Litchfield enquirer., 1877-01-11
From the Quarterly Journal of Inebriety.] Causes of the Recent Increase or s anebrtety in AmeTIca.s
BY GEORGE M. BEARD, M D.

GENTLEMEN In accepting the invita- tion of your president to address the As- sociation at this annual meeting, It has seemed to me that an inquiry into the causes of the recent increase of inebrlety in this country might fitly be discussed.
 An inquiry of this kind is of interest. not only to this Association, the object of which is the cure of inebriety. but, as l hope to be able to show, to society ln general, or at least to philanthroRists and philosophic thinkers everywhere.
 The habit of drinking to intoyication IS partly vice, and partly disease. Drunk enness, as vice. is very old indeed; it seems to have always existed wherever the materials were accessible. Drunken ness as disease, inebriety. has been rec ognized but recently, aud 1t appears to pc especially and increasingly frequent Tn .his country.
 He who drinks to intoxication for the fun of it, for the sake of the pleasure 1t glves, or to drive dull care away is vicious. H- who drinks because he cannot help drinking, who is borne on against his | wishes and striyings by an irresistible lm- pulse. is diseased. Drunkenness, as a vice. may and often does lead to drunken l ness as disease, and the two forms are l freouently combined. Drunkenness. as a vice, may be and often is stopped by sign ing pledge of abstinence, which the victim finds no serious difficulty in keep ing, so long as he is not surrounded by | evil companions. Drunkenness, as dis
 ease, is rarely cured by signing the pledge,
 With 6 snc6 psrsons eafHaeg e is 0l aay eSs.at sa pledge; they wish to be delivered from
 their suffering as much as the dyspeptic patient wishes to De delivered from his indigestion, or the neuralgia patient of his pain The dyspeptic and neuralgia sufferer may pledge himself to abstain from eating those articles and exposing | himself to those influences, as cold and dampness, that experience shows to be harmful, but, in addition, positive reme- compllshment of cure. Likewlse the inebriate may pledge himself to abstain from alcoholic liquors, and may put him. | self into position where he cannot get them, but to this negative treatment should often be added positive medica- tion. If we expect permanent or even a temporary cure. In word, inebriety is | neurosis-a functional disease of the nervous system-ahd should be treated on the same principles as other and allied nervous diseases.
 There are two prominent features of in- ebriety that especially ally it to the neu- roses-its hereditary character, and its periodicity. It is malady that may be inherited; it descends from father and mother to daughter and son, and like other maladies, 1t is, when hereditary, all the harder to combat. In conformity to the laws of inheritance, 1t may take the place of other disorders, and may, in turn, lead to them. Abating the many one-sided statements on this point, ine- briety, it must be conceded, is oftentimes the door that opens to various forms of insanity.
 The periodicity of inebriety is fully as marked as that or neuraIgia. DO wo1 not all know of persons. who, at regular periods, every month or six weeks, or per- haps even. less frequently, suffer from at- tacks of inebriety, and vho. during all the intervals, are entirely sober and sane? What is more significant is. that during these intervals they may not be even tempted by the presence of alcohol. On the other hand, on the day for the attack to appear they are impelled by a force against which their own will is as the hand of an infant against the rush of Mi agara, to go after alcohol, and they will find it if they can. Many who are subject to these attacks clearly recognize their true nature; they expect and prepare for them, just as for an attack of ague, or tic-douloureux. The phenomena of the nervous system, like those of the heaven ly bodies, move in cycles; one can, in some cases, predict the coming on of an attack of neuralgia or inebriety with al- most as much precision as the astronomer calculates an eclipse of the sun, or the transit of Venus.
 It is a good example of the way in which men reason, or rather of the way in which they abstain from reasoning, on these subjects, that in almost all that is written on inebriety, for the profession or for the laity, it is assumed and not un- frequently stated, that intemperance and rum-drinking are on the increase among us; and the welghty statistics of the rev. enue department are brought in support ofthis assumption. The reality is that there never was time, in the history of our race. when, in proportion to the pop ulation, there was so little intemperance and little drinking among the higher classes, as to-day. The idea of abstain ing from alcohol when it is accessible. either for example sake, or for our own sake, IS, outside of Mohammedanism. al. most entirely modern and pre-eminent- ly an American idea. Abstinence, total or comparative. has been of late years forced upon us by the necessities of the nervous system; we cannot bear alcohol as our fathers could. Even in England, also. as was told by Prof. Huxley, sey- eral years ago-and other competent ob- servers confirm the statement-there has been among the leading classes, similar ft kt,A T
 This progress, in both countries, Is due, in part, no doubt. to the special efforts of reformers, but mainly to the general pro- gress of culture, and perhaps, most of all, to that heightened nervous sensitiveness that makes it itimpossible for many to par take, even moderately, of wine without showing. instantaneously or speedily, the evil effects therefrom.
 Temperance, indeed. is mostly a nine teenth century virtue. and the vice of in- temperance Is survival of savagery in civilization. Going back yet farther. we find that with certain savage tribes drunkenness is the rule, sobriety the ex- ception. In these tribes every event of real or supposed importance, a birth. a funeral, the going to or return from bat tie. is celebrated by hard drinking. Re- prove an Angola negro for heing drunk and he will reply my mother is dead,'' as though that were excuse enough. Even as recently as the,beginning of the present century. the custom of drinking at funerals yet survived with our fathers. At the present time both culture and con- science are opposed to such habits. It is among the depressed classes. who yet re- tain the habits, and the constitutions of the last century, that intemperance abounds; they drink as everybody drank, in the eighteenth century It IS often claimed that we. of this generation, are more injured by drinking than our fath- CTS. becanse of the adulterations of Ii- quors. The replysto this is, that analyses show that most of the adulterations are, so far as their effect on the nervous sys- tenn IS concerned. comparatively harmless, and that few or none of them produce ln- toxlcatlon or nebriety. It isthrough the alcohol, and not the adulterasions. that excessive drinking ipiures