K 
' • ■ S INEBRIETY 
ITS SOURCE, PREVENTION, AND CURE INEBRIETY 
ITS 
SOURCE, PREVENTION, AND CURE 
BY 
CHARLES FOLLEN PALMER 
f < i 
New York Chicago Toronto 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
1898 Copyright, 1896, by 
Fleming H. Revell Company 
THE NEW YORK TYPE-SETTING COMPANY 
THE CAXTON PRESS CONTENTS 
I 
The Nervous-Mental Organization 
PAGE 
Morbid Conditions and Perverted Sensations .... n 
The Characteristics of Nerve-influence 12 
Natural Inheritance in Connection with Physical and 
Moral Disease *6 
The Neuro-psychopathic Constitution 17 
Mental Disease 20 
The Inebriate Diathesis 21 
The Relation which Disease or Injury Holds to Alco- 
holic Inebriety 23 
The Relation which Morality Bears to Inebriety 27 
The Distinction Made by Medical Scientists be- 
tween Hereditary and Acquired Inebriety 30 
The Possibility of Altering the Constitutional Tempera- 
ment by Suitable Education 31 
II 
The Inebriate's First Step toward a Cure 
The Inebriate in His Moral Aspect 39 
Moral Status of Inebriates 40 
Trained Will Power an Essential to Self-preser- 
vation 41 6 
CONTENTS 
PAGE 
An Unselfish Wife not Always the Best for a Weak 
Husband 42 
The First Steps to be Taken for the Inebriate's Resto- 
ration 44 
Sensitiveness of Some Inebriates to Inebriate Asylums 44 
Further Steps to be Taken by the Inebriate in Building 
up Moral Manhood 45 
Purgation of Evil Thoughts of Others an Essential... 47 
The Inebriate's New Life 48 
Nothing More Dangerous than a Life of Ease, Care- 
lessness, and Levity 49 
The Character of the Temptations that will Assail Him 50 
The Value of Each Day's Self-denial in Petty Indulgences 52 
No Inebriate Really Cured unless He has Built up Self- 
control on the Structure of Daily Self-denial .... 53 
Reparation of the Physical Damages Wrought by 
Alcohol 54 
HI 
The Remedying of the Pretnebrtate Morbid 
Conditions and the Strengthening of 
the Bases of Self-control 
Treatment in Early Youth t» 59 
The Masculine Treatment an Essential in Early Life 60 
The Character of His Occupations, Amusements, and 
Exercises 62 
Sanitary Regimen in Ventilation, Cleanliness, and Diet 64 
Entire Abstinence from all Stimulants and Narcotics an 
Essential 67 
To Correct the Absence of Ambition in Moral-Material 
Directions 69 
The Training of the Executive Force or Moral Will 
Power 73 
Moral Defection in Well-trained Youths 76 CONTENTS 
7 
IV 
The Inebriate's Continued Progress in Build- 
ing up Moral Manhood 
PAGE 
The Hypercritical Condition of Mind with Regard to 
Our Fellow-men very Destructive to Mental Health 81 
The Value of Being Indulgent to the Beliefs and Opin- 
ions of Others 85 
Manly Indulgence for the Weaknesses and Infirmities 
of Others 86 
The Value of Moral Persistence 88 
Adherence to Virtues in Harmony with Our Disposition 
and Associations not Moral Strength 90 
Encouragement in a Life of Self-denial 92 
V 
Moral Characteristics and Various Types of 
the Inebriate 
The Inebriate in His Moral Characteristics 97 
The Brutal Criminal Inebriate of Our Cities 98 
The Nervous Animal Type of Inebriate 98 
The Intellectual Type of Inebriate 99 
The Domestic and Religious Type of Inebriate 100 
The Brutal Criminal Inebriate in His Connection with 
Jails and Penitentiaries 101 
The Spiritual Effects of Drunkenness 105 
DiagramTo follow 109 I 
THE NERVOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION I 
The Nervous-Mental Organization 
Morbid Conditions and Perverted Sensations 
The Characteristics of Nerve-influence 
Natural Inheritance in Connection with Physical and 
Moral Disease 
The Neuro-psychopathic Constitution 
Mental Disease 
The Inebriate Diathesis 
The Relation which Disease or Injury Holds to Alco- 
holic Inebriety 
The Relation which Morality Bears to Inebriety 
The Distinction Made by Medical Scientists be- 
tween Hereditary and Acquired Inebriety 
The Possibility of Altering the Constitutional Tempera- 
ment by Suitable Education 
10 I 
THE NERVOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZA- 
TION 
Morbid Conditions and Perverted Sen- 
sations.-All intelligent persons unite in believing 
that the entire nervous force constituting the nervous 
organization is generated within the ganglionic centres 
of the brain, and that the brain is the physical organ 
of the mind. Obedient to the impulse therein given, 
this imperial and multiform system, embracing millions 
of nerve-cells, exercises its functions in the production 
of all the mental phenomena. 
Under the varying transformations and modifications 
of the nerve-sensations are evolved our ideas, feelings, 
moral perceptions ; through these we acquire the facul- 
ties of attention, memory, comparison, judgment, and 
the desires and volitions. The passions-love, hatred, 
fear-and the will are influenced by their alternating 
activity. With every movement of the mental processes 
there is a change, alteration, or loss of nerve-element, 
and the basis upon which its healthy equilibrium rests 
is healthy blood and pure air. 
The primal force which produces activity in this sub- 
tle piece of mechanism is purely spiritual, and is de- 
rived from the first great Source of all created matter; 
11 12 
INEBRIETY 
but the exciting causes producing its manifold phenom- 
ena are spiritual, psychical, and physical, and these are 
constantly arising through association with altering con- 
ditions within the body, with external objects, and with 
objects that are neither corporeal nor material. 
The Characteristics of Nerve-influence*-From 
the lowly forms of animal life, whose nerves pro- 
duce only reflex action in its simplest expression, up- 
ward through every series of progressive development, 
with the superaddition of nerve-centres, which add 
to the complexity of nerve-function, there is accu- 
mulated evidence that every such additional centre 
furnishes a source of new power, potentially capable, 
within certain limits, of modifying the action of the 
subordinate centres, yet nevertheless incapable of wholly 
negativing their specialized functions. Thus the organic 
nerve-cell presides over nutrition, and so far as the sim- 
ple vegetative growth of the animal is concerned, its 
action is all-sufficient; but in order to connect simple 
and organic growth with the phenomena of animal life 
an additional centre of force is needed, and there are 
evolved the reflex centres of the spinal cord, which 
unite vegetative growth with animal action. The 
sensory centres being next evolved, there is the possi- 
bility of sensory being added to organic and reflex 
action. There is no consciousness of life, of motion, 
or of sensation; but evolution goes on, and the brain 
becomes the centre of that conscious energy which pre- 
sides with such mysterious power over the thoughts 
and actions of man. 
To understand fully the operations of the brain ne- THE NERVOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
13 
cessitates a knowledge of the functions of the spinal 
and sensory centres ; for there are many acts performed 
by man which bear the semblance of conscious volition, 
yet when correctly interpreted only give evidence of 
automatic action of the reflex centres of the spinal cord 
and sensorium. While a few cases have been reported 
in which apparently limited nerve-action resulted with- 
out the existence of the proper nerve-elements, such as 
fibres and cells with their prolongations, yet it is an 
accepted fact that nerve-force exists only within the 
boundaries of the nervous structure, and that this 
nerve-force is generated not only in the cells, but also 
in the fibres, as seen when they are at rest. For ex- 
ample, in a limb removed, oxygen or strychnia restores 
nervous energy after its complete exhaustion. 
Nerve-force is not generated by any volitional effort. 
As magnetic, frictional, and statical electricity are only 
different forms of expression of the same energy, so 
simple impression, sensation, ideation, emotion, and 
volition are but different forms of expression of the 
same nerve-force and come from the special molecular 
structure of the organ through which they are mani- 
fested. This unity of nerve-force precludes its intense 
expression in more than one way at a time, so that if 
there is great bodily fatigue, mental work is impossible, 
and vice versa; neither can volition hold full sway in 
the presence of deep emotion. 
Nerve-energy is transformed into motion, as evi- 
denced in muscular action; it is also transformed into 
heat, but it is not known whether this is an immediate or 
a secondary result. There are a few instances recorded 14 
INEBRIETY 
which seem to show its transformation into light, and 
it is well known that in certain animals electricity is 
the direct result of its metamorphosis. From these 
data the conclusion seems authorized that at least a 
partial correlation exists between the physical forces 
and the energy resulting from nerve-action. It is im- 
portant to remember that the character of nervous and 
mental phenomena is determined by the condition of 
the nerve-centres, whether the condition is one of de- 
velopment of the centres themselves or of modification 
by disease or by foreign substances. The existence of 
the spinal cord alone predicates the possible existence 
of automatic reflex action, which, though unconscious, 
gives evidence of the use of means to a special end. 
Add to the spinal centres the medulla oblongata, and 
there result the involuntary and unconscious coordi- 
nate muscular movements of respiration, swallowing, 
coughing, and simple exclamation. Unconscious sen- 
sations of pleasure and pain, of taste and hearing, come 
by the addition of the annular protuberance, while the 
four medullary tubercles at the posterior surface of the 
annular tuber alone give visual power. The cerebel- 
lum coordinates the muscular movements of the body, 
while the cerebrum not only determines the nature of 
the mental life, but it alone is able to bring the varied 
sensations of nervous action within the domain of con- 
sciousness. The existence of these several general 
centres is therefore necessary in order that the many 
acts of human life may be performed; and as a neces- 
sary corollary it is found that in proportion as any 
centre is undeveloped, diseased, or modified, nervous THE NERHOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
15 
or mental action will be changed, limited, or arrested. 
That mind is influenced by and is dependent on the 
physical condition of the brain is again evident when 
we remember the effect caused by poisoned blood on 
all mental expressions. Hashish, opium, and alcohol, 
for example, weaken the will, exalt the automatic ac- 
tion of the brain, disturb perception, exaggerate self- 
consciousness, distort the emotions, dethrone reason, 
and cause moral turpitude. Diminish the normal blood- 
supply to the brain and the mind changes its charac- 
ter ; restore the needed amount and the mind promptly 
responds to the altered condition. 
Old age, injury, fatigue, anything which impairs the 
normal nutrient action of the nervous centres of 
thought, directly modify intellectual and moral mani- 
festations ; and the conclusion is irresistible that every 
psychical manifestation has a physical antecedent, and 
that cause and effect are as certainly established within 
the realm of mind as of matter. To explain the how 
and the why of mental action as a result of physical 
conditions is impossible. It is an ultimate fact, and as 
such is beyond explanation, as much so as how electri- 
city comes from the union of metals with an acid, or 
how life springs from a seed, or perfume from a flower. 
The effects of impure air on the nervous system are 
well exemplified in the case of young resident medical 
officers in hospitals, one and all of whom, more espe- 
cially if their animal vitality is still further lowered by 
overstudy, have their capacity for recuperation some- 
times deteriorated to such a degree that if they get a 
flesh-wound it is almost certain to become a suppurat- 16 
INEBRIETY 
ing sore, and so bad a one that, notwithstanding the 
application of the most powerful therapeutic agents in 
the pharmacopoeia, it will sometimes resist healing so 
long as they live under the hospital roof; whereas it 
heals rapidly, without assistance of either balm or lo- 
tion, so soon as they transport themselves into the pure, 
strong, fresh air either of the seaside or mountain-top.* 
Natural Inheritance in Connection with Physi- 
cal and Moral Disease.-The masterly labors of Gal- 
ton and Ribot have established the fact that a gen- 
eral law of heredity obtains in the mental as well as 
in perceptive and physical life. Its influence is un- 
disputed by all intelligent persons in forming the 
character of instinct, perception, intellect, will, and 
control over the appetites and passions, including all 
the moral impulses, either normal or abnormal, and 
the pathological conditions to which the physical and 
mental life are subject. This law invokes an analysis 
of the physical and mental antecedents which give the 
bias to the criminal's individual character and which 
so irresistibly impel him to crime. 
Testimony is conclusive in establishing the heredity 
of many neurotic diseases, such as a simple nervous 
temperament, neuralgia, chorea, hysteria, hypochon- 
driasis, inebriety, criminality, and insanity. Assuredly 
it is a fact which none can deny that the offspring of 
nervous, insane, epileptic, inebriate, consumptive, scrof- 
ulous, or criminal parents are more liable to develop 
some special form of disease than those whose parents 
are free from any vitiating cause. They have organi- 
* William G. Stevenson, M.D. ; Dr. George Harley, F.R.S. THE NERVOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
17 
zations which render it not only more possible, but 
more probable, for ancestral vice to appear, although 
the particular form which this vice may assume is not 
necessarily determined by the parent. Many neurotic 
diseases, like physical forces, are correlatives of one 
another. They are metamorphosed oftentimes in their 
transmission, so that what was neuralgia in the parent 
is chorea or hysteria in the offspring ; or chorea or hys- 
teria may be transformed into epilepsy, and this into 
insanity, and in a third generation develop phthisis, 
dipsomania, or criminality. Conversely, criminality or 
drunkenness may engender epilepsy or madness; and 
thus throughout the entire category of nervous mani- 
festations testimony is adduced to sustain the fact that 
cause and effect are as invariable in the intellectual 
and moral as in the physical world, and that through 
heredity the physical, intellectual, and moral forces of 
the ancestor largely determine those of the offspring. 
The Neuro-psychop athic Constitution. 
- It is not the purpose of this treatise to enter into the 
comprehensive subject of nervous and mental diseases, 
but only to inquire into that one department of the 
nervous group of constitutional temperaments which in 
France is known as the neuro-psychopathic constitu- 
tion, and that only in connection with one of its exag- 
gerated forms,-inebriety,-involving as it does the 
happiness and success of so large a proportion of the 
human family. So intimately related is it to insanity 
and the neuroses that at critical periods of life it is 
very apt to develop into one of them. It is congenital, 18 
INEBRIETY 
or attributable to early interference with the normal 
development. At least seventy-five per cent, are he- 
reditary. 
Included within its subjects are to be found the most 
gifted, the most vicious, the weakest, and ordinarily 
the most unhappy of mankind. Chatterton, Gold- 
smith, Burns, Steele, Coleridge, Southey, Charles 
Lamb, and Cowper are instances of this perverted or- 
ganic disposition. Dr. Folsom doubts if the compen- 
sation to society of such members of this family as 
Byron, Burns, De Quincey, and others is equal to the 
loss and injury sustained through the acquisition of the 
men who become the inmates of our prisons and alms- 
houses and destroyers of home peace; and he quotes 
Clouston as saying that the world would be better off 
to lose the comparatively few ill-balanced geniuses, the 
hundreds of impracticable, unwise, talented men and 
women, along with the thousands of people who can- 
not get on, shiftless, intemperate, idle, improvident, 
and impracticable, in order to get rid of the diathesis. 
It shows itself in infancy and childhood by irregular 
and disturbed sleep, irritability, apprehension, strange 
ideas, great sensitiveness to external impressions, high 
temperature, delirium or convulsions from slight causes, 
disagreeable dreams and visions, romancing, intense 
feeling, periodic headaches, muscular twitchings, ca- 
pricious appetites, and great intolerance of stimulants 
and narcotics. At puberty, developmental anomalies 
are observed in girls, and not seldom perverted sexual 
instincts in both sexes. During adolescence there is 
often excessive shyness or bravado, always introspec- I HE NERUOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
19 
tion and self-consciousness, and sometimes abeyance 
or absence of the sexual instinct, which, however, is 
frequently of extraordinary intensity. The imagina- 
tion and imitative faculties may be quick. The affec- 
tions and emotions are strong. Vehement dislikes are 
formed, and intense personal attachments result in 
extraordinary friendships, which not seldom swing 
around to bitter enmity or indifference. The natural 
home associations and feelings easily become disturbed 
or perverted. The passions are unduly a force in the 
character which is commonly said to lack will power. 
