The transforming power or alcohol is marvelous, and often appalling. It seems to open a way of entrance into the soul for all classes of foolish, insane or malignant spirits, who, so long as it remains in contact with the brain, can hold possession. Men of the kindest nature when sober, act often like fiends when drunk. Crimes and outrages are committed, which shock and shame the perpetrators when the excitement of inebriation has passed away. Referring to this subject, Dr. Henry Munroe says:
"It appears from
the experience of Mr. Fletcher, who has paid much attention to the cases of
drunkards, from the remarks of Mr. Dunn, in his 'Medical Psychology,' and from
observations of my own, that there is some analogy between our physical and psychical
natures, for, as the physical part of us, when its power is at a low ebb,
becomes susceptible of morbid influences which, in full vigor, would pass over
it without effect, so when the psychical (synonymous with the moral ) part of the brain has its healthy
function disturbed and deranged by the introduction of a morbid poison like
alcohol, the individual so circumstanced sinks in depravity, and "becomes
the helpless subject of the forces of evil, "which are powerless against a
nature free from the morbid influences of alcohol."
Different persons are
affected in different ways by the same poison. Indulgence in alcoholic drinks
may act upon one or more of the cerebral organs, and, as its necessary
consequence, the manifestations of functional disturbance will follow in such
of the mental powers as these organs subserve. If the indulgence is continued,
then, either from deranged nutrition or organic lesion, manifestations formerly
developed only during a fit of intoxication may become permanent, and terminate
in insanity or dipso-mania. M. Flourens first pointed out the fact that certain
morbific agents, when introduced into the current of the circulation, tend to
act primarily and especially on one nervous center in preference to that of
another, by some special elective affinity between such morbific agents and
certain ganglia. Thus, in the tottering gait of the tipsy man, we see the
influence of alcohol upon the functions of the cerebellum in the impairment of
its power of co-ordinating the muscles.
Certain writers on
diseases of the mind make especial allusion to that form of insanity termed 'dipsomania',
in which a person has an unquenchable thirst for alcoholic drinks a tendency as
decidedly maniacal as that of homicidal mania or the uncontrollable desire to
burn, termed pyromania or to steal called kleptomania.
Homicidal mania.
---------------
The different tendencies
of homicidal mania in different individuals are often only nursed into action
when the current of the blood has been poisoned with alcohol. I had a case of a
person who, whenever his brain was so excited, told me that he experienced a
most uncontrollable desire to kill or injure someone that he could at times
hardly restrain himself from the action, and was obliged to refrain from all
stimulants, lest, in an unlucky moment, he might commit himself. Townley, who
murdered the young lady of his affections, for which he was sentenced to be
imprisoned in a lunatic asylum for life,
poisoned his brain with brandy and soda-water before he committed the
rash act. The brandy stimulated into action certain portions of the brain,
which acquired such a power as to subjugate his will and hurry him to the
performance of a frightful deed, opposed alike to his better judgment and his
ordinary desires.
As to pyromania, some
years ago I knew a laboring man in a country village who whenever he had a few
glasses of ale at the public-house, would chuckle with delight at the thought
of firing certain gentlemen's stacks. Yet, when his brain was free from the
poison, a quieter, better-disposed man could not be. Unfortunately, he became
addicted to habits of intoxication and, one night, under alcoholic excitement,
fired some stacks belonging to his employers, for which, he was sentenced for
fifteen years to a penal settlement, where his brain would never again be
alcoholically excited.
Kleptomania.
-----------
Next, I will give an
example of kleptomania. I knew, many years ago, a very clever, industrious and talented
young man, who told me that whenever he had been drinking, he could hardly
withstand, the temptation of stealing anything that came in his way but that
these feelings never troubled him at other times. One afternoon, after he had
been indulging with his fellow-workmen in drink, his will, unfortunately, was
overpowered, and he took from the mansion where he was working some articles of
worth, for which he was accused, and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment.
When set at liberty he had the good fortune to be placed among some
kind-hearted persons, vulgarly called teetotallers and, from conscientious
motives, signed the PLEDGE, now above twenty years ago. From that time to the
present moment he has never experienced the overmastering desire which so often
beset him in his drinking days to take that which was not his own. Moreover, no
pretext on earth could now entice him to taste of any liquor containing
alcohol, feeling that, under its influence, he might again fall its victim. He
holds an influential position in the town where he resides.
I have known some ladies
of good position in society, who, after a dinner or supper-party, and after
having taken sundry glasses of wine, could not withstand the temptation of
taking home any little article not their own, when the opportunity offered; and
who, in their sober moments, have returned them, as if taken by mistake. We
have many instances recorded in our police reports of gentlemen of position,
under the influence of drink, committing thefts of the most paltry articles and
later returned to the owners by their friends, which can only be accounted for,
psychologically, by the fact that the will had been for the time completely
overpowered by the subtle influence of alcohol.
Loss of mental
clearness.
