One fact attendant on incessant drinking stands out so prominently that none can call it in question. There are exceptions, as in the action of virtually each rule ; but the just about invariable result of the habit we have discussed, is, as we have announced, a steady expansion of taste for the stimulant imbibed. But it is to the fact itself, not to its cause, that we now want to direct your attention.
The person who is satisfied at first with a single cup of wine at dinner, uncovers, after awhile, that appetite asks for a touch more ; and, in time, a 2nd glass is conceded.
The rise of need may be awfully slow, but it is going on certainly till, in the end, a complete bottle will scarcely serve with way too many, to meet its imperious demands.
It’s the same per the utilization of each other type of alcoholic drink. Now, there are men so constituted that they are able, for a long series of years, or for a complete lifetime, to hold this appetite inside a certain limit of indulgence.
To assert “So far, and no farther.” They suffer eventually from physical illnesses, which certainly follow the lengthened contact of alcoholic poison with the fragile structures of the body, lots of an agonizing personality, and shorten the term of their natural lives ; but still they can drink without an increase of appetite so great as to reach an overmastering degree.
But no person who starts the utilization of alcohol in any form can tell what, in the final analysis, is going to be its effect on his body or mind.
Thousands and thousands, once completely comatose of danger from this source, go down annual into drunkards’ graves. There’s no standard by which any one can measure the latent malevolent forces in his inherited nature. He might have from ancestors, near or remote, an unhealthy moral inclination, or physical diathesis, to that the peculiarly upsetting influence of alcohol will give the gloomy condition in which it’ll find its disastrous life. That such results follow the utilization of alcohol in a large number of cases, is now a well known fact in the history of inebriation. The topic of alcoholism, with the psychological and moral causes leading thereto, have attracted a large amount of earnest attention. While differences are held on some points, as, for example, whether drunkenness is an illness for which, after it’s been established, the individual ceases to be responsible, and may be subject to restraint and treatment, as for lunacy or fever ; against the law to be punished ; or a sin to be repented of and healed by the Surgeon of souls, all agree that there’s an inherited or bought psychological and frightened condition with many which renders any use of alcohol very deadly.
The point we feel like make with you is, that no person can presumably know, until he has used alcoholic drinks for a certain time period, whether he has or has not this hereditary or bought physical or psychological condition ; and that, if it should exist, a discovery of the fact may come too late. Dodge, late Super of the Big Apple State Inebriate Asylum, talking of the causes leading to intemperance, after saying his faith that it’s a transmissible illness, like “scrofula, gout or consumption,” claims. “There are men who have an organization, that may be named an alcoholic mannerism ; with them the latent need for stimulants, if indulged, shortly leads to habits of intemperance, and finally to a doleful appetite, that has all the features of an ill condition of the system, which the patient, unassisted, is helpless to alleviate since the weakness of the will that led on to the disease obstructs its removal.
“Again, we find in another class of folks, people who have had healthy oldsters, and have been educated and used to good social influences, moral and social, but whose personality and physical constitution are such, that, when they once luxuriate in the employment of stimulants, which they find enjoyable, they continue to habitually indulge until they stop to be moderate, and become over the top drinkers. A depraved appetite is established, that leads them on slowly, but certainly, to destruction.”.