The individual's higher brain-centres are inhibited, and 
he dashes about like a ship at sea without a rudder, 
fairly well if the winds are fair and the sea calm, but 
dependent upon the elements for the character and 
time of the inevitable final wreck. Invention, poetry, 
music, artistic tastes, philanthropy, intensity, and ori- 
ginality are sometimes of a high order among these 
persons, but desultory, half-finished work and shiftless- 
ness are much more common. With many of them 
concentrated, sustained effort is impossible, and at- 
tempts to keep them to it result disastrously. Their 
common sense, perception of the relations of life, ex- 
ecutive or business faculty, and judgment are seldom 
well developed. The memory is now and then phe- 
nomenal. In later life there is a ready reaction to ex- 
ternal circumstances, even to the weather, by which 
they are usually a little exhilarated or somewhat de- 
pressed. They are apt to be self-conscious, egoistic, 
suspicious, and morbidly conscientious; they easily 
become hypochondriacal, victims of insomnia, neu- 20 
INEBRIETY 
rotic, hysterical, intemperate, or insane; and they of- 
fend against the proprieties of life or commit crimes 
with less cause or provocation than other persons. 
Many of them are among the most gifted and attrac- 
tive people in their community, but the majority are 
otherwise and possess an uncommon capacity for 
making fools of themselves, being a nuisance to their 
friends and of little use to the world. Some exceptions 
get on fairly well if their lives are tolerably easy or 
especially well regulated. Their mortality rate, espe- 
cially from pulmonary consumption, is high. In the 
critical physiological periods of life there is danger of 
breaking down. 
Mental Disease*-There is a further development 
of the hereditary predisposition to nervous or mental 
perversion, with more or less evidence of the neuro- 
psychopathic constitution. It is of two forms, the 
depressed and the mildly exhilarated, in either case 
amounting to simple melancholia or mild mania. Some- 
times the two forms are seen in a single member or in 
different members of one family where mental degenera- 
tion has begun. The frequent association of pulmonary, 
disease with these cases is possibly due to malnutrition 
in those persons living under the influence of more or 
less perpetual gloom, and to exposure and overexertion 
in those who are constantly and unnaturally excited, 
sleeping too little, and drawing upon their alert brains 
to the extent of exhaustion. 
Misanthropists, communists, enthusiasts, reformers, 
useless people and worse than useless, common nui- 
sances, criminals, saints, and heroes are found among THE NERNOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
21 
them. Undoubtedly in the case of criminals the tyr- 
anny of their organization deprives the intellect of the 
proper inhibitory power over the passions and evil ten- 
dencies, and yet with sufficient motive they can hold 
themselves considerably in check. It is only when 
the disease progresses into active insanity that the 
world is convinced that what it looked upon as 
meanness and wickedness was only disease. It seems 
like progressive development of character, except for 
the fact, generally overlooked, that it advances in a 
contrary direction to what would be natural, and is in- 
dependent of normal development.* 
The Inebriate Diathesis.-The earliest teach- 
ing of the temperance reformer was that intoxicating 
liquors are dangerous articles; that multitudes of 
persons are so susceptible to the narcotic influence of 
alcohol that, whatever their accomplishments or station, 
if they drink at all they drink to drunkenness; and that 
the confirmed inebriate is a diseased individual under- 
going the tortures of a living death, manifesting symp- 
toms characteristic of the operation of an irritant nar- 
cotic poison. 
The temperance enthusiast of latter days denies that 
inebriety is ever a disease, insists that the fault always 
lies with the drunkard, never in the drink, and that only 
evil-disposed persons and fools fall victims to the al- 
coholic excess. 
With the former well-informed friend of the inebriate 
the physical phase of narcotic indulgence, the arduous 
* Dr. Folsom. 22 
INEBRIETY 
and protracted character of the struggle of the drunk- 
ard for emancipation from his tyrannous taskmaster, 
is recognized. 
With the latter ill-informed visionary there is no 
physical element in the matter,-nothing but wanton 
immorality, a wilful sin, or at the best degrading 
weakness, in taking the first drink after the evil is 
once recognized by the moral perceptions,-and he 
complacently declares that religious and moral deter- 
mination and influences are alone of service in the 
reformation and cure of the inebriate. 
The illustrious forerunner of temperance, Erasmus 
Darwin, two centuries ago, and Benjamin Rush, a 
century ago, besides other far-seeing and profound 
thinkers long before, knew and taught the truth. It 
is not the vicious, the ill disposed, or the poor who 
alone swell the great army of the intemperate ; the most 
guileless spirits, the purest minds, the most unselfish 
souls, the loftiest understandings, and the clearest heads 
have gone down before the irresistible power of drink. 
The refrain swells from ten thousand voices, " Men 
become drunkards because they drink." If ever this 
weie true it is here; but in the language of Tennyson : 
" That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies; 
1 hat a lie which is all a lie can be met and fought with outright, 
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight." 
Men become drunkards through drinking, it is true; 
that is, drinking is the means by which they attain to 
a state of intoxication. Though a cause, drinking is THE NERVOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
23 
not the sole cause of drunkenness. It is in our coun- 
try and in some other countries the principal means of 
intoxication. In other lands, and to a great extent 
among ourselves, opium and other narcotics are the in- 
toxicating agents. There are many means used, by 
men and women who never drank and cannot drink 
alcohol in any form, to produce the toxic condition 
and give rise to the inebriate diathesis. 
A case has recently come to light, the first instance 
known to medical science, of a phosphorus habit, 
used first as a nerve-stimulant. The patient, while in 
the army, felt some symptoms of nervous debility, and 
seeing the hospital steward give phosphorus to sick 
soldiers, he began taking it himself in the shape of 
pills. It seemed to put new strength and energy into 
his nervous system. He subsequently became a con- 
firmed habitue to its use, and now he cannot give it up 
without his nerves suffering ; he craves it as the drinker 
craves his dram, and is a complete wreck.* 
The Relation which Disease or Injury Holds to 
Alcoholic Inebriety.-Disease may act as the predis- 
posing, exciting, complicating, and protracting cause 
of alcoholic inebriety. The disease may be inherited 
or acquired. It is proverbial that the progeny of in- 
sane or inebriate parents frequently become insane or 
inebriate either at or near puberty or middle life, when 
the exciting causes are presented that develop the latent 
tendency. As many are born imbecile, epileptic, or 
idiotic because of some defect in the procreating power, 
* Dr. Norman Kerr, F. R. S. 24 
INEBRIETY 
so many are born who inherit an inebriate diathesis; 
it is their sad birthright. They are the product of a 
defective and degenerate parentage. Of several hun- 
dred cases of inebriates whose ancestral records were 
noted at the Fort Hamilton Inebriate Asylum, over one 
third had either insane or inebriate parents, the latter 
being in excess. 
While we may regard inebriety and insanity in pa- 
rents as the principal predisposing causes of alcoholic 
inebriety in their offspring, we should also include 
among the predisposing causes of an hereditary char- 
acter, only secondary in importance to those mentioned, 
all neurotic tendencies, all hereditary diseases accompanied 
by degenerative changes-congenital syphilis, tubercu- 
losis, epilepsy, or other neuroses. The subjects influ- 
enced by such diatheses are born with a defective 
nervous system, and have a low resisting power to the 
degenerating inroads of disease. They are congenital 
neurotics; they have a natural tendency toward drugs, 
either stimulating or narcotic, and readily become in- 
sane or inebriates or opium habitues whenever a suffi- 
ciently exciting cause is presented. 
In brief, then, any disease of an hereditary charac- 
ter acting either directly or indirectly upon the nervous 
system, while it may not be as important as hereditary 
insanity or inebriety in determining the channels into 
which the future life shall drift, nevertheless imposes 
upon that life a diminished resisting power to the use 
of alcoholic stimulants or narcotics, and so predisposes 
the individual to inebriety. 
Let us now consider those conditions which may be THE NERHOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
25 
denominated the exciting causes of alcoholic inebriety, 
and we shall find they were acquired in the form of 
disease or injury by the person at some period of his 
life antedating his inebriety. 
These exciting causes may operate upon a person 
predisposed by heredity to inebriety, and so precipitate 
or hasten a tendency that might have manifested itself 
later, or they may act upon one who has not any he- 
reditary tendency to inebriety, but who becomes an 
inebriate from disease or injury. 
These exciting causes may be divided into: 
Direct, those that operate immediately upon the cere- 
brospinal axis, as cerebral concussion, fracture of 
skull with or without depression, sunstroke, cerebral 
syphilis, or other disturbance of the encephalon more 
or less profound ; and 
Indirect, any disease or injury not producing direct 
changes on the cerebrospinal axis, but localized out- 
side of it, and operating upon it by reflex influence, 
viz., painful ulcers, neuritis, neuromata, urethral stric- 
ture, and dysmenorrhea; in brief, any distressing or 
painful condition, thus indirectly acting upon the ner- 
vous system. 
In the experience of many, "head injuries" hold an 
important place among the direct exciting causes. At 
least one in six had received blows on the head, and 
forty-one of one hundred and twenty-three cases of 
head injuries recorded at Fort Hamilton were fractures 
of the skull; in four of these cases there was loss of bone. 
Twenty-one of the one hundred and twenty-three be- 
came habitual inebriates, the others periodical inebriates. 26 
INEBRIETY 
Syphilis.-About one in four of the cases entering 
the Fort Hamilton Inebriate Asylum are syphilitic. 
Syphilis is not infrequently the exciting cause of ine- 
briety, more especially in the later stages, when the 
nervous system becomes involved. 
Mental shock, resulting from sudden or excessive 
grief or joy, may be an exciting cause of inebriety, act- 
ing as it does directly upon the nervous centres by 
vasomotor disturbances. But while mental shocks, if 
they do not kill outright, may precipitate the subject of 
them into insanity or inebriety, and the first act of the 
insane may be an outbreak of intemperance or licen- 
tiousness in a person heretofore temperate and moral, 
these exciting causes of inebriety are insignificant when 
compared with 
Neurasthenia, or nerve-exhaustion, a prolonged vaso- 
motor disturbance of the cerebral circulation, resulting 
from underfeeding and overworking and worry, or other 
depressing causes producing physical weakness, want 
of mental energy, and almost total inability to perform 
the ordinary duties of life. Under these conditions 
alcohol is sought for its stimulating effect. It is the 
spur by which the tired heart and wearied brain are 
goaded on in the treadmill of routine and daily toil. 
It is for the neurasthenic we invent the "rest-cure," 
"massage," "systematic feeding;" and happy is he 
who seeks them early before the chains of habit and 
disease have made him a prisoner. 
The social customs and tendencies of the age in 
which we live are oftentimes the foundation causes of 
neurasthenia, the fierce rush in the race of life for THE NERUOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
27 
wealth, position, and " that honor which comes from 
men " being so great that to outstrip our fellows the 
words "rest," "diet," "recreation" must be erased from 
our vocabulary. 
If these premises which we have presented and en- 
deavored to prove as to the relation which disease 
holds to alcoholic excess are correct, then we are war- 
ranted in drawing the following conclusion: Alcoholic 
inebriety is often based upon and dependent on diseased 
conditions, which demand proper medical or hygienic 
treatment for their removal. The inebriate is a diseased 
person, and the disease has either preceded the inebriety or 
is dope)ident upon it. 
The Relation which Morality Bears to Inebriety. 
-The moral view has had full sway; the moral re- 
sponsibility of the drunkard has been the topic of a 
century; institutions have been founded on the "moral 
basis," and society and law and, worse than all, the 
family of the inebriate have treated him not as a sick 
man, but as a. moral delinquent. 
The relation which morality bears to inebriety ceases 
or assumes a secondary position when inebriety is de- 
pendent upon diseased conditions. We do not by any 
means exclude those moral influences which operate 
on the higher and better nature of man. These re- 
strain the inebriate from the worst features of his in- 
temperate career, and are a very important element 
in the treatment, but they must be assigned to their 
proper place as only a factor in the measures of cure. 
The authorities of the church and all philanthropic 
bodies and individuals are co-workers in returning the 28 
INEBRIETY 
inebriate to his healthy condition, but these must ac- 
company, not supplant, the hospital, the health insti- 
tute, the physician, and the hygienic means used for 
his cure. 
It is not extravagant to assert that the so-called 
moral treatment of the inebriate has been the great 
obstacle in the proper treatment of his case. The in- 
stances in which reproaches, imposed mortifications, 
insults, scoldings, contempt, criminations and recrim- 
inations, imprisonments, and other punishments have 
done other than to aggravate all the morbid manifes- 
tations, and to reflect back serious morbid consequences 
on the agents of such treatment, are so exceptional as 
to make them unworthy of consideration. 
I his injudicious conduct is the result of regarding 
the victim of a neurosis, of a defective inhibitory power 
of the brain-centres, of vitiated sensations, as having 
gone deliberately to work, through criminal self-indul- 
gence and love of a degrading vice, through a wicked 
perversity against walking in the "strait and narrow 
path," through pure wilfulness, and all the other beliefs 
incident to minds trained in one direction, to make 
himself a drunkard, to continue a drunkard for the 
very love of it, and to refuse to be other than a drunk- 
ard, rather than exercise the self-control necessary to 
become a temperate man. 
A recent medical scientist mentions the case of a 
soldier in the War of the Rebellion, who from being an 
amiable and good man, the pride of his home and 
family, anterior to his enlistment as a soldier, returned 
from the battle-field so altered in his moral conduct THE NERUOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
29 
that his relatives were disgusted and finally renounced 
him. He wandered from one soldiers' home to an- 
other all through the country, not being permitted to 
remain long in any on account of his conduct. He 
lied, stole, drank, told marvelous tales of his exploits, 
and among other things declared that he had a ball in 
his head, which, of course, was not believed. At his 
death an autopsy was made which proved the truth 
of his assertion. The poor man had been wandering 
around with a bullet in his head, suffering all kinds 
of moral degradation, the unmerited reproaches, con- 
tempt, and abandonment of wife, family, and friends, 
all because he had been so unfortunate as to be shot 
in such a manner as to interrupt the healthy working 
of his brain, causing the morbid manifestations attrib- 
uted to his wickedness. 
To prevent misapprehension, let it be known that 
we do not regard all drunkards as subjects of the dis- 
ease inebriety. There are those who indulge intem- 
perately who drink as they gamble-for mere pleasure, 
even though in their case the intemperate habit is apt 
in the long run to establish a permanent departure 
from health. The majority of drinkers are not dis- 
eased; there is no inherited diathesis or cachexia re- 
sponsive to narcotic excitement. Exciting causes play 
as thickly around them, provocative temptations beset 
them as persistently, pain, grief, joy, and excitement 
try their nerves as severely as all these excitants har- 
ass the possessors of the narcotic proclivity; but the 
inebriate excitation expends itself in vain, and the 
inebriate storm passes over a constitution which is 30 
INEBRIETY 
unaffected because it owns no corresponding predis 
position. 
The Distinction Made by Medical Scien- 
tists between Hereditary and Acquired 
INEBRIETY.- There are writers who make a strong 
distinction between hereditary diseased conditions in- 
volving inebriety, and that state brought about through 
self-indulgence and association. They name the first 
dipsomania, and the other habitual drunkenness pure 
and simple. 
Quain defines dipsomania as an irritability of the 
nervous system characterized by a craving, generally 
periodic, for alcoholic and other stimulants, and says 
that the occurrence of this form, as of other nervous 
diseases, may be traced in the family history of the 
patient, and that it may easily be and often is con- 
founded with mere habitual drunkenness; that, while 
in dipsomania there is a fundamental condition which 
manifests itself irrespective of external circumstances 
of temptation, in habitual drunkenness the craving 
consists mainly in a desire to keep up a condition of 
stimulation to which the brain has become accustomed. 
