The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1894-10-13
ALCOHOLISM A DISEASE.
Col. LIE Gage Pratt Lectures and
Shows That it is Not
ALTOGETHER A MORAL VICE.
The Lecturer Gives His Own Personal
Testimony and many Other In.
stances Of Reform Brought
about by the Kelley Insti-
ALTOGETHER A MORAL VICE.

Il az N11A AN6AtAl anu 1AAn& hbOu. AdAhtAl
on the subjects of Alcoholism and
the cure at Academy Hall Monday
night. There was not a large aa-
dience present, owing to meager an
nouncement of the event. but those
who were there were edited and en-
tertained by the presentation of q
subject of which many sides NAV
perhaps have been familiar and as
many were not.
Col. Pratt announced in opening
that it had been his intention to ar
que the matter from scientific
standpoint, but would defer that
phase of the question to subsequent
visit which he hopes to make, and
would confne himself solely to the
Kelley treatment.
He said that there are two kinds
of drinkers, the habitual and the
periodical. The regular drinker is
the one who takes stimulants every
day, thus creating an artificial ner
yous system which after time re
quires so much alcohol all the time
to prevent collapse, which is sure to
finally undermine the entire consti.
tuition. The periodical drinker is the
one who drinks all the alcohol he can
get for time, until the nerve cells
become overcharged with the poison
(alcohol) and then he is very sick
for time and VOWS never to have to
go through that experience again,
with period of sobriety ensuing for
probably one, two, six months or a
year, when the horrible operation is
repeated. The periodical drinker
will consume, he said, more whisky
IN a day than the regular will in
week, but the regulars quantity in
a year was many times over more
than the periodicals..
He said that he drank regularly
for % years. In 1885 he first found
that he was a slave TO the habit and
made his first honest and sincere eff
fort to quit He did nearly every
thing that a man can do to quit, had
all the spiritual influence to check
him, but the appetite was stronger
than these and in two years he was
satisfied that he was a moral wreck,
and he gave up his home and friends
and business associations and went
to Texas with the hope that be could
overcome the habit. There he took
ill-the illness being superindueed
by the drink habit and for five months
he was in "a hospital and underwent
an enforced sobriety He came out
and was determined to not take
drink, but in journey of mile to
his hotel he got drunk. In those
days inebriety was not classed as
disease, being looked upon merely as
a moral vice He found in his case
that through long drinking, nature
had refused to perform its functions
aud depended upon artificial susten-
ance, He was much discouraged
and returned to Chicago and entered
the Washington Home, where moral
suasion and other influences are
brought to bear to cute man, and
after six months sobriety when he
left that institution he Immediately
proceeded to get drunk again and
the condition kept up for many
months until he was taken to the
Kelley cure. He did not care to go
as he had before felt safe at other in
situations, but the old demand would
regularly recur His going to the
Kelley was providential, for he was
very close to complete loss of mind
and the asylum would very soon
have been entered had he not consen
ted to take the Kelley cure. Every
thing else had failed to rob him of
the desire and demand for stimu-
lants. He went to Dwight, with no
faith. He was there four weeks and
from that time to the present g
years. he has been on the threshold
of new life, with not shadow nor
suggestion of demand or desire for
alcoholic stimulation. Time and
again since that time he would have
drunk had he not been a cured man,
that is, he had been placed in posi-
lions where before taking treatment
it would have been impossible to re-
sist.
Col. Pratt said that no man takes
the Kelley cure till be is a diseased
man-one having the desire of alco-
holism. Keeleyites are all proud of
having made men of themselves. OF
the 100000 Keeleyites there had been
but per cent of relapses. 1t is the
finer species of men, who have con
tracted the drinking habit, good men,
who are in every way right except
for the habit, who take the cure The
gutter drunkard dom want to change
his condition, and it is of these, of
men who have no ambition even when
sober, who are morally deficient at
the best of times, who make up the
ranks of relapsers. But "for the men
who do take it to rid themselves of
the enslavipg powers of strong drink
it is the greatest blessing to mankind
since the coming of Christ" Con-
tinuing he said:
Il do not propose to go into any
physiological or pathological discus
sion of the effects of alcohol upon the
human system-but will in few
words try to make it plain that the
habitual use Of alcohol Cor narcotics
will produce disease One
might as well deny that alcohol is a
poison as to deny that it will not pro
duce disease. This is no longer de
MED.
ut seems strange, however, that
it should have SO long been classed
as only a moral vice-and unworthy
of the attention of the medical pro-
fession
For ages it has been known that
excuses of any kind would produce
disease And for very many years
the medical profession have recog
nized that nearly all diseases are the
result of some poison which has in
some way been absorbed into the sys-
tem-but alcoholic poisoning has
had to stay out in the cold, chained
to the great catalogue of moral vices
and hut little effort has been made
to treat it scientifically.
Now, to make it plain that aco
holism is disease, let me explain
that the habitual use of alcohol has
q most disastrous effect upon nearly,
il not all. the vital functions of the
body, working the greatest destruc-