Remarks on the utility and necessity of asylums or retreats for the victims of intemperance.

Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the utility and necessity of asylums or retreats for the victims of intemperance. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    produced it. So it is with many other diseases; one attack in- creases the susceptibility of the system to a second. Yet if the cause be avoided, the disease, in either instance, will never return. Total abstinence from all alcoholic potations is the grand instrument by which this security is effected. To the temperate, it is now considered to afford the only se- curity from the dreaded evil of intemperance. To the intem- perate, the only hope of restoration to health, and respectability, and happiness. By means of total abstinence, and such remedies as the particular symptoms of the case may call for, most cases of intemperance may be radically cured. Many cases of gout, rheumatism, gravel, delirium tremens, will subside, and never return, if total abstinence is rigorously adhered to. Intemperance being a physical evil, and connected with an appetite more imperious than any other to which the human system is incident, it will be obviously most difficult of cure while the subject of it is within the reach of temptation, and while the means of relief are so nearly at hand. Seclusion and restraints are as important in the case of this malady, as in the case of insanity; and it may be said without exaggeration that as many recent cases will be cured—wholly and totally cured—as of recent cases of insanity, or any disease of equal severity. It is somewhat surprising, that amidst all the efforts to advance temperance, and to eradicate the evil of intem- perance, the experiment of an institution to restore those who have persisted in the practice, and will persist in it, in spite of reason, and all inducements that can be presented, has never been tried. Is the benevolent mind satisfied with the saying that the old drunkards will soon die off, and then, if total abstinence prevail universally, there will be none to take their places, and the evil will be ended. If this were true, it still would be an object worthy of serious consideration, whether an effort should not be made to save the present unfortunate race of inebriates. If there are thirty thousand drunkards in this country, and one tenth part are susceptible of cure, it will afford sufficient motives to commence immediately the important work. Doubt-