The habit is the result merely of compliance with a 
vicious custom; there is no such periodicity or inde- 
pendence of external influences as is found in the true 
disease. 
The symptoms of the latter, or true dipsomania, are 
described as an instability of character, indications of 
peculiar nervous irritability,-generally recognized as 
having preceded the distinct development of the crav- THE NEROOUS-MENTAI. ORGANIZATION 
31 
ing,-an abnormal sensitiveness to the influence of 
stimulants through which at times very small quantities 
of alcohol produce appreciable intoxication. During 
the periods of craving the whole being is enthralled 
with this morbid desire. 
The duration of the periods of craving is variable, 
but most commonly they last one or two weeks, while 
the remissions may continue from two to twelve months. 
Members of the household in which a patient lives 
can, indeed, often recognize the indications of a com- 
ing attack of the mania by a restlessness and depres- 
sion which precedes any such indulgence. Moderate 
indulgence in a stimulant may bring on the morbid 
craving, but the desire is frequently developed without 
any such introduction. During the intervals the pa- 
tient seems (except when the brain is weakened) to 
recover completely, and he generally displays great 
confidence in his ability to resist the tendency in the 
future. But even though compulsory restraint has been 
successfully enforced for a considerable period, the mor- 
bid tendency is seldom eradicated. 
The Possibility of Altering the Constitutional 
Temperament by Suitable Education. - It will have 
to be admitted, therefore, that there is in the nervous- 
mental organization of the inebriate an inherent weak- 
ness, a diseased condition, which makes him more the 
creature of circumstances and susceptible to the influ- 
ences which result in drink than would be the case 
in normally healthy nervous organizations. 
In the case of numbers of individuals born into the 
world it would seem as if by the order of their being 32 
INEBRIETY 
they were exempt from all ordinary possibilities of be- 
coming intemperate or insane, be the environment of 
life what it may. This phenomenon is frequently wit- 
nessed even in the offspring of the same parents, who 
differ widely as to their after destinies in life, some 
becoming inebriates or insane, and others healthfully 
growing into temperate, mentally capable, and success- 
ful men and women. 
It w'ould be greatly opposed to my purpose to sug- 
gest a plausible pretext by which one generation of a 
family can throw the odium of its moral and physical 
defection and failure in life upon the generations pre- 
ceding it. Heredity has been defined as the sum of 
all the ancestral forces culminating in the individual 
at birth, at which time begins the hygiene or environ- 
ment of life; and it is not too much to believe that in 
every individual birth there is a compensatory adjust- 
ment of forces in different directions, which practically 
amounts to an equality so far as individual happiness 
is concerned, and that education does the rest. The 
constitution that, under injudicious training and envi- 
ronment, tends in the direction of inebriety or insanity 
may be extraordinarily capable, under the rightful as- 
sociations, of making a John Howard or a Martin 
Luther. The inheritor of the inebriate predisposition 
may by eschewing intoxicants, by simple and healthful 
diet, by the observance of hygienic laws, by the culti- 
vation of the mental and moral faculties, and by the 
hallowed power of religious conviction, not only pre- 
serve a life unsullied by a single drunken blot, but rise 
to a height of usefulness and honor exceptional in its THE NERVOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
33 
character. It is only the accurate knowledge of his 
real tendencies and susceptibilities at the earliest pos- 
sible period of his history that is requisite. Possessed 
of these, he can set about to devise an impregnable line 
of defense against revolt from within and assault from 
without; knowing these, he can fortify the weak places, 
he can make good his defects, he can keep in check 
the impetuosity of his passions, he can strengthen his 
self-control, he can seek support from the Source most 
powerful to succor him, he can employ with effect arms 
of power and precision. 
The futility of censures or palliations is too apparent 
to need any apology in dwelling upon the transmitted 
basis of character. With these the inebriate has noth- 
ing to do, but simply with the knowledge of the phys- 
iological and moral pedigrees of at least two or three 
generations of the family directly preceding his own, 
so that he may be cognizant at the beginning of 
his life of his latent organic physical and intellectual 
disposition, and be enabled to make suitable selection 
of association and mental and physical discipline the 
best adapted to subvert and correct unwholesome and 
pernicious tendencies, and to encourage the growth 
and development of healthy latent intellectual organs 
and capabilities of the mind. If it were the uniform 
custom for each intelligent family to place on family 
record a chart of the approximate traits, characteristics, 
sicknesses, and general history of its living members, 
and of those of their progenitors into whose lives they 
have had some insight, their descendants would be 
informed of the influences at work within themselves 34 
INEBRIETY 
to mold their characters for better or worse, and could 
not plead ignorance when malevolent conditions con- 
spired to foster and encourage natural dispositions in 
false directions. 
In this knowledge and the subsequent conduct of 
the youth in the different phases of mental, moral, and 
physical activities up to the time of marriage is largely 
involved the earthly happiness or misery of unborn 
generations of humanity. If by wilful non-compliance 
with moral and physiological laws which influence 
the successful development of the individual he remits 
to these any portion of his own acquired moral, mental, 
and physical debts, for them either to discharge by 
painful exertion of right-doing, perhaps under unfavor- 
able and depressing conditions of living, or to relieve 
themselves altogether by moral defection and subse- 
quent remorse and misery, he most assuredly assumes 
a large responsibility in the character of their after lives. 
In the case of a goodly number of individuals who 
seem to pass happily through life without any appa- 
rent attrition of evil, how much may they thus uncon- 
sciously owe to the moral integrity of preceding gen- 
erations who left the inestimable heritage of a healthy 
organization to their descendants! 
We cannot doubt for one moment that many indi- 
viduals born with defective nervous organizations, 
and corresponding mental-moral idiosyncrasies and 
morbid susceptibilities, have through favorable training 
in early life (perhaps in the greater number of cases 
more the result of fortuitous circumstances than of 
actual calculation and foresight) gone through life not THE NERVOUS-MENTAL ORGANIZATION 
35 
only with security from wreckage, but with credit to 
themselves and with advantage to the world at large; 
and, assisted by favorable marriage relations with 
healthy persons, have not only ignored the strain in 
their own lives, but checked the transmission of the 
faulty constitution to their children. 
It is not unreasonable to believe that the mental 
energy or ambitious volition of the mind in successful 
moral-material directions, however small its showing 
may be at the beginning (and it is ordinarily very 
feeble and wavering in this temperament), can by 
training and cultivation be stimulated to give the 
needed impulse to individual efforts in the overcoming 
of constitutional inertia and perversion, and thus bring 
to light valuable self-conserving qualities that might 
otherwise be locked up in the human mind. Thereby 
all the dormant intellectual forces will be awakened 
into active participation in the work of a more satis- 
factory adjustment of the nervous-mental structure to 
the actual conditions of life, and consequently to an 
assurance of greater usefulness and happiness than 
would otherwise be the case. II 
THE INEBRIATE'S FIRST STEP TOWARD 
A CURE 
37 II 
The Inebriate's First Step toward a Cure 
The Inebriate in His Moral Aspect 
Moral Status of Inebriates 
Trained Will Power an Essential to Self-preser- 
vation 
An Unselfish Wife not Always the Best for a Weak 
Husband 
The First Steps to be Taken for the Inebriate's Resto- 
ration 
Sensitiveness of Some Inebriates to Inebriate Asylums 
Further Steps to be Taken by the Inebriate in Building 
up Moral Manhood 
Purgation of Evil Thoughts of Others an Essential 
The Inebriate's New Life 
Nothing More Dangerous than a Life of Ease, Care- 
lessness, and Levity 
The Character of the Temptations that will Assail Him 
The Valueof Each Day's Self-denial in Petty Indulgences 
No Inebriate Really Cured unless He has Built up Self- 
control on the Structure of Daily Self-denial 
Reparation of the Physical Damages Wrought by 
Alcohol 
38 II 
THE INEBRIATE'S FIRST STEP TOWARD 
A CURE 
The Inebriate in His Moral Aspect.- 
" Be a man, whatever you do," is not unfrequently the 
advice which men who have achieved material success 
give to men who have gathered in an abundant harvest 
of failures. 
This suggestion, urged almost to the point of imperi- 
ous command, is quickly tempered, however, by a sense 
of the folly of expecting manliness from a man who has, 
perhaps for a lifetime, been insidiously ungrowing, and 
dissipating the substratum of manhood granted him by 
his forebears, themselves possibly more or less derelict 
in transmitting the qualities which comprise true man- 
hood. To expect, therefore, any manifestations of it 
other than in an affected form from the intemperate, 
shrinking wretch to whom the advice is commonly given 
is as vain as to look for a mole-hill to evolve itself on 
the instant into a mountain. One experiences a sudden 
transition of feeling in the direction of pity for the man 
who, knowing his deficiency in this respect, assumes the 
affectation of manliness which he does not feel, more 
especially as we reflect how utterly beggared he is as 
he stands before us, destitute alike of money and of 
what is of infinitely higher value, moral manhood. 
39 40 
INEBRIETY 
But where there has been no greater abuse of the 
moral nature than that involved in greater or less in- 
temperance and folly, there exist through a merciful 
and kindly moral law stronger assured hopes of build- 
ing up this fallen man, beggar as he is, to the full 
stature of manhood than with that larger class of mor- 
ally blinded men who have built up a moneyed success 
in this life at the expense of every quality and trait of 
manhood (including intemperance in every form but 
that of drink) needed to begin the next; incapacitating 
themselves by a lifetime of insatiable greed, injustice, 
cruelties, self-flatteries, and gross egoism, from reaching 
that real success, comprehended in the divine economy, 
which is the growing result of rightful moral doing and 
gradually perfecting renunciation of selfish instincts in 
successive periods of the soul's existence. 
Moral Status of Inebriates.-Chronic inebriates are 
rarely, if ever, wicked ; they are weak, diseased, and im- 
perfectly developed. I f they were wicked they would not 
remain drunkards, for uniform wickedness implies a cer- 
tain amount of will force, which is all that the inebriates 
ordinarily require for a cure. The intensity of their 
desires and cravings for intoxication evidences a greater 
natural goodness, as well as a larger organic weakness, 
than the systematic drinker who drinks by rule ; but they 
are, on account of the character and result of that weak- 
ness, more difficult to cure. Thoroughly wicked persons 
are sometimes converted and remain so, but the good- 
hearted, soft, and amiable men backslide continually. 
Their very amiability and soft-heartedness, the result 
of defective nervous brain-elements, exhibit the yield- THE INEBRIATE'S FIRST STEP T01UARD A CURE 
41 
ing composition of their nature, as the strength of char- 
acter requisite for moral success in life is rarely allied 
with the effeminate qualities in men. 
Trained Will Power an Essential to 
Self-preservation.-a man lacking a strong will 
power, trained by the necessities and demands of his 
daily struggle for self-preservation and material ad- 
vancement in the carrying out of fixed purposes, can 
be neither a wicked man nor a good one. He may be 
superlatively good at times, and at other times superla- 
tively bad, but he is neither long. His greater periods 
of sobriety are spent either in a kind of chronic moral 
atrophy of gentle amiability and good nature, with a 
flavor of inoffensiveness and negative goodness, or in 
excess of energy and sanguineness which amounts to 
nothing practical. Under pleasant circumstances and 
ordinarily wholesome conditions of living, his desires 
tend largely in the direction of a good life; but he ac- 
complishes nothing, for he cannot back up his resolves 
with sufficient nerve-force to give life to them. A 
dominant temptation, like that of the liquor habit, seizes 
him, and, his organic tendencies being favorable, he 
succumbs to it, and does not make even a consistent 
drunkard, but has his lapses of negative sobriety and 
goodness between times. He lacks backbone, solidity, 
strength of mind, simply because he has not realized 
that the sole cause of his inability to control his appetite 
for drink lies in the fact that his nervous structure has 
not been healthfully trained and disciplined from the 
beginning in such a manner as to develop self-control, 42 
INEBRIETY 
forcible moral resistance, wholesome desires, and will 
likings for successful moral-material results. To offset 
this neglect and to set about his education without ref- 
erence to age or condition must hereafter constitute 
his life-work, so that every day will put a stone in the 
new structure of manhood and enable him to resist the 
attacks of his formidable enemy in all the days to come. 
An Unselfish Wife not Always the Best for a 
Weak Husband*-It is often said of an inebriate, in 
a tone of wonder and reproach, that he had so good a 
wife, one who loved and indulged him. The univer- 
sality of good wives to intemperate husbands suggests 
an inquiry into the connection they may bear and the 
influence they may exercise, however innocently, in the 
downfall of their husbands ; not for the purpose of trans- 
ferring any part of the blame and odium of the man's 
moral defection upon the woman's unconscious and 
defenseless shoulders, but as a warning to other good 
wives who may be pursuing a course of conduct which 
antagonizes the maintenance of a wholesome will force 
in the man ; and also for the purpose of mitigating to 
some extent the bitter animosity which many a formerly 
loving spouse may entertain toward a ruined husband 
from whom she is parted by the inexorable liquor curse. 
A good woman is not necessarily a good wife. On the 
contrary, she may be, without meaning it and in spite of 
her conscientious efforts to be otherwise, a very bad wife 
to her husband, and that in spite of her gentleness, docil- 
ity, piety, and excessive love for him ; and it is possible 
that he might not be in the position he occupies to-day if, 
instead of possessing these qualities, she had developed THE INEBRIATE'S FIRST STEP TOWARD A CURE 
43 
stronger or even more selfish traits of character. The 
continued exercise of the spirit of unselfishness on the 
wife's part has helped in no small degree to restrain the 
husband from denying himself in a hundred ways ; and 
all innocently, but not less fatally, has fanned the flames 
of self-indulgence until his power of resistance, insidi- 
ously encroached upon by loving hands, has finally suc- 
cumbed to her persistency, and his great preservative 
against any strong temptation to which he may be con- 
stitutionally inclined has become so weakened that he 
is unable to cope with the strong desire for drink when 
it manifests itself. 
With a love which has more of the idolatry of the 
fond and indulgent mother than that of a wife, women 
of this sort are ordinarily very persistent, even obstinate, 
in effacing themselves and in giving up their own nat- 
ural inclinations and wishes in behalf of soft-hearted 
and pliable husbands. They succeed in smothering the 
latter's protests against such unfairness and partiality 
until their husbands finally yield and quietly accept as 
the natural fitness of things that which their sense of jus- 
tice and magnanimity at first rebelled at. Before either of 
them is aware of it the husband's strong mainstay and 
security against sudden and powerful temptation are 
gradually but surely undermined ; and when the circum- 
stances of life, sure to be favorable at certain junctures, 
invite the presence of an underlying vice, the man goes 
down before it and, in spite of his manifold struggles 
and heroic resolves and efforts, fails utterly to redeem 
himself. 
It is rarely, if ever, that the eyes of these good wives 44 
INEBRIETY 
are open to the truth of this matter, and they live and 
die in the conviction that they made the best of wives 
to very wicked husbands, who sacrificed the love of a 
good woman to a greater love for drink. 
The First Steps to be Taken for the Inebriate's 
Restoration.-It is possible that this treatise may be 
read by an inebriate who is engaged in a soul- and 
body-destroying fit of intemperance, the duration, re- 
sults, and final ending of which he cannot foresee; but 
through it all, hopeless and despairing, he has an in- 
tense desire to lie down and never rise again to sin and 
suffering. He cannot stop; the power is not within 
him to stop of his own accord. He has so weakened 
his great preservative against sin and suffering that it 
fails to respond to his call. He has not even the power 
to remove himself from temptation by voluntary con- 
finement, and it remains for his solicitous friends to step 
in and through persuasion and argument (never by 
force) induce him to sanction their confining him for a 
period not exceeding three months (longer than this is 
not necessary and may be demoralizing) in a private 
asylum for security and rest, during which he can re- 
solve upon his future life and make the necessary ar- 
rangements for entering upon the course of training, 
discipline, and association the best suited to bring about 
a permanent cure. 