------------------------
Alcohol, whether taken
in large or small doses, immediately disturbs the natural functions of the mind
and body, is now conceded by the most eminent physiologists. Dr. Brinton says:
'Mental acuteness, the accuracy of conception, and delicacy of the senses, are
all so far opposed by the action of alcohol, as that the maximum efforts of
each are incompatible with the ingestion of any moderate quantity of fermented
liquid. Indeed, there is scarcely any calling which demands skillful and exact
effort of mind and body, or which requires the balanced exercise of many
faculties, that does not illustrate this rule. The mathematician, the gambler,
the metaphysician, the billiard-player, the author, the artist, the physician,
would, if they could analyze their experience aright, generally concur in the
statement, that a single glass will often suffice to take, so to speak, the edge of both mind and body, and to reduce
their capacity to something below what is relatively their perfection of work.
A train was driven
carelessly into one of the principal London stations, running into another
train, killing, by the collision, six or seven persons, and injuring many
others. From the evidence at the inquest, it appeared that the guard was
reckoned sober, only he had had two glasses of ale with a friend at a previous
station. Now, reasoning psychologically, these two glasses of ale had probably
been instrumental in taking off the edge from his perceptions and prudence and
producing a carelessness or boldness of action which would not have occurred
under the cooling, temperate influence of a beverage free from alcohol. Many
persons have admitted to me that they were not the same after taking even one
glass of ale or wine that they were before, and could not thoroughly trust
themselves after they had taken this single glass.
Impairment of memory.
---------------------
An impairment of the
memory is among the early symptoms of alcoholic derangement.
"This," says
Dr. Richardson, "extends even to forgetfulness of the commonest things; to
names of familiar persons, to dates, to duties of daily life. Strangely,
too," he adds, "this failure, like that which indicates, in the aged,
the era of second childishness and mere oblivion, does not extend to the things
of the past, but is confined to events that are passing. On old memories the
mind retains its power; on new ones it requires constant prompting and
sustainment."
In this failure of
memory nature gives a solemn warning that imminent peril is at hand. Well for
the habitual drinker if he heeds the warning. Should he not do so, symptoms of
a more serious character will, in time, develop themselves, as the brain
becomes more and more diseased, ending, it may be, in permanent insanity.
Mental and moral
diseases.
--------------------------
Of the mental and moral
diseases which too often follow the regular drinking of alcohol, we have
painful records in asylum reports, medical testimony and our daily observation
and experience. These are so full and varied and thrust so constantly on our
attention, that the wonder is that men are not afraid to run the terrible risks
involved even in what is called the moderate use of alcoholic beverages.
In 1872, a select
committee of the House of Commons, appointed "to consider the best plan
for the control and management of habitual drunkards," called upon some of
the most eminent medical men in Great Britain to give their testimony in answer
to a large number of questions, embracing every topic within the range of
inquiry, from the pathology of inebriation to the practical usefulness of
prohibitory laws. In this testimony much was said about the effect of alcoholic
stimulation on the mental condition and moral character. One physician, Dr.
James Crichton Brown, who, in ten years' experience as superintendent of
lunatic asylums, has paid special attention to the relations of habitual
drunkenness to insanity, having carefully examined five hundred cases,
testified that alcohol, taken in excess, produced different forms of mental
disease, of which he mentioned four classes: 1.
Mania a potu, or alcoholic mania. 2. The monomania of suspicion. 3.
Chronic alcoholism, characterized by failure of the memory and power of judgment,
with partial paralysis generally ending fatally. 4. Dipsomania, or an
irresistible craving for alcoholic stimulants, occurring very frequently,
paroxysmally, and with constant liability to periodical exacerbations, when the
craving becomes altogether uncontrollable. Of this latter form of the disease,
he says: "This is invariably associated with a certain impairment of the intellect, and the
affections and the moral powers ."
Dr. Alexander Peddie, a
physician of over thirty-seven years' practice in Edinburgh, gave, in his
evidence, many remarkable instances of the moral perversions that followed
continued drinking.
Relation between
insanity and drunkenness.
-----------------------------------------
Dr. John Nugent said
that his experience of twenty-six years among lunatics led him to believe that
there is a very close relationship between the results of the abuse of alcohol
and insanity. The population of Ireland had decreased, he said, two million in
twenty-five years, but there was the same amount of insanity now that there was
before. He attributed this, in a great measure, to indulgence in drink.
Dr. Arthur Mitchell,
Commissioner of Lunacy for Scotland, testified that the excessive use of
alcohol caused a large amount of the lunacy, crime and pauperism of that
country. In some men, he said, habitual drinking leads to other diseases than
insanity because the effect is always in the direction of the proclivity, but there
certainly are many in whom there is a clear proclivity to insanity, who would escape that dreadful consummation
but for drinking; excessive drinking in many persons determining the insanity
to which they are, at any rate, predisposed. The children of drunkards, he
further said, are in a larger proportion idiotic than other children, and in a
larger proportion become themselves drunkards; they are also in a larger
proportion liable to the ordinary forms of acquired insanity.
