ABSTRACT
The habit of drinking to intoxication is partly a vice, and partly a disease. Drunkenness, as a vice, is very old indeed; it seems to have always existed wherever the materials were accessible. Drunkenness as a disease, inebriety, has been recognized but, and it appears to be especially and increasingly frequent in this country. The periodicity of inebriety is fully as marked as that of neuralgia. The phenomena of the nervous system, like those of the heavenly bodies, move in cycles; one can predict the coming on of an attack of neuralgia or inebriety with almost as much precision as the astronomer calculates an eclipse of the sun, or the transit of Venus. Inebriety has been especially observed in America, because, like other nerve maladies, it is especially frequent. It is for this reason mainly that asylums for inebriates were first organized in this country. England, however, is feeling the same need, and is beginning to follow our example.