Sensitiveness of Some Inebriates to Inebriate Asy- 
lums.-To those intemperate men who possess pecu- 
liarly sensitive traits of character, and have an especial 
aversion to promiscuous intercourse with others who 
carry the brand of their dissolute lives in continuous THE INEBRIATE'S FIRST STEP TOWARD A CURE 
45 
lawless and vicious conduct, the inebriate asylum is 
armed with a horror incomprehensible to more rugged 
temperaments, and particular tact should be employed 
in subduing these feelings on their part so as to gain 
their consent to confinement, for their protests may be 
largely justifiable. It has been conclusively demon- 
strated that long confinement in these asylums has been 
attended by most demoralizing effects, from which a 
short one is comparatively exempt through the advan- 
tages received. There are drunkards and drunkards, 
and the one may, in all other respects but that of pos- 
sessing an occasionally indulged craving for alcoholic 
stimulants, possess a purity of life the very antipodes of 
the other, who may be depraved all the way through. 
The compulsory association of two such natures in 
those institutions where isolation and retirement are 
impossibilities cannot be good. 
At the present time there are quite a number of 
smaller institutions or homes located within thirty to 
one hundred and fifty miles of the city of New York, 
in healthy country places, presided over by physicians 
who admit persons of good character afflicted with this 
habit, and give them the care, attention, and suitable 
freedom which they may require. The medical journals 
abound in references to them. 
Further Steps to be Taken by the Inebriate in 
Building; up Moral Manhood.-Lacking a great ob- 
ject in life, the man has hitherto been like a ship with- 
out a rudder; but he is no longer purposeless and 
without an ambition, for he has a grand, a heroic one, 
being resolved to live and die a free man. Bound in 46 
INEBRIETY 
chains that have tied him hand and foot for many a 
degraded year, he has at last set about to free himself 
of his grinding bondage. To accomplish this, every 
faculty of his mind, every force of his body, each op- 
portunity that life presents, must be brought into ac- 
tivity and made subservient to the furtherance of this 
object. It is his great ambition, and all else must be 
made subordinate to it. He realizes that no negative 
life of goodness is possible for him, but rather that he 
must take the kingdom of manliness by storm, and force 
the underlying vices of his character to the surface, in 
order to get at and destroy them. 
In reviewing himself in his individual egoism, he dis- 
covers that he must correct all of his estimates, judg- 
ments, and opinions of persons and things with which 
he has had to do in the past, especially those evil thoughts 
of others which spring up in his mind from time to 
time, and gather strength the more they are indulged 
in. He reviews the suspicions and distrusts which have 
held full sway in his mind and hindered all previous 
efforts at recovery: how such and such persons have 
done him irreparable harm, getting everything out of 
him that was worth the getting, and returning nothing 
but evil; how they mounted up from obscurity into 
respectable positions in life through his kindly assis- 
tance in the beginning, and then threw down the ladder 
when he was in need of their help ; how fawning, hum- 
ble, and grateful they had been when he had money, 
influence, and social position, spitting at him when all 
these were gone; how his fair-weather and easy-sailing 
friends stuck to him like brothers in prosperity, and THE INEBRIATE'S FIRST STEP TOWARD A CURE 
47 
abandoned him in adversity; how the one nearer and 
dearer than all others was the first to throw him off, 
and in all his after years of suffering pitilessly refused 
to sacrifice one jot of her comforts or run the slightest 
risk in order to aid by her presence his sincere and 
constant efforts at recovery; how in his mind he has 
applied a literal interpretation to Christ's statement that 
one's enemies are of his own household. Hundreds of 
such thoughts usurp sovereignty over his mind, making 
it still more sensitive and open to contamination from 
the poison of suspicion. 
Purgation of Evil Thoughts of Others an Essen- 
tial.-it is absolutely necessary that he should settle 
this whole matter for good before he can expect any 
advancement in his manly progress. His success de- 
pends upon the morally wholesome position he now 
occupies. Possibly these things are as his mind repro- 
duces them, but more probably they have assumed 
extravagant proportions and a realism through the 
self-indulgence of continually thinking of them in his 
mentally depressed and sensitive condition, and a calm 
and dispassionate review of each and every occur- 
rence upon which he bases his opinions will fail to 
substantiate them. At any rate, it is safer for him to 
assume at the beginning of his mental investigations 
that they may be the outcome of his distempered ima- 
gination-that they may have become so vastly ex- 
aggerated by his fallacious judgment as to be a fiction 
with a network of truth only; and then to endeavor to 
lose sight of his own individuality, its personal bias, 
selfish instincts and feelings, and take upon himself 48 
INEBRIETY 
the personalities of these individuals whom he charges 
with evil-doing, with their instincts of self-preservation, 
worldly advancement, and expediency, their perhaps 
smaller altruistic intuitions and habits of mind, for the 
purpose of studying their case as if he were their legal 
counselor, determined to prove them guiltless of these 
charges. 
It is more than probable that by so doing he will 
have lightened the load of their iniquities by the cut- 
ting away of fictitious injuries to at least one third of 
their original bulk. If this be the case, he may as well 
transfer the remainder to his own account and feel 
justified in the conviction that none would have ac- 
crued if he had led a temperate, manly, and well-con- 
ducted life, and placed no temptation in the way of 
others to profit by his weakness and faults or put a 
vicious interpretation upon them; and, moreover, he 
will feel persuaded that he himself, under analogous 
conditions, might not have acted very differently. In 
this way he will have unloaded his mind of a great 
incubus, which would otherwise prove an insuperable 
obstacle to moral advancement. 
The Inebriate's New Life*-Through the silent 
processes of the divine wisdom and goodness the un- 
developed man has come to light. He has been through 
the fire of suffering; he is lacerated and broken; the 
inherent forces of his mind, opening with a revolt, have 
gone through a revolution, and it is now the dawn of 
his new life. His restored mind beholds responsibilities 
and possibilities in the future that he never saw in the 
past. He has become a responsible being even unto THE INEBRIATE'S FIRST STEP TOWARD A CURE 
49 
himself. The dead past is burying its dead. Out 
of that suffering past he has gained experience: 
through it the light which now interpenetrates him 
has come. 
With this bitter knowledge and with this moral light, 
he starts anew to weave with silent endurance and per- 
sistency the fabric of his new structure of manhood, to 
build his house upon a rock; for on that foundation 
alone can he rear his safeguard against moral degra- 
dation, his security against future downfalls, and his 
preservative from a living death a thousand times 
worse than the physical death which at times has held 
him so closely within its grasp. 
He finds that he cannot live the same life, that he 
cannot enjoy the same pleasures. His sole hold on the 
miserable existence of the past has been through his 
indulgence in drink. Without that life gave him no 
pleasure. Hereafter his enjoyments must come from 
the higher part of his mind, and not from the lower; 
from his spiritualized mind, not from his animal mind. 
His kingdom of pleasure is to be found within, and not 
looked for without. His diseased imagination must 
be brought into healthful subjection until it has thor- 
oughly learned its lesson and sees things as they really 
are, and not as they seem to be; until it confesses that 
life is real and earnest and does not die when the body 
dies, but continues onward, perhaps in other worlds, 
under better or worse conditions of living as they are 
invited in this. 
Nothing More Dangerous than a Life of Ease, 
Carelessness, and Levity,-By the natural order and 50 
INEBRIETY 
fitness of things, his life for a time will be a hard one, 
and it is good for him that it should be so; not as a 
punishment, but as the only condition, if rightly used, 
by which he can gain the strength of resistance he 
needs. If his circumstances qualify this too much it 
may be better that he should make it harder of himself 
for his greater growth, for experience has taught him 
that nothing is more dangerous than a life of ease, care- 
lessness, and levity, and he feels that he cannot live the 
old life and enjoy immunity from drink. 
Fortunately for him now, his former sources of grati- 
fication were of a belittling character, and it is well that 
he cannot return to them with safety. On the other 
hand, the higher grade of pursuits only give pleasure 
outside of drink, and it is with these he must make 
acquaintance and determinedly go to work to absorb 
all of their value. At first the old disgust with which 
they inspired him will continue, but not for long. His 
mind will gradually absorb the healthful mental tonic, 
and he will subsequently wonder how the senseless and 
puerile pastimes of his past life ever pleased him. The 
first opening up of self-respect will inspire him with a 
keener delight than alcohol ever yielded; and the in- 
creasing expansion of the moral side of his nature will 
continue to throw out light that will guide him onward 
in his heroic ambition to live and die, be the living 
short or long, a growing, manly man. 
The Character of the Temptations that will As- 
sail Him.-He will in his progress be assailed from 
within, and not from without. The breaking up, if it 
come, will result from insidious temptations attacking THE INEBRIATE'S FIRST STEP TOWARD A CURE 
51 
him from within his mind, long before the social ones 
without have any effect upon him ; and the strongest of 
all will come through his aversion to physical discom- 
forts, the lack of energy and spirit, and through dis- 
couragements. 
He imagines that he is physically falling off,-per- 
haps declining into consumption,-that his system is 
surely breaking up, that local complaints are verging 
into chronic invalidism, and depression into melan- 
cholia. His tricky imagination begins to juggle with 
his reason, and forces him to believe that he has only 
to resort to alcohol in some shape for a deterrent 
and a cure. Thence follow his sophistical commun- 
ings: that his system imperatively requires bracing up, 
and that it can be done in no other way than through 
homeopathic doses of spirits, to be taken only as medi- 
cine and to be thrown aside as soon as the emergency 
permits; that alcohol is indeed a prodigious vitalizer 
and seems to revolutionize the internal machinery and 
start it afresh on its active mission, and how rarely he 
was sick of any of the ordinary ills affecting the body 
when he drank; that it shows greater evidence of man- 
hood to use liquor in moderation and only for the 
stomach's sake than not at all; that both body and 
mind will be the stronger for a little animal indulgence, 
and, now that he does not expect to live much longer at 
the best, he might as well have a little enjoyment out of 
the balance of his life, particularly as he has developed 
sufficient power of self-control and of antagonism to 
self-indulgence to make it safe. These are some of the 
thoughts which assail him. In whatever way the desire 52 
INEBRIETY 
for drink manifests itself, it is always the suggestion of 
the diseased imagination, the outcome of the partially 
restored mind, which if yielded to will have but one 
ending, the pulling down of the growing fabric of man- 
hood to the mire, but which if resisted will become 
a source of renewed and renewing strength. 
There will be repeated attacks of this kind upon his 
growing manhood, and he should feel proud and hope- 
ful every time he has crushed these insidious assailants 
under his feet. Rather than yield to them, let him die, 
if die he must, struggling and fighting his way onward 
to a manlier life, encouraged in the faith that his efforts 
will receive no check by that form of death, but will 
continue on, under more favorable circumstances, in 
another life, and perhaps others again, still growing in 
intensity until they ripen unto perfect development in 
the last and eternal life of all. 
The Value of Each Day's Self-denial in Petty 
Indulgences.-It would be well for the intemperate 
man to bear continually in mind that in proportion as 
he yields and gives way to his daily weaknesses, foibles, 
and smaller unworthy inclinations, there will be a con- 
tinuing growth of his desire to drink, even though it 
may not be apparent to himself, and that it is certain 
to break out with renewed virulence when least ex- 
pected ; but that the strength he gathers by the prac- 
tice of daily self-denial in matters outside of drink is 
not only sufficient to check the progressive growth of 
the disease, but to leave a reserve of constantly ac- 
cumulating strength to meet the more pressing demands 
and attacks of his great temptation. THE INEBRIATE'S FIRST STEP TOWARD A CURE 
53 
This self-denying life will never make him less able 
to support himself and family, but rather the more. 
He will not build up moneyed wealth. That he could 
not do under any circumstances, for his present position 
shows conclusively that his organic disposition is not in 
harmony with the acquisition of money, which, after 
all, is of very little importance compared with the rear- 
ing of the incorruptible structure of moral manhood. 
It is not optional with him, it is compulsory, this life 
of daily self-renunciation, and it is fortunate for him 
that it is so. The scheming for wealth must give way 
to the scheming to build up a perfect character, and in 
the end the wealth may be added unto him. 
No Inebriate Really Cured unless He has Built 
up Self-control on the Structure of Daily Self-de- 
nial*-It is inexpedient to point to this man or to that 
and say, These men have once been drunkards, and are 
now successful speculators and wealthy men of the day ; 
they have not drunk for years, or they drink without 
becoming intoxicated ; and they are neither self-denying 
nor especially moral men. If it is true that they were 
at one time completely subservient to the toxic mania, 
then, unless they have built up a strong will force 
through the daily exercise of a petty force in resisting 
immaterial trifles and moral weaknesses, the habit of 
their brains is sleeping, and under conditions inviting 
its return will break out again and prostrate them and 
their wealth into ruin. 
Only when the will is trained and educated through 
mental-moral and physical hygiene, until it has become 
so prompt, effective, and perfect in its working as to 54 
INEBRIETY 
carry on successful conflicts with the man's recurrent 
appetite for indulgence in intoxicants without his voli- 
tion and without his consciousness of the struggle going 
on within him, can the inebriate be said to be perma- 
nently restored. 
The chronic inebriate, in the strong and almost ter- 
rible resistances he has made from time to time against 
yielding to his craving for drink, has made it possible for 
himself to put forth sufficient force toward extinguish- 
ing the smaller faults and vices of his character; and, 
if he is sincere and earnest in his endeavor to fortify 
himself at all points, he will not let a day pass without 
making a gain, however apparently insignificant, in this 
direction. 
Reparation of the Physical Damages 
Wrought by Alcohol-it is only in the vis 
medicatrix nature, in the hygienic treatment applied to 
both body and mind subsequent to the withdrawal of 
the narcotic poison, that the physical damages wrought 
by inebriety can be repaired; and, as the treatment in 
early youth involving the preinebriate morbid condition 
and strengthening his self-control (fully entered into 
farther on) covers all the further phases of his cure, 
the patient should make this matter his study, and be 
willing to begin at the bottom of the ladder and carry 
on his recuperative training the same as the youth who 
begins life with a natural inheritance of morbid nervous 
conditions or of the inebriate diathesis direct. 
As the mature adult inebriate has gained experience, 
caution, prudence, foresight, and a considerable amount THE INEBRIATE'S FIRST STEP TOWARD A CURE 
55 
of sagacity, intelligence, and will strength through his 
sufferings, as well as an intense desire for moral health, 
there is no reason why he should not make as good a 
run, with equally good chances, as his younger com- 
petitor, who starts out inexperienced, with all his fresh 
impulses dead against him. He is older, it is true, but 
never too old to live right, particularly as living right 
will make life sweeter to him all along. He must for- 
get his age and regard himself as once more a youth 
setting out on his journey through life, with his educa- 
tion, training, and new associations to achieve; then, 
with healthy aspirations to the fore, whatever else he 
may do, he must never return to his old degradation. 