Dr. Winslow Forbes
believed that in the habitual drunkard the whole nervous structure, and the
brain especially, became poisoned by alcohol. All the mental symptoms which you
see accompanying ordinary intoxication, he remarks, result from the poisonous
effects of alcohol on the brain. It is the brain that is mainly affected. In
temporary drunkenness, the brain becomes in an abnormal state of alimentation,
and if this habit is persisted in for years, the nervous tissue itself becomes
permeated with alcohol, and organic changes take place in the nervous tissues
of the brain, producing that frightful and dreadful chronic insanity which we
see in lunatic asylums, traceable entirely to habits of intoxication. A large
percentage of frightful mental and brain disturbances can, he declared, be
traced to the drunkenness of parents.
Dr. D.G. Dodge, late of
the New York State Inebriate Asylum, who, with. Dr. Joseph Parrish gave
testimony before the committee of the House of Commons, said, in one of his
answers: "With the excessive use of alcohol, the functional disorder will
invariably appear, and no organ will be more seriously affected, and possibly
impaired, than the brain. This is shown
in the inebriate by a weakened intellect, a general debility of the mental
faculties, a partial or total loss of self-respect, and a departure of the
power of self-command; all of which, acting together, place the victim at the
mercy of a depraved and morbid appetite, and make him utterly powerless, by his
unaided efforts, to secure his recovery from the disease which is destroying
him." And he adds: "I am of opinion that there is a "great
similarity between inebriety and insanity.
"I am decidedly of
opinion that the former has taken its place in the family of diseases as
prominently as its twin-brother insanity; and, in my opinion, the day is not
far distant when the pathology of the former will be as fully understood and as
successfully treated as the latter, and even more successfully, since it is
more within the reach and bounds of human control, which, wisely exercised and
scientifically administered, may prevent curable inebriation from verging into
possible incurable insanity."
General impairment of
the faculties.
-----------------------------------
Dr. Richardson, speaking
of the action of alcohol on the mind, gives the following sad picture of its
ravages:
"An analysis of the
condition of the mind induced and maintained by the free daily use of alcohol
as a drink, reveals a singular order of facts. The manifestation fails
altogether to reveal the exaltation of any reasoning power in a useful or
satisfactory direction. I have never met with an instance in which such a claim
for alcohol has been made. On the contrary, confirmed alcoholics constantly say
that for this or that work, requiring thought and attention, it is necessary to
forego some of the usual potations order to have a cool head for hard work.
"On the other side,
the experience is overwhelmingly in favor of the observation that the use of
"alcohol sells the reasoning powers, "make weak men and women the
easy prey of the wicked and strong, and leads men and women who should know
better into every grade of misery and vice. If, then, alcohol enfeebles the
reason, what part of the mental constitution does it exalt and excite? It
excites and exalts those animal, organic, emotional centers of mind which, in
the dual nature of man, so often cross and oppose that pure and abstract
reasoning nature which lifts man above the lower animals and rightly exercised,
little lower than the angels.
It excites man's worst
passions.
--------------------------------
Exciting these animal
centers, it lets loose all the passions and gives them more or less of
unlicensed dominion over the man. It excites anger, and when it does not lead
to this extreme, it keeps the mind fretful, irritable, dissatisfied and
captious... And if I were to take you through all the passions, love, hate,
lust, envy, avarice and pride, I should but show you that alcohol ministers to
them all; that, paralyzing the reason, it takes from off these passions that
fine adjustment of reason, which places man above the lower animals. From the
beginning to the end of its influence it subdues reason and sets the passions
free. The analogies, physical and mental, are perfect. That which loosens the
tension of the vessels which feed the body with due order and precision, and,
thereby, lets loose the heart to violent excess and unbridled motion, loosens,
also, the reason and lets loose the passion. In both instances, the heart and
head are, for a time, out of harmony; their balance broken. The man descends
closer and closer to the lower animals. From the angels he glides farther and
farther away.
A sad and terrible
picture.
---------------------------
The destructive effects
of alcohol on the human mind present, finally, the saddest picture of its
influence. The most aesthetic artist can find no angel here. All is animal, and
animal of the worst type. Memory irretrievably lost, words and very elements of
speech forgotten or words displaced to have no meaning in them. Rage and anger
persistent and mischievous, or remittent and impotent. Fear at every corner of
life, distrust on every side, grief merged into blank despair, hopelessness
into permanent melancholy. Surely no Pandemonium that ever poet dreamt of could
equal that which would exist if all the drunkards of the world were driven into
one mortal sphere.
As I have moved among
those who are physically stricken with alcohol and have detected under the
various disguises of name the fatal diseases, the pains and penalties it
imposes on the body, the picture has been sufficiently cruel. But even that
picture pales, as I conjure up, without any stretch of the imagination, the
devastations which the same agent inflicts on the mind. Forty per cent., the
learned Superintendent of Colney Hatch, Dr. Sheppard, tells us, of those who
were brought into that asylum in 1876, were so brought because of the direct or
indirect effects of alcohol. If the facts of all the asylums were collected
with equal care, the same tale would, I fear, be told. What need we further to
show the destructive action on the human mind? The Pandemonium of drunkards;
the grand transformation scene of that pantomime of drink which commences with,
moderation! Let it never more be forgotten by those who love their fellow-men
until, through their efforts, it is closed forever."