CURE OF DRUNKENNESS.
Ir is impossible to mistake the character of the Temperance move- ment, which not only belongs to Great Britain, but appears in a much more energetic form in distant countries, particularly to the North. We see the Swedish people demanding of its Government rigorous statutory law to suppress the manufacture of spirituous liquors from cereals, and the King respondine.° in words which, although they do not pledge the Legislature to the law demanded, attest the sympathy with the claim. The State of Maine in America has adopted a law which practically suppresses the sale of liquors except in the wholesale form ; thus permitting the con- sumption only in private families, the retail distribution being im- peded by the prohibition of purchase in small quantities. How the law works we do not know; it is impossible to suppose that it is not extensively evaded; but we do know that other States are agitating for the enactment of a similar law. "The Maine Liquor Law " is the cry of Teetotallers in various parts of the Union. In our own country, the Teetotaller and Temperance parties have not yet obtained anything like a state recognition ; on the contrary, with individual exceptions, they are principally limited to the humbler section of the middle classes : but they are numerous, and it is probable that the virtue which those two sections of re- formers inculcate is also the object of assiduous labours in other quarters that do not formally join the association. We observed not long since an advertisement in the papers offering a reward on statement of a remedy for drunkenness ; a confession of the preva- lent evil, which also comes out in the complaint of the Australian colonists that so many ships are ill-managed or imperilled by the vice amongst the masters and men. There is some reason to be- lieve that intoxication does not prevail so extensively in England as it did in generations not long since past ; but it still prevails to far too great an extent; and its prevalence in the United States and in the extreme North of Europe is attested by the extensive and at the same time somewhat violent measures taken for its sup- pression. Now it is not easy to suppose that mankind at large can be weaned from the use of those exhilarating beverages which are in fact more habitually consumed in countries nearer the Equator, and the use of which does not produce the same habitual drunken- ness in those more genial countries. It is not easy to imagine that the Italian peninsula or any other Mediterranean country can be weaned from the use of wine, because the people of Munich abuse the native beer, or the people of Sweden cannot restrain themselves from corn-brandy. The use of various drinks appears to be more ex- tensive geographically than the abuse ; and the vice which is partial will seek its partial remedies. Perhaps the Maine Liquor Law may be necessary in Maine, and it may be sustained in that State as long as it is necessary. New England has distinguished itself by prohibitory laws ; but we very much doubt whether the modern statute-book can show that those prohibitions have been immortal. Again, as a temporary law, a statutory check upon the conversion of grain into spirit may be useful to Sweden and its people : the people collectively demand it, and the demand must be instigated by some very urgent want which seeks its own direct and natural satisfaction; but it does not follow that the want of Sweden is the want of mankind. The grand object would appear to be, to dis- cover such a check upon intoxication as would correct it without imposing wanton restrictions upon those who are not inclined to the vice. In this country, however widely extended, drunkenness is the vice of individuals rather than classes. You can scarcely point to any one section of the population and say, that is a drunken class. The most you can say is, that drunken individuals are common in particular classes. With the far greater number the probability is, that the increase of education, and especially of practically applied knowledge, will be the wholesome check to the abuse. Few men with the average amount of natural sense would seek disease by putting the enemy into their mouths, if their education enabled them to associate the idea of disease with the act, which appears at present simply to be one of immediate gratification. There is a remarkable capacity in the human mind for conceiving dislike where there is any very distinct moral reprobation ; a faculty ex- hibited in eases where such a thing as a distinct surfeit has re- suited from the abuse of some particular viand, the viand being subsequently the object of absolute revulsion. There still would remain, perhaps, though diminished in number, eases of individual depravity which appear to defy correction : and this is the crying evil. The social abuse of exhilarating drinks has been very largely corrected since the time when it was the custom of society to finish the evening under the table ; but there does not appear to be a cor- responding progress in checking that aberrant appetite for stimu- lants which has in it nothing convivial, but much that is miser- able, and which appears almost to transcend the will of the indi- vidual to control it.
The remedy for this extreme evil would naturally arise in a country familiar with intoxication ; and it is from Sweden that the most practical suggestion comes. Many remedies have been tried for that form of insanity which exhibits itself in the un- controllable appetite for alcoholic stimulants ; but we are not aware of any that has had general success, except the one alluded to ; and that, from its nature, has been capable of application only in the military hospitals, where it originated, and perhaps in prisons and other places under an absolute control. The process may be easily described. We will suppose that the liquor which the pa- tient is addicted to drinking is the commonest in the country—say gin. When he enters the hospital for treatment, he is supplied with his favourite drink, and with no other ; if anything else is given to him, or any other food, it is flavoured with gin. He is in heaven—the very atmosphere is redolent of his favourite perfume ! His room is scented with gin ; his bed, his clothes, everything around him ; every mouthful he eats or drinks, everything he touches ; • every zephyr that steals into his room brings to him still gin. He begins to grow tired of it—begins rather to wish for something else—begins to find the oppression intolerable—hates it —cannot bear the sight or scent of it ; longs for emancipation, and is at last emancipated : he issues into the fresh air a cured man ; dreading nothing so much as a return of that loathed persecutor which would not leave him an hour's rest in his confinement. This remedy appears to have beenhoroughly effectual—so effectual, that persons who deplored their uncontrollable propensity have petitioned for admission to the hospital in order to be cured ; and they have been cured.
A question has been raised in this country in private practice, whether the same remedial treatment could not be resorted to.. The case of Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre is by no means solitary, although perhaps caricatured in some of its incidents, and although of course the domestic calamity which is exposed in that book is usually concealed. That trusty adviser the medical man is usually the person consulted ; and in some instances he has been asked to try the effect of the Swedish plan. Of course it has not been pos- sible to carry out such a method; nor, we suppose, would any medical man risk his reputation in commencing the trial of it. It is sometimes not difficult to procure the consent of a patient to such a process, however appalling it may look ; the desire, for re- form frequently being almost as strong as the propensity. But in such a process, the trial becomes intolerable, and the patient would inevitably " bolt" if the door were not closed upon him. But how can a private practitioner keep a patient in restraint ? There is no doubt that in most cases the patient is as much the subject of an insane cerebral depravity as any other maniac, and is as properly a lunatic. But unless Lord St. Leonards's new bills for the custody and treatment of lunatics were made to contain a clause authorizing the detention of monomaniacs of this class, no medical practitioner could carry out the process. Of course it would be impossible to authorize private practitioners to exercise such an authority. At best, the authority would be conferred under proper supervision and proper checks for securing the assent of the patient himself, in asylums under public authority. But perhaps scientific opinion will re- quire some further time to mature a distinct recognition of this malady as a form of insanity, before the lawyers can be called upon to arrange for the hospital treatment of the patient under the authority requisite for the development of the entire process. Meanwhile, it will be interesting for those who are at present somewhat blindly acting against the vice in question, to survey the operation of statutes like the Maine Liquor Law, or that which the Swedish people are begging of their Government, in conjunc- tion with some more specific remedies, such as that which we understand to have been carried on successfully for some time in the military hospitals of Sweden.
Previous page