Let him not live to say he has abandoned the ship and 
that it is too late to mend. Ill 
THE REMEDYING OF THE PREINEBRIATE 
MORBID CONDITIONS AND THE 
STRENGTHENING OF THE 
BASES OF SELF- 
CONTROL Ill 
The Remedying of the Preinebriate Morbid 
Conditions and the Strengthening of 
the Bases of Self-control 
Treatment in Early Youth 
The Masculine Treatment an Essential in Early Life 
The Character of His Occupations, Amusements, and 
Exercises 
Sanitary Regimen in Ventilation, Cleanliness, and Diet 
Entire Abstinence from all Stimulants and Narcotics an 
Essential 
To Correct the Absence of Ambition in Moral-Material 
Directions 
The Training of the Executive Force or Moral Will 
Power 
Moral Defection in Well-trained Youths 
58 Ill 
THE REMEDYING OF THE PREINEBRI- 
ATE MORBID CONDITIONS AND THE 
STRENGTHENING OF THE BASES OF 
SELF-CONTROL 
Treatment in Early Youth,-The family physi- 
cian, the parents, or guardians who discover a child to 
be neurotic, and from their knowledge of ancestors, 
collateral relatives, and family antecedents generally 
know that a predisposition to nervous disease is likely 
to present itself, should exercise all the influence they 
possess to have a healthy, robust training provided. 
The self-control should be developed, the bodily 
health should be carefully regarded, and motives and 
purposes supplied which will give force, persistency, 
unity, and success to the endeavors of the patient. As 
there is always present a large sensitiveness to nutri- 
tive derangements, scrofula, epilepsy, phthisis, wasting 
diarrheas, etc., the greatest care should be observed 
in the selection of a hygienic and sanitary discipline 
the best adapted to prevent an unhealthy development 
of this constitution into those exaggerated conditions 
which involve the complete perversion of the nervous- 
mental health. 
59 60 
INEBRIETY 
It should be borne continually in mind that with every 
departure from the moral law governing the physiolog- 
ical well-being, that is, from rightful thinking axu&rightful 
acting, at this period of life (even in petty delinquen- 
cies, insignificant and immaterial trifles, avoidance and 
omissions of duty) there is: (i) a corresponding depar- 
ture from the health standard; (2) a corresponding 
diminution of the power of self-control; (3) a corre- 
sponding step in life to be retraced, a debt instead of 
a gain ; and that the sum of these departures constitutes, 
sooner or later, an aggregate condition of mental and 
physical health which renders suffering, misery, and 
ultimate failure in life a foregone certainty; but that 
obedience to these, trifling though they may seem at 
first, will gradually build up a basis of character so 
organized as to enable it to resist the largest temptations 
and establish on a permanent basis an enduring power 
of self-control. 
The Masculine Treatment an Essential in Early 
Life.-T here must be no coddling of the patient, no 
encouragement given to induce him to regard himself 
as an object of commiseration, and to indulge in pity 
for himself as one inducted into life but partially made, 
and a victim of predestined ruin. He should, on the 
contrary, be made to believe that his temperament 
is of such a character as to be extraordinarily capable, 
through judicious training and education, of achieving 
almost phenomenal success, and at the same time ex- 
ceptionally capable, under improper training, of achiev- 
ing a phenomenal failure; and that whether it shall be 
the one or the other is dependent almost altogether REMEDYING HND STRENGTHENING 
61 
upon his own individual efforts and upon obedience to 
physiological laws of health both of body and of mind 
to begin with. 
The coddling treatment in early youth is almost al- 
ways reprehensible, but with this temperament it is 
especially antagonistic to health. The youth must be 
made self-reliant as early as possible by the spur of 
necessity, and all influences and encouragements tend- 
ing to nourish his inherent proclivities to self-indulgence 
of mind and body or dependence on others should be 
promptly removed from him. 
The earlier he is made acquainted with the possibil- 
ities of his constitution, the better; and in carrying out 
his training especial care should be exercised not to 
impress too rigorously upon his mind the consequences 
of every dereliction from duty, but to allow him to judge 
for himself as much as possible. Excessive solicitude, 
continued warning and holding over his head the re- 
sultant penalty of disobedience, especially when be- 
stowed early and late in moralizing lectures, will prob- 
ably be much more prejudicial than to allow him to 
take his chance in life unenlightened. Children cannot 
be readily molded to. set patterns; the latter must be 
largely and gradually made to conform to them without 
losing their ultimate intention. Abnormal traits of char- 
acter are too persistent to be removed altogether, and 
it may not be well that they should be effaced, even were 
it possible, but rather that they should be trained to bear 
in a direction that promises the best results, allowing 
nature to work as far as possible without too great 
interference with the growth. 62 
INEBRIETY 
It sometimes happens that evidences of inebriety 
exhibit themselves very early in life. If this be the 
case, it shows unmistakably that the youth is organi- 
cally unbalanced, that his brain-centres are disturbed, 
and that all effeminate treatment will only be adding to 
the intensity of the disease. There must be no delay, no 
indulgence, in the hope that he will see the error of his 
ways and amend of his own moral volition, and that the 
same association and home discipline can be maintained. 
The environment must be broken immediately, and 
the patient regarded not as a wilful violator of decency, 
of religion, and of the sacred home, to be punished for 
his wilful sinning, but as one who has suddenly devel- 
oped symptoms of a dangerous mental malady which 
requires immediate restorative measures to cure. And 
as the only known cure of diseases of the nervous- 
mental organization, involving the loss of self-control 
and the power of moral resistance, is by strengthening 
the self-control through building up the general health 
of mind and body, so immediate steps should be taken 
to carry out every available plan of doing this, con- 
tinually bearing in mind that the new training and 
treatment must begin at the foundation and be very 
gradual. 
The Character of His Occupations, Amusements, 
and Exercises,-The training of the mind to self-con- 
trol and to avoid introspection, is often found in healthy 
occupations which make regular drafts upon body and 
mind alike. The earlier it begins, the better. The 
permanent occupation should be of the routine order 
and one not dependent for success upon the assump- REMEDYING NND STRENGTHENING 
63 
tion of wearing responsibilities and anxieties. The 
mind should be strengthened by giving it a rudimentary 
basis of sound, wholesome tenacity, vigor, and capacity 
to fit it for an education which properly does not begin 
until the youth ordinarily leaves school or college. 
Fresh blood and pure air form the basis of a well-regu- 
lated nervous-mental temperament, and fresh blood is 
dependent upon strict obedience to moral-physiological 
laws. The pure air of dry marine resorts along the 
Atlantic coast, which induces neither too great nor too 
little nervous action, is the best to give healthful activ- 
ity to the nutritive processes and improvement in con- 
stitutional vigor. It may be called a mild tonic climate. 
High altitudes and dry deserts should be avoided. 
Light gymnastic exercises in the open air, slowly 
spun out for a long time, and not allowed to exhaust 
themselves quickly by an indiscriminate and reckless 
waste of nerve-force, must be prescribed. The amuse- 
ments, exercises, and employments should always be in 
the open air, and those that can be done in a few 
minutes by an extra spurt should be made to last an 
hour. The great fault of this temperament is that when 
left to its own impulses it does everything at once and 
nothing long. Everything soon tires. The patient, 
calculating steps of the tortoise, and not the swift, leap- 
ing movements of the hare, are the example to be fol- 
lowed. All strains and overexertion are to be avoided. 
The forces of both body and mind must be built up 
little by little, and the hardest lesson to learn is the 
overcoming of the instinctive longing to get through 
with everything quickly and to reach results at once. 64 
INEBRIETY 
The physical training must be, like that of the athlete, 
a strict obedience to the regimen and rules prescribed 
by those who are thoroughly acquainted with all the 
potentialities of such a vital force under proper cul- 
tivation. 
Walking is perhaps the safest and best mode of exer- 
cising all the muscles of the body, but even this should 
be carried out under prescribed rules and graduated 
until it reaches five or, if able, ten miles daily. Walk- 
ing in crowded cities is not walking in the purest of at- 
mospheres, so one of the most important factors in its 
beneficent results is wanting; nevertheless it is better 
than not walking at all. 
In this, as in all things, the patient should take plenty 
of time and walk slowly, not allowing the spirit of emu- 
lation or rivalry to provoke great feats of strength and 
endurance. With such nervous temperaments there is 
a conspicuous ability in early youth to accomplish suc- 
cessfully any such achievement, but years afterward, 
when the memory of these childish contests is altogether 
lost sight of, those strains on the nervous organization 
will be felt in a condition of impaired health and corre- 
sponding loss of self-control. Little by little is the only 
rule, and neglect of this injunction will as certainly re- 
sult in failure in life as the rising and setting of the sun. 
Every cause has its effect, although that effect may not 
be felt immediately. 
Sanitary Regimen in Ventilation, Cleanliness, 
and Diet.-An excessive indolence of mind and body 
is probably as prejudical to the nervous system as ex- 
cessive toil, fatigue, and overexertion, for in both cases REMEDYING AND STRENGTHENING 
65 
they produce unnatural strains, the one directly and the 
other indirectly. In the former case the nervous system 
demands a regular supply of activity in order success- 
fully to carry on its functions, abhors a continued inac- 
tive state, and, finding its calls neglected, produces a 
morbid craving which creates a desire for some sort of 
artificial stimulation. 
The patient should begin early in life to accustom 
himself or herself to take daily, before breakfast, cold- 
water douches, or, if these are impracticable, cold-water 
towel baths, followed by vigorous rubbings, and this 
should be continued all through the year. It will fi- 
nally enable the weakest constitution to endure the ex- 
tremes of the weather. A short walk of a few minutes 
before breakfast is useful. 
The matter of ventilation should be uniformly re- 
garded as a prime factor in health. At least one win- 
dow of the bedroom should always be kept open a little 
from the top and bottom, but care should be exercised 
against allowing strong currents in their progress through 
the room, if the doors are kept open, to strike against 
the body. The bedstead placed at the unexposed cor- 
ner of the apartment will remedy this. Strong drafts 
should be carefully avoided. 
The practice of overeating to the point of subsequent 
discomfort or satiety is a severe strain on the nervous 
system, and is regarded by medical authorities as being 
even more prejudicial than that of overdrinking. The 
diet should be regulated to the extent of excluding a 
few objectionable items out of a superabundant whole- 
some and palatable dietary. Food which contains too INEBRIETY 
66 
large a percentage of carbon makes continued encroach- 
ments on the nervous vitality and health. The nitrog- 
enous elements in food are the most to be regarded, 
as these seem to reconcile themselves better to the men- 
tal and physical processes and to build up flesh at the 
same time. Fat meats, overcooked meats, pork in all 
forms, veal, excess of butter, cheese, oils, syrups, tea, 
and coffee must be expunged from the bill of fare, as 
well as preserves, condiments of all kinds, pastry, and 
puddings. Let there be plenty of broiled beefsteaks, 
underdone roast beef, vegetables of all sorts, milk, 
abundance of fruit both raw and stewed, but nothing 
that comes from the frying-pan. Cocoa prepared 
homeopathically, with the fatty oil extracted, is the 
best drink not only to maintain, but to improve, the 
purity of the blood. 
A well-regulated system of diet has great power in 
checking the progress of disease and in aiding the pro- 
cess of healthy development; a proper knowledge of 
dietetics is therefore as important as that of materia 
medica. There are many diseases produced by im- 
proper diet, alcoholism among the rest. Liebig makes 
a very simple classification as follows: 
1. The nitrogenized elements of nutrition, flesh-formers, 
in which he comprises vegetable fibrin, vegetable al- 
bumin, vegetable casein, flesh, and blood. 
2. The non-nitrogenized, or elements of respiration, 
heat-givers: fat, starch, gum, cane- and grape-sugar, 
sugar of milk, beer, and spirits. 
The former alone, in his opinion, are inservient to the 
nutrition of organized tissue; the latter are burned in REMEDYING A ND STRENGTHENING 
67 
respiration and to furnish heat. A work published in 
England some twenty years since, and undoubtedly re- 
printed in this country, entitled " How Not to Be Sick," 
enters plainly and most satisfactorily into the subject of 
diet, and is worthy of study. 
Entire Abstinence from all Stimulants and Nar- 
cotics an Essential.- Inasmuch as there exists in 
this constitution a singular sensitiveness to stimulants 
and narcotics, all alcoholic drinks, tobacco in every 
form, and even strong tea and coffee and the exces- 
sive use of drug medicines should be rigidly and un- 
compromisingly avoided. The youth should learn 
his lesson early through a vehicle which he would 
undoubtedly respect-a physician: how his mental 
constitution will not allow him to indulge in liquor 
or beer, and that the first glass may so prejudicially 
affect his nervous-mental system as seriously to impair 
the proper development of self-control and the main- 
tenance of it through life; that it may, and undoubt- 
edly will, open the sluice-gates to all sorts of self- 
indulgence which sooner or later may terminate in 
insanity, intemperance, or other mental affection, and 
always in failure, ruin, and misery; that even if he could 
indulge in moderation, and without becoming grossly 
inebriated every time he touched it, the injury to his 
nervous constitution would be no less pernicious, and 
although his freedom from the grosser features of dram- 
drinking would indicate the absence of the inebriate 
strain in his temperament, it might not demonstrate for 
many years, and perhaps not until it was too late for a 
cure, other organic weaknesses and defects that would, 68 
INEBRIETY 
under self-indulgence, develop into epilepsy, paralysis, 
and other forms of unmistakable insanity. His only 
safety lies in a complete abstinence from all alcoholic 
and malt liquors, tobacco, opiates, and indeed all drugs, 
from the beginning. By the law of his organization, 
moderation in all these indulgences which influence the 
nervous brain is impossible. If, during the employ- 
ments of later life which involve close application of 
the mind, this liability to indulge to excess is mani- 
fested, it must be emphatically borne in mind that the 
most commendable mental employment, starting as it 
ordinarily does with instinctive likings accompanied by 
a natural adaptability, and with the stimulus of suc- 
cessful and perhaps lucrative results to the fore, may be 
blindly carried to such an extent as to become a hurt- 
ful self-indulgence and terminate in a loss of mental 
health and its concomitant, self-control; until what 
began as a virtuous duty has through unwise persis- 
tency become so exaggerated as to degenerate into a 
destructive vice. 
Many individuals from this cause have broken down 
and failed before arriving at the fruition of their hopes, 
while of those who have succeeded in reaching the sum- 
mit of their ambitions the greater number have left be- 
hind them all the satisfaction that comes from living. 
Their judgment is continually calling upon them to 
desist, to forbear, to rest, to refrain from pushing their 
likings to the point of self-indulgence; but the work 
they have in hand has gradually and covertly metamor- 
phosed itself from a healthful sensation into a morbid 
and injurious craving; from an instrument and agent of REMEDYING /IND STRENGTHENING 
69 
healthful development of the faculties and exercise 
of the mind into a tyrannous taskmaster demanding 
passive obedience. The nerve-force is exhausted, the 
self-control in this indulgence, as it is in more vi- 
cious enjoyments, is lost, the health is broken, and 
happiness a thing of the past. They are, practically 
speaking, in the same physical state of health as the 
drunkard, and perhaps in a large majority of instances 
more accountable ; for the latter individual may have 
started life with that neurasthenic condition of nerve 
which the former have sown and reaped later on. To 
say the least, they have been self-indulgent men and 
have undermined their health and happiness, and, like 
the inebriate in drink, must start afresh to build up 
their fallen structure and do those things which they 
do not like to do and have an aversion for. 
To Correct the Absence of Ambition in Moral- 
Material Directions.-In a large proportion of youths 
inheriting the neuro-psychopathic constitution there is 
a conspicuous absence of any pronounced liking or 
ambition in the direction of any special line of intellec- 
tual labor or physical pursuit pointing to material pros- 
perity or independence. There is a manifest aversion 
to occupations that require strength, exertion, persis- 
tency, uniformity, and continuity. They incline toward 
sedentary employments, possess intellectual intuitions, 
but no executive force. They are nervous, imaginative, 
and exhibit no interest in bodily existence outside of 
petty matters, are easily discouraged, and are self-con- 
scious to a painful degree. They make comparisons 
unfavorable to themselves, are acutely susceptible to 70 
INEBRIETY 
their own deficiencies, and shy, awkward, easily excited 
and disturbed. If there is one thing they dislike more 
than another, it is an occupation which brings them 
into continued communication with the outside world, 
into momentary contact with quick-witted, sharp, push- 
ing, energetic men of commercial instincts, into collision 
with the actualities of life. They are placed in stores, 
and are failures; into offices where money and its de- 
pendencies are the chief consideration, and are failures ; 
and, indeed, are failures all through life ; and the causes 
of this lie: 
1. In the morbid condition of the constitutional mental 
health exhibited in wavering and perverted nerve-sen- 
sations. 
