old potations in order to own a cool head for exhausting work.
“On the other aspect, the expertise is overwhelmingly in favor of the observation that the employment of “alcohol sells the reasoning powers, “make weak men and girls the easy prey of the wicked and robust, and leads men and women who ought to understand better into each grade of misery and vice. If, then, alcohol enfeebles the rationale, what part of the mental constitution will it exalt and excite? It excites and exalts those animal, organic, emotional centres of mind which, in the dual nature of man, therefore typically cross and oppose that pure and abstract reasoning nature that lifts man higher than the lower animals, and rightly exercised, little lower than the angels.
It excites man’s worst passions.
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Exciting these animal centres, it lets loose all the passions, and offers them a lot of or less of unlicensed dominion over the man. It excites anger, and when it will not lead to this extreme, it keeps the mind fretful, irritable, dissatisfied and captious…. And if I were to take you thru all the passions, love, hate, lust, envy, avarice and pride, I should but show you that alcohol ministers to all of them; that, paralyzing the explanation, it takes from off these passions that fine adjustment of reason, which places man above the lower animals. From the start to the tip of its influence it subdues reason and sets the passions free. The analogies, physical and mental, are perfect. That that loosens the stress of the vessels which feed the body with due order and precision, and, thereby, lets loose the center to violent excess and unbridled motion, loosens, conjointly, the reason and lets loose the passion. In both instances, heart and head are, for a time, out of harmony; their balance broken. The man descends nearer and closer to the lower animals. From the angels he glides farther and farther away.
A unhappy and terrible picture.
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The damaging effects of alcohol on the human mind present, finally, the saddest picture of its influence. The most aesthetic artist will notice no angel here. All is animal, and animal of the worst type. Memory irretrievably lost, words and very elements of speech forgotten or words displaced to own no that means in them. Rage and anger persistent and mischievous, or remittent and impotent. Worry at each corner of life, distrust on each aspect, grief merged into blank despair, hopelessness into permanent melancholy. Surely no Pandemonium that ever poet dreamt of might equal that which would exist if all the drunkards of the globe were driven into one mortal sphere.
As I have moved among people who are physically stricken with alcohol, and have detected under the numerous disguises of name the fatal diseases, the pains and penalties it imposes on the body, the image has been sufficiently cruel. But even that image pales, as I conjure up, without any stretch of imagination, the devastations which the same agent inflicts on the mind. Forty per cent., the learned Superintendent of Colney Hatch, Dr. Sheppard, tells us, of those that were brought into that asylum in 1876, were so brought as a result of of the direct or indirect effects of alcohol. If the facts of all the asylums were collected with equal care, the same tale would, I fear, be told. What need we have a tendency to any to point out the destructive action on the human mind? The Pandemonium of drunkards; the grand transformation scene of that pantomime of drink that commences with, moderation! Let it never more be forgotten by those who love their fellow-men until, through their efforts, it is closed forever.”
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