The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-11-17

the continual exercise of the will power Of
quired self-control under treatment
which helps his exhausted energy of viii
back TO healthy. vigorous action, but there
Is no scientific proof that drunkenness
- disease for which the patient lie no
more responsible than smallpox, or that
it can be permanently eradicated by the
administration Of drugs. Medical treat
ment by tonics il Of great value as help
to lift the mind and body back to its
normal plane of health, but when that Is
done the sufferer must save himself by his
renewed will power. If he cannot do this
no doctor can cure him. Macbeth asks
his wife's doctor:
Cansf thou not minister to mind diseased,
rtuex from tue memory rooted sorrow,
haze out the written troubles OF the brain,
Ana with some sweet obvious antidote
aleaase the STAFF bosom Of that perilous stun
Doct. Therein the patient
Must minister 10 himself.
Shakespeare is right. When the doctors
have done their best to rehabilitate the
sick mind the patient then must minister
unto himself. If he cannot minister unto
himself early and late and keep his will
oraced up by the solemn conviction that
alcoholism is q sin, he may be watched
ana guarded never 80 carefully by his
friends and his physicians all to no pur-
pose against relapse into inebriety. The
New York Tribune truthfully says:
II cannot be. There is no cure for the drink
hnt
habit once formed cannot be exercised by any
spell, or eradicated by any remedy. It stands
az the door so long as life lasts, aud the only
escape from IL is through the constant sense OF
danger and the constant guard
Any other view than this only serves to
relax our care, diminish our sense of re-
sponsibility and dismiss our vigilance.
We should accept all the medical help we
can get from doctors; all the moral and
spiritual encouragement We can get from
our fellow men, but when We have done
all this no salvation is possible except the
man who has burst the letters of the drink
habit be solemnly resolved all through his
waking moments TO save himself, No
two inebriates are exactly alike. Some
men are able to summon strength Of mind
enough to resolve to drink no more
and keep tR resolution, or if
further gone 5 would get their
will restored to its normal strength by
temporary confinement in an asylum, but
there are doubtless others who coald not
do this, would not keep the resolution I'M
til the Uhole man was lifted up by strong
emotion, by q belief that Divine Power
had got hold of them, and would keep
them, and would not let them go. This
emotion il, perhaps, kin to that expert
enced by an honest conversion at relig-
ious meeting, but is not necessarily con-
fined to the converts at revivals.
A lady writes US that she heard of
man, . drunkard, who would bark like
dog when drunk. and after he was ''con-
verted" at revival and gave his heart to
Christ, never drank again. The more we
see of human nature at the average level
the more we are inclined to believe that
strong religious emotion is needed to make
1t try to reform the whole man to the
standard Of Christ. and 1t is safe to say that
it is in the accumulation and unwearied
application of spiritual and moral
tonics rather than medical treatment lies
the best, if not the only, hope of rescue of
the inebriate from his bondage. Help
should be accepted from all sides, but the
chief hope lies in the patients genuine
conviction that his intemperance Is not
merely a deplorable, destructive infirmity,
q disease for which he has small, If any,
personal responsibility, but is a sin, for
the presence of which his ungoverned
habit is primarily responsible. If men of
decent antecedents could be made to feel
the same moral horror of drunkenness that
they have generally for the practice of
theft, few such men would become drunk.
ards.