2. The absence of healthy sensational likings in mate- 
rial existence and a retarded mental development follow- 
ing this departure from a necessary law of improvable 
being. 
3. The absence of all individual persistency in any one 
direction that would develop rudimentary liking into a 
successful force and capacity, and in consequence: 
4. The absence of that great lever to removal of moral 
impediments, self encouragement, which follows only from 
repeated successes in the petty details of life; and 
5. As the natural accompaniment to continued 
mental discouragements, the gradual degeneration of 
the physical health, the sapping of the physical forces of 
the body, calling into activity latent constitutional 
strains and disorders, causing the nervous system to be 
intensely susceptible to prejudicial influences and as- 
sociations, and making the future life dependent either REMEDYING NND STRENGTHENING 
71 
upon an accidental conjunction of circumstances, or of 
calculating and extraordinary measures for altering and 
remedying preexisting morbid conditions and health- 
fully developing the latent intellectual constitution ; and 
6. The loss of self-control, opening wide the avenues 
to self-indulgence, the propensities in the line of the 
animal nature, and putting the finishing touch to de- 
parting manhood. 
Among all civilized races and during all periods of 
their civilization the intellectual likings of men have 
furnished the motive power to every great achievement, 
to every ennobling ambition and pursuit, to commen- 
dable conduct in life, success in some form or other being 
the ultimate consideration; and so common is it to 
possess this quality of mind in a marked degree that its 
absence may be set down as a departure from a natural 
law of the human organization. 
It will not do for us to act on the supposition that 
there are no natural impulses of the mind in any other 
direction than that of animal indulgence unless im- 
planted there by extraneous measures, but rather that 
the corresponding magnet of attraction has not been 
presented to draw out strong will impulses or latent 
capacities, or that peculiar organic conditions exist 
which have prevented their full growth. It is quite 
possible that in every human being there is at least one 
strong talent or liking, and, given the opportunity and 
the requisite training and association, it may become a 
prodigious force to develop all the forces of the moral 
man to almost superhuman accomplishment. 
If the lack of any persistent liking, desire, or per- 72 
INEBRIETY 
sistent impulse in the line of a social-moral purpose in 
life exhibits itself, and there are evidences of morbid 
sensitiveness, moral cowardice, physical timidity, defec- 
tive energy and persistence, a yielding disposition, a 
tendency to give way to the immaterial trifles of daily 
existence, take steps at once to excite and stimulate the 
mind of the young patient by familiar conversations on 
the heroic characters of the past and present age, and 
on every instance of moral heroism that crops out amid 
his surroundings ; not the physical prowess of the soldier 
and the athlete, which is only of value when it accom- 
panies moral audacity and a moral purpose in life, but 
of actions which necessitate a tension of the stronger 
intellectual forces of the mind. The course of reading, 
study, and pleasures should be shaped so as to include 
all that comes within the sphere of moral firmness and 
moral audacity. His manly sentiments, boldness, 
" daring to do," and particularly his readiness and 
presence of mind, should be developed by placing him 
in positions which will demand of him more or less of 
these qualities, in order that his shyness and aversion 
to use his faculties in public may be gradually crushed 
out. This should be effected through encouragement 
and praise, for in these cases commendation is better 
than ridicule, persuasion stronger than compulsion, in 
arousing the dormant energy and ambition. 
His disgust and contempt of every phase of moral 
weakness and loss of self-control should be aroused by 
making available to that end every instance of such 
infirmity displayed by his colleagues and through his 
associations. The weakness exhibited in lying to avoid REMEDYING /IND STRENGTHENING 
73 
unpleasant consequences should be impressed upon him 
by practical illustrations. He should be encouraged 
to make manliness his principal aim in life, and incited 
to enthusiasm in the acquisition of it in its highest 
moral sense; be made thoroughly to understand that 
self-control is the very keystone of the arch of all the 
manly qualities; that manliness itself, in its full signifi- 
cance, comprehends self-denial, energy, and indomi- 
tableness of purpose, the " do-or-die " principle, the 
carrying out of a moral intention once declared in spite 
of every obstacle that may arise to divert him from his 
purpose ; and that none of these things can possibly be 
accomplished through ill-considered spurts, yet none is 
impossible in time. The moment that his moral per- 
ceptions fully recognize the difference between a Martin 
Luther and an athlete, he has made a great mental ad- 
vancement. 
There are some youths of this kind who exhibit ex- 
ternally an unusual frankness, an excessive ingenu- 
ousness of character, accompanied by a physical au- 
dacity, impulsiveness, and recklessness which is apt to 
mislead ; for, underlying this apparent manliness, there 
may exist moral cowardice, morbid sensitiveness, absence 
of all ambition, changeability, a lack of industry and 
persistence, self-indulgence, and especially a weak will, 
all of which render them as liable to failure in life as 
the shy, reserved, and less ingenuous youth. 
The Training; of the Executive Force or Moral 
Will Power. -All that is good in human existence 
comes from forced individual efforts under the moral 
perception to think right and to do right. It is partic- 74 
INEBRIETY 
ularly the case with this temperament, wherein the 
feelings and impulses often prove unfaithful indicators 
of the true character. It is not so much what can be 
accomplished directly by successful efforts in directing 
the mind into wholesome channels, but the aggregate 
results which these mental gymnastic exercises produce 
in strengthening the mind to a point of resistance to 
those frequent moral impediments which interpose 
themselves from time to time to bar advancement, and 
conspicuously those twin giants of despair, chronic dis- 
couragement and mental ill health. Hence the impor- 
tance of training the mind to make daily efforts of all 
sorts in moral directions against the grain of the incli- 
nations, and particularly to overcome that injurious 
dissatisfaction of the mind arising from the immediate 
non-fruition of attempts to do right. The patient should 
be made to realize that no labor of any value produces 
its complete results at once, but that the longer these 
results are delayed, the richer the harvest of well-doing. 
There was never a seed of this kind planted that did 
not, sooner or later, yield returns tenfold its cost. There 
is no investment that can be made so productive of 
generous dividends. 
Doing right is to do those things which we do not 
want to do, rebel at, and finally leave undone after an 
expenditure of nerve-force largely in excess of that re- 
quired in the immediate execution of them; and while 
the nerve-energy in the one case has been applied to 
the building up of the moral character, in the other it 
has weakened the basis of the fabric and made it waver- 
ing. Every failure in carrying out petty duties is a REMEDYING AND STRENGTHENING 
75 
brick misplaced. If the mind be gloomy and depressed, 
bend it at once into active and heroic channels; read 
history and the biographies or memoirs of men who 
have risen beyond these constitutional restraints of the 
mind. Burton, in his " Anatomy of Melancholy," is 
more adapted to the present actualities of life than 
Thomas it Kempis, and much can be learned from him. 
When the mind is unnaturally stimulated, variable, and 
diffuse, concentrate it on a study or one line of objects 
that will bring the observing faculties into activity, such 
as plant life and the various phenomena of external na- 
ture. I f effeminate and enervated, bring i t to bear on mas- 
culine pursuits that will call upon the stronger forces of 
the patient's mind, and exercise the organs of calcula- 
tion, weight, size, form, order, and eventuality in the 
study of the niceties and harmonies of nature. When 
it is affected by sensual fancies and imaginings, call upon 
the inborn moral power of resistance to disperse the 
objectionable impression, the impure suggestion, the un- 
wholesome nervous sensation, and get rid of it quickly 
before it is taken up by the self-consciousness and regis- 
tered on the nerve-fibres of the brain for future repro- 
duction. 
Exercise or work in the open air, society of virtuous 
and cultivated women, a puzzle, a conundrum, a laugh 
-anything, all things, to get the mind back to a healthy 
standard. 
Action ! action ! action ! Action of the mind, action 
of the body, uniform, persistent, and tiring, is the 
treatment. 
If the mind shall have become so morbid as to find 76 
INEBRIETY 
no satisfaction outside of continued isolation and avoid- 
ance of social-moral restraints and duties, with aversion 
for intercourse with healthy, refined youth of both sexes 
in their social assemblies, continued efforts are neces- 
sary to overcome such unwholesome and pernicious 
instincts or morbid acquisitions. The whole fabric of 
utilitarian morality is dependent upon association. 
Success in life is fatally marred at the beginning of the 
career unless every opportunity of mingling with one's 
kind of both sexes is availed of to cure this evil ten- 
dency. There must be a daily growth of healthy social 
instincts, by mixing in society, by ignoring the diseased 
sense of personal deficiencies, by doing all that lies in 
the power of the patient to forget himself for a time by 
helping others to forget the vivid sense of their genuine 
troubles and afflictions, by cultivating an ambition to 
please others, and by showing himself pleased with them. 
If constitutionally inclined to self-depreciation and to 
a sense of personal inferiority and deficiency in social 
talents, the constant association with intelligent, polite, 
and considerate men and women of the world, and 
persistent study of the requirements of social inter- 
course, is the only cure for that form of nervous egoism, 
uncultivated selfishness, and mauvaise honte. 
The assumption of responsibility as adviser and pro- 
tector of cultivated women, with the ability to assume 
such an office, is a high moral agent for good. The 
opportunities to do this in a youth's life are ordinarily 
abundant, but are usually shirked. 
Moral Defection in Well-trained Youths.-It has 
ever been a matter of astonishment to parents who REMEDYING /IND STRENGTHENING 
77 
have reared children in a highly moral and religious 
atmosphere, and have subjected them to the strictest 
home restraint apart from vicious associations, that, in 
spite of these safeguards, at least one of the flock turned 
out no better, and possibly not so well, as the offspring 
of their poorest neighbors, whose secular and religious 
education and training were alike of the most meagre 
character, and who were permitted to run out in the 
byways and inhale possible contamination at every 
breath; and still greater is the wonder when one of 
their tenderly nurtured sons, who " kicked the traces " 
in his early youth, and finally ran away from the pa- 
rental roof, returns, older in years, but with a success 
that could be reached only through years of self-denial, 
fortitude, patience, and industry. 
It may be a relief to these good parents and guardians 
to know that it was not due to any culpable negligence 
or remission of duty on their part that some of their 
children turned out so diametrically opposite to the 
pattern to which it was intended they should conform, 
but simply to ignorance of a physico-moral law which 
influences cause and effect. This they had not so much 
refused to recognize as the fact that the constitutional 
temperaments of children, even of the same parents, 
differ largely, and the education and training suited to 
one temperament might be very prejudicial to another. 
The organic conditions which made departure from a 
steady life easy were systematically being backed and 
stimulated in the case of one child by a course of train- 
ing more favorable to the growth of the weaker and 
more effeminate qualities, which were weakening and 78 
INEBRIETY 
prejudicial and directly opposed to the formation of that 
great safeguard of life built up of manliness, self-depen- 
dence, and self-control, so imperatively demanded in his 
case; while with another, escape from the enervating 
influences of home life, the being thrown on their own 
resources at an adaptable age, and the accidental con- 
junction of other favoring circumstances, developed 
strong, healthy, intellectual forces which antagonized 
a disposition to a self-indulgent life and carried him 
safely onward in spite of pitfalls and dangerous places 
to material success. IV 
THE INEBRIATE'S CONTINUED PROGRESS IN 
BUILDING UP MORAL MANHOOD IV 
The Inebriate's Continued Progress in Build- 
ing up Moral Manhood 
The Hypercritical Condition of Mind with Regard to 
Our Fellow-men very Destructive to Mental Health 
The Value of Being Indulgent to the Beliefs and Opin- 
ions of Others 
Manly Indulgence for the Weaknesses and Infirmities 
of Others 
The Value of Moral Persistence 
Adherence to Virtues in Harmony with Our Disposition 
and Associations not Moral Strength 
Encouragement in a Life of Self-denial IV 
THE INEBRIATE'S CONTINUED PROG- 
RESS IN BUILDING UP MORAL MAN- 
HOOD 
The Hypercritical Condition of Mind with Re- 
gard to Our Fellow-men very Destructive to Men- 
tal Health.-T 'he habit of dwelling upon the weaker 
and meaner qualities and vices of others in thought 
and conversation is enervating to the mental and hurt- 
ful to the moral health, and the sooner it is laid aside 
the better. The weak men who indulge in it are weaker 
than the women who do so, for where the latter have 
been led into the practice by reason of the restricted 
sphere of their activities, men have no such excuse. 
On the other hand, to speak of the good traits in 
our associates and neighbors necessitates a restraint 
upon our egoism, and the desire for moral precedence 
in the lives of others is provocative of intellectual ex- 
pansion. It is greatly developing to engage in this 
latter practice, which especially commends itself to a 
woman as the quality in a man's mind which she is 
81 82 
INEBRIETY 
less able to emulate than any other manly trait he may 
possess. It is true she does at times caustically remark 
that " men speak well of one another because they are 
afraid of one another," but she does not honestly believe 
this, for it is the true genius of manliness in the habit 
which excites her respect. 
The tattler of the male sex is held in quiet contempt 
even by the tattler of the female sex, who, though she 
may encourage him in his unmanly displays of small- 
ness, meanness, and insignificance, at the same time 
rates him much below herself in strength of mind and 
character. 
The value of the appreciative quality of mind with 
regard to others depends upon the man's intelligence 
and sagacity in discovering admirable traits of charac- 
ter not apparent to the ordinary observer, and perhaps 
only obscurely guessed at by the possessors themselves, 
and not upon an uncalculating assumption that such 
virtues exist, or for self-interest. Therefore in speak- 
ing of others it is well to maintain reticence on the 
score of their well-known faults and vices of character, 
and refer to their virtues and choicer traits. Although 
this will prove a difficult matter at first from insufficient 
cultivation, it will finally become as easy and fluent as 
the other, and he who penetrates the deepest into this 
undeveloped mine will ultimately be esteemed the best 
talker. In the generous rivalry which would spring up 
to outdo one another in this accomplishment, virtues 
and capacities now undreamed of would be brought to 
light and the aggregate results become incalculably 
beneficent. The smartest man in society would be he THE INEBRIATE'S CONTINUED PROGRESS 
83 
who could discover the greatest number of beauties, 
and the dullest and stupidest he who could alone find 
nothing but faults and blemishes. 
rlhe weak and faulty, the discouraged and despair- 
ing, would be stimulated to live up to the character 
given them by others when they learned that the good 
they were but dimly aware of possessing elicited the 
praise of their social contemporaries, while the bad 
they were conscious of doing was treated with silent 
contempt. The greatest flattery would be the praise 
of qualities and capacities which the man knew he pos- 
sessed, but with which he had never been properly 
credited. It would not only make him feel stronger 
and better, and inspire him with respect for the intelli- 
gence and admiration for the generosity of the man 
who openly avowed them, but it would also encourage 
him to give a guaranteed force to the commendation 
by making it still further deserved. 
We have got so into the fashion of seeing strength and 
capacity in successful corrupt men that we fail altogether 
to note the greater strength and nobler capacities in 
unsuccessful (taking wealth as the standard of success) 
good men. Yet it is easier and more immediately 
profitable for the unprincipled man to do evil than for 
the good man of mediocrity to continue to do well; 
and therefore, the demands upon the latter's strength 
of resistance being greater, he is the stronger and the 
manlier. To be just, to be generous, in our estimate 
and criticism of others, is a very high grade of manli- 
ness and possibly the scarcest of all our manly qualities. 
