Port Royal commercial and Beaufort County Republican. [volume] (Port Royal, S.C.) 1873-1874, 1874-03-19
Alcoholic Disease.


ty, like other disorders of the human
system, can be corrected and cured; by
proper treatment that the lost self-control
can be restored, and the unfortunate vic
tins of terrible vice returned to lives
of usefulness and responsibility. Many
eminent men, including DR.. Rush, have
from time to time, during the last half
century, given testimony in favor Of
medical treatment in the management Of
drunkenness. When the public come to
understand that the medical profession
regard drunkenness or inebriety as
disease, literally crazy thirst inherited,
or begotten of excessive indulgence, and
chat intoxication is the immediate or
remote cause Of this disease, the subject
will not be treated in the fippant or
noisy denunciatory style that is too fire.
ouently ilidulged in by the press and pull
pit of the day.
The physician of the New York State
Inebriate Asylum classifes the different
forms Of drinking as accidental or social,
habitual and periodical. An accidental
or occasional drinker is sound man, aid
has the power of restraining himself; but
the habitual drunkard is an unsound man
mentally, physically, and morally. He
is lost to selfcontroI. The appetite
grows by what it feeds upon, and as q
rule habitual drinkers as they increase
the amount of stimulation, take cores
pondingly less food. Not few patients
have been reported as having taken from
forty to fifty glasses day for as many
days, with scarcely any food, until poison.
cd aud exhausted, the eliminating point
is reached, and prostration, with or with
out commissions or mania, or it may be
death, follows. IF they recover, such
persons soon relapse again, and physical,
is changed, Slowly, inSidiously, but
surely, the brain and nervous centres
have been poisoned The tissues are
infamed, and hardening or softening
may follow; then comes confusion of
of thought, blunted perceptions, and
conscious or unconscious moral obliquity.
Such persons seldom see themselves as
others see them. They will, with appar-
ent earnestness, deny the fact of their
drinking. In fact, as they frequently 60
for days without reeling, even their init
mate friends may be deceived. They
say and do all sorts of absurd things, for
which in the restored consciousness of
sobriety they are deeply penitent.
A majority of the persons who drink
excessively have estimable qualities.
They are ordinarily ofgenerous impulses,
and with not a little manly pride and
delicate sensibility. Letters from friends
furnishing the physician with brief bio
graphies of patients usually refer to the
"only one fault" That one fault is
vice; but at the time a disease from
which the victim is powerlcss, unaided,
to rid himself as the fever patient crazed
with the poison of malaria is to restrain his
frenzy. He Graves the stimulus of alcohol
with the same intensity that a starving
man Graves food. Under such conditions
food is rejected and positively loathed. A
man in this condition should be regarded
as we would regard swimmer who,
intent only on the pleasures ola bath,
finds himself in the current of an under
tow and unable to regain the shore. In
both cases the need of assistance is urgent
Humanity demands that we promr tly
provide for the perishiug the means Of
rescue,