The bee., 1883-05-05
ALcoHOL1c FRANCES.
Some Remarkable Cases Resulting IRON
Liquor Drinking.

Liquor Drinking'
A remarkable case-that of ply
sician of some prominence in New
York-will furnish a clearer concep
tion of what is meant by alcoholic
trance than could be done by pages OF
abstract description. This gentleman
inherited from his father q tendency
to periodical indulgence in alcoholic
stimulants, which never attacks him
unless he has performed an important
operation, lost a patient by death or
encountered some crisis in his affairs.
The first symptoms is S nse OF nerV-
GUS prostration, followed by an inexor-
abe craving for brandy, which, if re-
solutely denied at the moment, wakes
more and more imperious, until denial
is out of the question. Tired out with
the struggle, he yields at last and tax S
mere thimbleful of cagnac-the
beverage tspe ,ia,ly craved at srch
times. The drop of cognac is the
signal for the mental transformation
that follows. Sometimes he shuts him
self ND in his room with a bottle of
brandy at his elbow. d MES himself
alike to visitors and To patti nts, and
INDUCES in a protra tel AMI so ,itary
symposium-if that term may be ap-
piled to a bout in which no second
person is included. Generally, when
he emerge5 from his room and his
trance he has no knowledge of what
has taken place. He remembers that
he did not feel exactly well and took
nip of brandy; but from the moment
of that event until he awoke as from
troubled dream, memory is perfect
blank. At other times, Instead of shut
ting himself up in solitu lie with his
bottle, he attends to business as usual,
collecting and paying bills, giving and
taking receipts, banking, visiting pa
tients and prescribing for them as
lucidly and correctly as though in his
normal conditiOn-and all this without
exciting a suspicion that he is not in
his proper mind, his conversation being
as consecutive and coherent as ever,
and his manner the same as ordinary.
He continue; in this condition some
times for a whole day, retires to bed,
and wakes up the next morRing with
out the least recollection of the events
of the day before; not even the vague
"reminiscences of a troubled dream re-
naming to mark the period of trance
through which he has so recently
passed.
A farmer, forty-eight years of age,
whose parents were eccentric and
weak-minded, and who had been long
motel for his retiring disposition,
spent his leisure hours in reading
and was very secluded in his habits,
began to drink whisky at the
age of thirty-nine, but so spar
ingly that its effects were never no.
ticed by persons associated with him,
saying that he was perhaps
shade more solitary and reserved than
ever as the years passed by. One day
in the hurry of harvest time he broke
off work abruptly, dressed himself in
his Sunday best, and drove off to make
a call on an unmarried laiy, the daugh-
ter Of neighbor, explaining the un-
wonted event to the young woman by
saying that he was going to be more
social in the future. He was reserved
but courteous in his manner, and lucid
and sensible in his conversation.
During the next week he called in
similar fashion upon several young Ia
dies in the neighborhood, talking
pleasantly and promising to repeat the
visits. These experiences were perfect
blanks of cons ciousnesS to him, and on
awakening from sleep the next morn
ing. while he could recall what took
place in the field up to the moment
when he started for the house, he had
no memory whatever of having gone
thither, dressed, or made the calls,
though he ppoared perfectly conscious
and rational to those upon whom the
calls were made. Nor had he the least
recollection of returning home, unhar-
Messing the horse, and going to bed.
This state of affairs continued for sew
eral years, until, while in one of his
frances he broke his leg and died of the
gangrene consequent upon unskillful
surgery.
A more extraordinary case than any
of the preceding is that of an eminent
lawyer in Hartford, who inherited a
consumptive taint, was nervous and
passionate, but of brilliant talents,
industrious, deyout and
very temperate in all things except |
eating. He began to use whisky after
a severe attack Of typhoid fever and |
drank three years. After a long cam
paign of political speaking, during
which he drank considerably, he sud
denly called for paper, wrote a will,
avowed that he was going to die, dis
posed of all he possessed, retired for
the night and awoke the next morning |
with no recollection of what he had |
done. A week later he repeated this |
t ostamentary farce with great solem-
nitv and during the succeeding two
years he wrote 100 wills, all of sub
stantially the same tenor. After a i
while the aspect of his trance assumed |
the more alarming description of sui ,
cidal impulse, in which he insisted |
that his wife must die with him, and |
with her that, if she loved |
him as devotedly as she professed, she
would be anxious to die at the /
same moment that he did. He was
filed with alarm the next day when
the state of affairs was explained to
him, but this aspect did not occur
acan. On the other hand, it was re-
Pared hy Jealousy of his wife OF more
than "Othello's intons sity, during the
paroxysm of which he dictated an elab-
Orate statement of his wrongs to a