To give full and complete credit to others in public INEBRIETY 
84 
seems like hiding our own light under a bushel, yet by 
withholding any good word with respect to others we 
may be sinning against them cruelly, and may carry, by 
a compromising silence, a train of evil consequences 
to them which is sure to rebound in evil results to our- 
selves. The excess of praise, although it is regarded 
as man-worshiping, is stimulating to every quality of 
healthy manhood. 
Ordinarily the worst of our fellow-men are the tran- 
sient and emotional: colorings and expressions, exter- 
nally noticeable, are no safe indications of the real man 
within, who is rarely sounded by the lighter gages of 
associated life. We must be at our best before we can 
get at his best, before we can draw out that moral 
worth in him which only responds truthfully to that 
which is genuinely trustworthy in ourselves. It is alone 
through our own manhood that we can bring his into 
activity, if there be any of that quality in him to re- 
spond to true calls. If we fail to do this, it may be 
through some lack of it in ourselves, hidden even from 
our own eyes through unconscious egoism ; and we may 
feel pretty certain that what we do call out corresponds 
closely to that exhibited by ourselves, whether it be 
noble or whether it be mean. Herein lies the influence 
of every man or woman, either for good or mischief, 
in their relations with one another. 
The capacity to read others and to do justice to 
others in speaking of them approaches to a rare genius; 
and as, however conscientiously we may set about it, 
the essay is carried on largely by a comparative anal- 
ysis of qualities which we know to be within ourselves, 
we seldom arrive at more than faint impressions, the THE INEBRIATE'S CONTINUED PROGRESS 
85 
silent mannerisms, leaving out the real character al- 
together. The study of the real man in others must be 
prefaced by the study of the real man in ourselves, and 
the doing so will develop a stronger and kinder regard 
for one another, outside of circumstantial aspects, 
which would seem to affiliate closely to that tenderness 
of manhood characterized by the great Formulator of 
our religion as " loving one another." 
The Value of Being Indulgent to the Beliefs and 
Opinions of Others.-It is rarely that we get at the 
real sense, the true meaning, of a person who gives his 
opinions and beliefs, either in conversation or in writing, 
if they are apparently antagonistic to those we hold, 
and it may be more through our own weaknesses than 
the fault of the other that we so signally fail to do so. 
It may only require on our part a mental position of 
patience, kindly allowance, and withdrawal of personal 
prejudices for a while readily to translate his mode of 
working up thought and his manner of conveying that 
thought into our more familiar and satisfactory pro- 
cesses ; and it is anything but manly to indulge in irri- 
tability and unreasoning criticism until we are thoroughly 
satisfied that our interpretation meets with his approval. 
When so authorized, with a just allowance for his situ- 
ation in Tfe, which may give greater or less freedom of 
expression, it may be that our own views will be altered 
through what he has advanced. Possibly his beliefs 
are by necessity what our own would be under anal- 
ogous conditions, or they are substantially the same 
under a different dress. Uniformity of opinion may 
be more general than we think, but uniformity of ex- 
pression seems impossible. 86 
INF.BR1F.TY 
Manly Indulgence for the Weaknesses and In- 
firmities of Others.-It is through the moral weak- 
nesses and infirmities of others, even to their vices 
(excepting that unpardonable sin of intense greed for 
accumulating vast fortunes at the expense of others), 
that our manly sympathies receive the healthful exer- 
cise they require. This necessitates on our part a re- 
linquishment of self-flatteries, prejudices, and egoism, 
and merges our minds into a trained sense of the suf- 
ferings of others, not morbidly dwelling on sufferings 
and sins, but encouraging a healthful fellow-feeling, 
which prompts a rightful help to them and is at the 
same time helpful to ourselves. Usually, however, the 
weaknesses and infirmities of others seem to excite and 
draw to the surface our manifold weaknesses, which, 
instead of making us more companionable and indul- 
gent, are apt to arouse a spirit of contradiction. We 
are thus made more hypercritical, severe, and domineer- 
ing than usual, and thereby aggravate rather than relieve 
the evil. 
This can be remedied only by disciplining our self- 
control and training our sympathetic impulses to that 
degree of strength which is beyond the weakness 
drawn out of us; in fact, throwing aside our personal 
egoism, self-flatteries, and prejudices. Every man and 
woman with these healthfully cultivated susceptibilities 
to the sufferings of others, which come from intimate 
connection with them in a proper and indulgent state 
of mind, is more than a missionary, more than a skilled 
physician. Under the moral and bodily miseries of 
life they are the medicines that silently but surely work THE INEBRIATE'S CONTINUED PROGRESS 
87 
to alter the mental conditions which make sin and 
suffering possible. 
We may exhibit stronger and more convincing evi- 
dences of sympathy and benevolence in giving our time 
rather than our money to alleviate all that needs allevi- 
ation in the lot of other men and women, for whom we 
are called upon by the spirit of manhood within us to 
do all that lies in our power. Unfortunately, however, 
we are too apt to give that which costs the least self- 
denial, without much regard to the necessities or the 
well-being of the individual requiring our assistance. 
That which costs the greatest inconvenience to give 
is not always money, and for that reason the bestowal 
of it may be the best suited to enable a person to 
help himself. It takes very little of a man's money 
and a great deal of the man himself to do the best he 
can for another, but that form of assistance which is 
in harmony with the man's disposition and costs no 
effort is the one ordinarily bestowed. The unfortunate 
and unsuccessful, the poor and miserable, the cruelly 
afflicted and innocent sufferers, and even the tempted 
and fallen ones may perhaps be permitted to suffer for 
a greater or less time in the world, not as an evidence 
that they, any more than the fortunate ones in life, have 
committed greater infractions on moral laws, and are 
receiving the results of their misconduct, but that their 
sufferings may work out for them a greater breadth of 
manhood than, with their organization, would otherwise 
be possible. The more their misery is responded to by 
our intelligent aid and sympathy, rather than our con- 
tempt and harsh criticism, the more we assist in accom- 88 
1NEBR1E7 Y 
plishing the end in view at the least possible expense 
of human suffering, that of carrying out the line of de- 
velopment evidently intended by the great spiritual 
Source from whom all that is valuable in us first ema- 
nated. 
The Value of Moral Persistence*-It would seem 
as if the quality of manly persistence, in order to pro- 
duce results of permanent value to the man and to 
mankind, must be educated and trained in a high moral 
direction and not be made subservient to selfish per- 
sonal interests. The men who arrive at material suc- 
cess by this force of persistence and determination to 
achieve certain objects in life are rarely men who 
began their careers with a resolve to become rich with- 
out scruple at whatever cost. At first their ambition 
was of a more heroic type, and may not have altered 
until the result of this ambition was within their reach. 
This once obtained, bringing, as it ordinarily does, 
wealth in sufficient abundance to satisfy wholesome 
wants, these successful men in a double sense are rarely 
able to divorce the two in their after conduct of life. 
The altruistic motive has, however, been adulterated 
by the egoistic tendency through motives of calculating 
expediency, and where it commenced with the unselfish 
query, What good will it do ? it ordinarily ends with the 
more fixed politic consideration, How much will it pay? 
In persistence there is always strength, not necessa- 
rily manly strength, for it may be persistence in evil; 
but even though it be not manly, but brute strength, it 
is certainly of more value than the weakness of waver- 
ing, which is a continued waste of nervous manhood THE INEBRIATE'S CONTINUED PROGRESS 
89 
all through. Persistence, if it be at all logical and 
reasoning, may be and often is utilized by its subsequent 
conversion into good. 
The genuinely wicked persistence in man for a gen- 
uinely wicked purpose is fortunately of sufficient rarity 
to shock us when it is openly manifested; but the great 
majority of individuals whom we regard as persistently 
wicked may be nothing more than persistently self- 
indulgent and mentally diseased. No man is strong in 
manly persistence who does not finish his stage of life 
in this body at a point which reaches its maximum of 
moral persistence. There is nothing so weak and 
offensive as moral waverings, nothing so strong and 
beautiful as moral persistence, the building up of man- 
hood on a solid, impregnable rock of stern, irrevocable 
resolves, which, though it may know defeats, has never 
known unconditional surrender of any portion of the 
ground it has gone over. 
It is oftentimes the case, however, that the persistently 
successful man in business or in religion is greatly in- 
clined to self-laudation, and indulges this weakness to 
an extent offensive to others who are honestly obliged 
to acknowledge that they have achieved no very great 
success in either, but, on the contrary, may be set down 
as failures in both. The generator of moneyed wealth 
and the successful genius of religion each becomes a 
law unto himself in his self-conscious appreciation. If 
it were only true that the one had built up a fortune 
and the other goodness by lives of painful self-denial and 
self-renunciation, of enduring faith and untiring per- 
sistence, in lines that were solidly against the grain of 90 
INEBRIETY 
their inclinations, then it would seem as if they deserved 
to have a just and favorable opinion of their merits and 
the right to call attention to their well-earned deserts; 
but, unfortunately for themselves, they do not in the 
greater number of cases tell the truth. Without being 
fully conscious of it themselves, they may have been 
largely the creatures of favoring circumstances, which, 
finding them with inherent lines of action in harmony 
with success, carried them through almost in spite of 
themselves. Instead of using any very great and ex- 
hausting labor involving self-denial, it may be that they 
were simply indulging themselves in habits of mind and 
body the most congenial and agreeable to their natural 
instincts and sensations; and it is refreshing, therefore, 
to hear occasionally of a successful wealthy man who in- 
genuously acknowledges that his success was a wonder to 
himself-that his life, instead of being a painful one of 
deprivations and unpleasant exhaustive demands upon 
his mind, was on the whole exciting and pleasurable, and 
a departure from such employment into uncongenial 
directions would have indeed been misery ; that instead 
of being one long-continued, determined effort at over- 
coming difficulties and knocking down the traditionary 
stone walls and barriers to success, it was nothing more 
than passive obedience to an harmonious life of daily 
thought and action, made the easier by the absence of 
conflicting and antagonistic desires and tendencies. 
Adherence to Virtues in Harmony with Our Dis- 
position and Associations not Moral Strength.- If 
there is one thing more than another that a man hates 
to confess, it is that he cannot drink without becoming THE INEBRIATE'S CONTINUED PROGRESS 
91 
intoxicated; yet it is much more manly to say this 
than the reverse, that he can drink without getting 
drunk. It shows that he possesses the excitable ner- 
vous-mental temperament of the intellectual man and 
"that his higher manly faculties are largely in excess of 
his lower animal nature. He who says that he must 
drink or life is no object to him is not a healthfully 
developed man. His body may be in apparently good 
condition, his muscles hard and strong, but his mind 
has either never been properly disciplined in early youth 
or is going through degenerative changes from the 
presence of some insidious disease. He must either 
go voluntarily and at once into mental training and 
treatment, or be hurled into it later, with suffering and 
misery, by the inexorable working of the moral law, 
which, before turning him out a complete man, will 
first have ground him up into exceeding small pieces. 
It is not only unmanly, but mean-spirited, for the 
intemperate man to declare that, although he is weak 
on the one point of getting drunk, he is especially strong 
on other temptations; that, although he gives way to 
inebriety, he does not do so in other vices, such as 
gambling, lying, stealing, taking undue advantage of 
another in a bargain, scandal-mongering, bearing false 
witness, adultery, and the like. He deceives himself 
and attempts to deceive others when he says so, for he 
knows that he does not exercise any strong force of 
moral resistance to these, and that the reason he does 
not yield to them is because he has no strong tendencies 
or inclinations in such directions. If they possessed 
one half the power over him that drink does, he would 92 
INEBRIETY 
yield to every one of them. There is no manliness in 
adhering to virtues which are in harmony with the dis- 
position-no moral advancement whatever; for it might 
be harder to gamble than not to gamble, to take ad- 
vantage of another than not to do so, to commit 
adultery than to subdue the prudent fear of conse- 
quences, to steal than not to steal. 
The truth is that he has exhibited greater moral 
strength in fighting against his one great temptation, 
drink, than in any other direction, and it is in this one 
direction that his restoration to the full stature of man is 
to come. 
The temperance zealot, lacking the appetite or desire 
for liquor, may be much less the man, as far as drink 
goes, than the inebriate who resists his craving for drink 
five times out of ten; and so it is with every virtue in 
the calendar. We are only strengthened, developed, 
and made rightful claimants and possessors of the title 
and dignity of manhood by our successful fightings 
with every form of weakness. 
A large number of men and women go through life 
with the credit of being manly men and moral women, 
who have never had a temptation sufficiently strong and 
potent for a kitten not to resist on the score of impro- 
priety, and who yet fail to resist even these. 
Encouragement in a Life of Self-denial.- Let the 
newly resolved man bear in mind that in living his life 
of daily and hourly resistance to his smaller appetites, 
foibles, and petty indulgences, he will meet with many 
difficulties, and that, instead of getting easier from day 
to day, life will become harder, with all sorts of appa- THE INEBRIATE'S CONTINUED PROGRESS 
93 
rently new temptations cropping out to block his path- 
way to reform. 
He has perhaps frequently witnessed in the past this 
tendency of his nature to oppose his will and good 
resolves, and it has always proved a stumbling-block 
to his continuance in the right path. As he experiences 
day after day this seeming antagonism, and beholds a 
long vista of ever-growing difficulties before him, he 
becomes discouraged at the apparent endlessness, hope- 
lessness, and unsatisfactoriness of his endeavors to do 
right, and succumbs to what he considers the inevitable. 
He attributes his failure to his destiny and to the devil 
being too much for him, ignorant that this seeming- 
opposition to his moral recovery is nothing more than 
the operation of a moral law of the divine economy in 
one of its most beautiful workings, by which his will 
power and force of resistance to evil are being educated 
and trained in the same manner as the fond mother 
trains her infant child to walk, step by step. As the 
strength increases, so do the trials or temptings increase, 
making further demands upon that growing strength 
until it reaches its fullest development. Instead, there- 
fore, of discouragement and despair, the mind of the 
struggling man should feel inspired with increasing 
hopefulness and continually renewing trust and thank- 
fulness. V 
MORAL CHARACTERISTICS AND VARIOUS 
TYPES OF THE INEBRIATE 
95 V 
Moral Characteristics and Various Types of 
the Inebriate 
The Inebriate in His Moral Characteristics 
The Brutal Criminal Inebriate of Our Cities 
The Nervous Animal Type of Inebriate 
The Intellectual Type of Inebriate 
The Domestic and Religious Type of Inebriate 
The Brutal Criminal Inebriate in His Connection with 
Jails and Penitentiaries 
The Spiritual Effects of Drunkenness 
Diagram 
96 V 
MORAL CHARACTERISTICS AND VARI- 
OUS TYPES OF THE INEBRIATE 
The Inebriate in his Moral Characteristics.-It 
may seem odd to many persons to speak of the differ- 
ence in the moral status of inebriates. With these a 
drunkard is nothing but a drunkard and there is no 
good in him. But the moral habits and characteristics 
of the individual, outside of drink, vary in accordance 
with his constitutional tendencies and the character of 
his previous education, training, and situation in life. 
Until the moment of intoxication he may be either a 
weak good man or a thoroughly vicious one. Subse- 
quently, when he emerges from it, he returns to what 
he was previous to his debauch, but always with a de- 
clension in point of resistance not only to drink, but 
to every vice which his surroundings and distempered 
mind incline him to. Fortunate is the man who can 
then return to a moral-intellectual environment; not so 
much for what it will do to cure his intemperance, but 
what it does accomplish in preserving him from the worst 
97 98 
INEBRIETY 
feature of it, the acquisition of vices, with the ultimate 
possibilities of crime. 
The Brutal Criminal Inebriate of Our Cities*-In 
the foreground we have the blackguard drunkard of 
our streets, big of limb, broad of chest, low of brow, 
and black of visage; born of the gutters; the braggart 
and bully of his less offensive neighbors, evil triumph 
in his eyes; with strong assumption of physical power, 
but cowardly by instinct; thief and murderer by inher- 
ent qualities, and only needing an accident to make 
either or both ; at times politic with the lowest form of 
animal cunning ; the woman-bruiser by nature and nur- 
ture ; his language as polluted as his mind, which rev- 
erences nothing but the brute force which overcomes 
him; always the concentrated living spawn of the ac- 
cumulating growth of generations of depravity. The 
accidents of life sometimes make him the successful 
politician and the petty magistrate or aiderman of our 
cosmopolitan cities, where he carries on his debauchery 
with immunity from the laws which he himself dispenses 
in unjust, arbitrary, and cruel decisions and sentences 
against his less fortunate contemporaries in vice. 
The Nervous Animal Type of Inebriate.-In an- 
other class of inebriates we recognize the spoiled boy 
that is born of those social upheavals in which men 
without education, excepting that which business life 
develops, become suddenly well-to-do and are inspired 
with an ambition to elevate their sons into a more re- 
fined and cultivated social position than they them- 
selves can hope to occupy. 
With an active mind born of the parent who has per- CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES 
99 
haps enriched himself without much scrupulous regard 
for the rights of others, with inherent tendencies in the 
direction of animal indulgences, an ill-regulated mind, 
ample means, and favoring environment, he very early 
absorbs the genius of the street more readily than that 
of the intellectual schools of life. 
His later education is of billiard halls, concert saloons, 
dance houses, gambling dens, and brothels, his conver- 
sation is altogether of these, and nothing in life is worth 
the living unless spent "as a tale that is told," amid 
pleasures which appeal directly to the largely developed 
animal side of his brain. Although not devoid of a 
thin veneering of refinement and polish, it is not unlike 
that attributed to the Russian: " Scratch him and the 
Tartar appears." He is an imperfect development, 
imperfect at birth and made so by the character of his 
after training and surroundings. Spurred on by the 
necessity which impelled his father, he might not have 
differed greatly from him in the character of his success. 
The Intellectual Type of Inebriate.-In the third 
marked type of intemperate men we find the educated 
man of refined and intellectual instincts and habits, who 
obtains no gratification from the pastimes of the brutish 
or ignorant, does not indulge in profanity, card-playing, 
gambling, etc., because the bent of his mind from the 
beginning, predetermined by the organic superiority of 
the intellectual qualities over the physical, possibly 
through a long line of cultured progenitors, is not in 
the direction of such enjoyments, and his surroundings 
have not inspired him with a habit of mind that can 
obtain even surcease of suffering from such practices. 100 
INEBRIETY 
He has no great vices outside of his indulgence in 
drink, because of the weakness of his desires, and he 
exercises no moral strength in resisting these, although 
he is apt to affect a reputation for his exemption from 
the common vices of ordinary drinking men. 
In his alcoholic inebriation he indulges in the intel- 
lectual form of pleasure rather than the animal, and 
often feels more moral when drunk than when sober. 
He is known frequently during his drinking-bouts to 
have been intellectually at his best, up to the time that 
his excessively stimulated brain gave way, by increasing 
intoxication, to the impossibility of putting his thoughts 
into an intelligible and coherent shape. At such times, 
if he happens to be of a classical or moral bent of 
mind, he will express himself with a purity and correct- 
ness that almost equal a Cicero, a Marcus Aurelius, or 
a Tacitus; if he is idealistic and sentimental, in poetry 
that makes Homer, Dante, or Dryden seem closer to 
us than ever before ; if humorous and witty, the brilliant 
sallies and bonsmots which his highly stimulated ima- 
gination conjures up transport us into an atmosphere 
breathing of a Sheridan or a Curran; and if patriotic, 
the fire and vehemence of dead orators and eloquent 
statesmen become renewed and living under the stimu- 
lated forces of the intoxicated brain of the nervous in- 
tellectual man. 
This type, as well as the succeeding one, is the pro- 
duct of hereditary disease. 
The Domestic and Religious Type of Inebriate* 
-Then, again, we have the quiet, domestic youth, who 
has been brought up among virtuous women, who loves CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES 
101 
reading and the refined pleasures of home life. He is 
reserved, modest, and cleanly in his habits, has little if 
any ambition, but has the character of mind and nervous 
organization which would make life sweet to him as a 
village cure or a country parson, where his small ego- 
ism would receive its necessary aliment through the 
sense of being useful to his fellow-men in a quiet, non- 
exciting field of labor rather than in a world of com- 
petitive ambitions, struggles, and cares. He has an 
appreciative sense of honor and probity, qualities which 
he has inherited along with his liability to indulge in 
stimulation. To him periodical attacks of intoxicative 
mania seem to come as a resultant of his quiet, non- 
combative existence, his soft and yielding nature, the 
disturbing influences of uncongenial living, and as a 
corrective medicine for his mental and physical weak- 
ness. He is a congenital neurotic. 
The Brutal Criminal Inebriate in His Connection 
with Jails and Penitentiaries.-These are the types 
that stand out more boldly than others, which are 
simply modifications of the foregoing specimens. With 
the first class referred to, where the brutal instincts are 
encouraged by street training and education and are 
accompanied by a love for and faith in depravity as a 
material basis of human existence, it would seem as if 
nothing short of being made all over again would be 
of any benefit in converting these into decent members 
of society. What we have to do in their case is not 
the reformation and restoration of men who have at 
one time led respectable and socially correct lives, but 
the working up of the polluted raw material into a 102 
INEBRIETY 
shape resembling humanity, with some sense of utilita- 
rian morality. They require new minds and new bodies 
to begin with, before' the ordinary processes of secular 
and moral education can be made available. The dis- 
cipline and teachings of the church cannot be made 
effective through her customary methods, for the brains 
of these defective specimens of humanity are so struc- 
turally disorganized, through many succeeding genera- 
tions of ignorance, degradation, and wrong-doing, that 
even the sensations of pleasure or pain are in them as 
quiescent as in a rhinoceros and are excited only through 
the stomach. There is nothing for religion to take hold 
of, and it is only by remedying the morbid organic 
conditions within their brains that they can be reached 
through the perceptive faculty. There is a constitu- 
tional restraint of the intellectual faculties, and a mental 
hygienic discipline and training is required to do away 
with this and allow of a partial development at any 
rate. 
As this would have to be done through compulsion 
and by the state, the jails and workhouses might be 
diverted from their present position as iniquitous, 
legalized schools of vice and crime into a useful pur- 
pose, the conversion of the bad stock of animal men 
into human men. But this will never be done until the 
ridiculous fallacy that criminality or viciousness is a 
moral infraction, a voluntary transgression rather than 
a mental deformity, is laid aside, along with the other 
old moral lumber of past civilizations. It is no new 
theory to believe that all wickedness and weaknesses 
arise from organic perversion of the brain, to begin CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES 
103 
with, and from this being continually stimulated and en- 
couraged by a wrong education and training all through 
life ; but we have also convincing proofs that these con- 
stitutional tendencies toward evil have been subverted, 
and the innate degeneracy corrected, from the fact that 
a large number of our morally healthy citizens of to-day 
started life with everything against them in this respect 
and undoubtedly owe their conversion to a rightful and 
proper training. 
The economic principle involved in turning our 
prisons and jails into schools of mental hygiene for the 
building up of moral manhood on a stern and rigid 
mental discipline, however appreciable, would un- 
doubtedly call out the usual protests of the moral 
school of gadgrinds, who would see nothing in it but 
awards and encouragements of crime where there should 
be nothing but punishment; who, in the same spirit 
that burned Protestant reformers as a prevention to the 
further spread of the crime of apostasy, would deal out 
blows rather than specifics. But there is little fear that 
this sort of discipline would ever be regarded as a plea- 
sure by the prisoner, or that persons would commit 
crime in order to avail themselves of the prison educa- 
tion. No one will ever go to jail to accomplish his 
healthful education in life. Schools and hygiene are 
not popular with criminals; they have too decided a 
preference for the old ways. 
The entire economy of prison organization is worked 
on the principle of fear as a ruling motive in conduct, 
and the sound of the gong carries with it the instant 
obedience of every inmate. Its rules are as immutable 104 
INEBRIETY 
as the laws of the Medes and Persians are said to have 
been. In no other way can such material be handled 
with safety, for kindness and indulgence are largely 
thrown away on these undisciplined men ; but if prison 
life fails to accomplish any good but that of ready 
obedience to discipline, harsh, cruel, and oppressive as 
it is, and as, under any change of beliefs, it will always 
remain, it performs that which is of appreciable value 
to them and to the state. Unfortunately, however, the 
worth of this to the prisoner is more than counterbal- 
anced by the poisonous influences unceasingly at work, 
through the admixture of perverted minds in various 
stages of cunning, evil ingenuity, and wrong-doing. 
The contagious example through this compulsory as- 
sociation is the immoral education the prisoner is now 
receiving, and this always affords the stimulus to make 
weak men more vicious and criminal and stronger in 
evil continually, while the hardened criminal, through 
the improvement in his physical, although not in his 
mental and moral, health, is becoming more dangerous 
to the future safety and security of society and con- 
tinually depreciating in possible value as an economic 
factor in civilization. 
The value of such a system of correction to society, 
if it could be successfully put into operation, would 
be almost incalculable. It is open to doubt if even 
the trade schools of our country could turn out, when 
their period of education terminated, more serviceable 
men than these rigidly disciplined, experienced, and 
systematically worked inmates of our prisons, if their 
perverted mental organizations were prepared by right- CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES 
105 
ful training and treatment during incarceration to work 
healthfully, to the best advantage for themselves and 
for the state. 
The Spiritual Effects of Drunkenness.-In closing 
this little treatise, it seems imperative upon us to call 
attention to the mischief wrought by the use of intoxi- 
cating liquors upon the hidden spiritual sources of man, 
and we cannot do this better than by quoting an article 
which appeared some years ago in " Harper's Monthly 
Magazine " on that subject: 
" The curse of drunkenness on the side of its physical 
devastations has been abundantly depicted by the 
advocates of the temperance reform. The amount 
of grain consumed in the manufacture of intoxicating 
liquors; the number of men whose labor is worse than 
wasted in producing and in vending them ; the number 
of lives destroyed by them ; the number of paupers and 
insane persons whose woes are traceable to this source ; 
the effects upon the health of individuals-all of these 
things are frequently set forth with sufficient fullness in 
impressive rhetoric. Some allowances must be made 
for the overstatements of zealous advocates, but there 
are facts enough of an appalling nature in these repre- 
sentations to call for the most serious thought. 
" But the worst side of drunkenness is not that which 
appears in these familiar figures. The most frightful 
effects of the drink habit are not those which can be 
tabulated in statistics and reported in the census. It 
is not the waste of corn, nor the destruction of property, 
nor the increase of taxes, nor even the ruin of physical 
health nor the loss of life, which most impresses the 106 
INEBRIETY 
mind of the thoughtful observer of inebriety. It is the 
effect of this vice upon the characters of men as it is 
exhibited to him, day by day, in his ordinary intercourse 
with them. It is in the spiritual realm that the ravages 
of strong drink are most terrible. 
" Body and mind are so closely related that when the 
one suffers the other must share the suffering; and the 
injury to the physical health resulting from intemperate 
drinking must therefore be accompanied by similar in- 
jury of the mental and moral powers. But the incli- 
nation of the popular thought is so strongly toward the 
investigation of the physical phenomena that the spirit- 
ual consequences of drunkenness are often overlooked. 
Degeneration of tissues is more palpable than degener- 
acy of spirit, a lesion of the brain more startling than 
a breach of faith; but the deeper fact, of which the 
senses take no note, is the more important fact, and it 
would be well if the attention of men could be fixed 
upon it. 
"The phenomena to which we have referred often 
report themselves to the quickened perceptions of 
those who stand nearest to the habitual drinker. Many 
a mother observes, with a heart that grows heavier day 
by day, the signs of moral decay in the character of her 
son. It is not the flushed face and the heavy eyes that 
trouble her most; it is the evidence that his mind is be- 
coming duller and fouler, his sensibilities less acute, his 
sense of honor less commanding. She discovers that 
his loyalty to truth is somewhat impaired, that he de- 
ceives her frequently and without compunction. This 
effect is often observed in the character of the inebriate. CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES 
107 
Truthfulness is the fundamental virtue; when it is im- 
paired the character is undermined and strong drink 
makes a deadly assault upon it. Coupled with this 
loss of truthfulness is that weakening of the will which 
always accompanies chronic alcoholism. The man 
loses, little by little, the mastery over himself; the regal 
faculties are in chains. How many of his broken 
promises are due to a debilitated will, and how many 
to a decay of his veraciousness, it would be impossible 
for the victim himself to determine. Doubtless his in- 
tention to break off his evil habit is sometimes honest, 
and the failure is due to the paralysis of his will. 
"The loss of self-respect, the lowering of ambition, 
and the fading out of hope are signs of the progress of 
this disease in the character. It is a mournful spectacle 
- that of the brave, ingenuous, high-spirited man sink- 
ing steadily down into the degradation of inebriety ; but 
how many such spectacles are visible all over the land! 
And it is not in the character of those alone who are 
notorious drunkards that such tendencies appear; they 
are often distinctly seen in the lives of men who are 
never drunk. Sir Henry Thompson's testimony is em- 
phatic, to the effect that the habitual use of fermented 
liquors to an extent far short of what is necessary to 
produce intoxication injures the body and diminishes 
the mental power. 
"If, as he testifies, a large proportion of the most 
painful and dangerous maladies of the body are due to 
the use of fermented liquors taken in quantities which 
are conventionally deemed moderate, then it is certain 
that such use of them must result also in serious inju- 108 
INEBRIETY 
ries to the mental and moral nature. Who does not 
know reputable gentlemen-physicians, artists, clergy- 
men even-who were never drunk in their lives and 
never will be, but who reveal in conversation and in 
conduct certain melancholy effects of the drinking 
habit? The brain is so often inflamed with alcohol 
that its functions are imperfectly performed and there 
is a perceptible loss of mental power and of moral 
control. 
" The drinker is not conscious of this loss ; but those 
who know him best are painfully aware that his per- 
ceptions are less keen, his judgments less sound, his 
temper less serene, his spiritual vision less clear, because 
he tarries every day a little too long at the wine. Even 
those who refuse to entertain ascetic theories respecting 
these beverages may be able to see that there are uses 
of them that stop short of drunkenness which are still 
hurtful to the mind and heart as well as the body. 
That conventional idea of moderation to which Sir 
Henry Thompson refers is quite elastic; the term is 
stretched to cover habits that are steadily despoiling the 
life of its rarest fruits. The drinking habit is often 
defended by reputable gentlemen to whom the very 
thought of a debauch would be shocking, but to whom, 
if it were only lawful, in the tender and just solicitude 
of friendship, such words as these might be spoken: It 
is true that you are not drunkards, and may never be; 
but if you could know, what is too evident to those who 
love you best, how your character is slowly losing the 
fineness of its texture and the firmness of its outline, 
how your art deteriorates in the delicacy of its touch, DIAGRAM 
OF THE MORAL MANIFESTATIONS RESULTING FROM THE NORMAL and ABNORMAL CONDITIONS 
OF THE NERVOUS-MENTAL STRUCTURE. CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES 
109 
how the atmosphere of your life seems to grow murky 
and the sky lowers gloomily above you, you would not 
think your daily indulgence harmless in its measure. 
It is in just such lives as these that drink exhibits some 
of its most mournful tragedies."