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BY
T. L. WRIGHT, M.D....
The
anaesthetic, the benumbing, the paralyzing influence of alcohol upon the
nervous system, and especially upon common sensation, always darkens
knowledge and misleads the judgment. This follows from the fact that
accurate perceptions are wholly dependent upon definite and normal
sensations. When the senses are disturbed and impaired, perceptions are
correspondingly disturbed and impaired; and they are unable to present to
the mind facts as they truly are, as they really exist in the
surroundings. The fine shadows, and uncertainties and doubts, which
invariably attend all human transactions, escape the notice of a man who
is intoxicated; and being unperceived by him, he imagines they do not
exist. Every thing has, to his mind, the quality and energy of absolute
demonstration. He never hesitates, never doubts....
Not
only is the rational faculty injured by the influence of alcohol,
producing confused, incoherent, and inconsequent ideas and beliefs, but
the moral attributes are debased in an equal degree. The paralysis of
alcohol, although incomplete, fails not to overcome the finer and more
etherial sensibilities, while it leaves the coarser ones comparatively
unaffected....
Nothing
is more common than that men, after drunkenness, are amazed at the
shocking things they have done, or said, or thought, while in a state of
intoxication-indicating the latent state of the moral nature in
drunkenness. But if the inebriation is continuous or nearly so, that is,
if it is habitual, the shooting thoughts do not become the subjects of
rational review; and thus the latency of the moral sense becomes fixed,
and congenial to an unsound and deformed reason. The mind may seem to know
the nature of morality perfectly, but if morality is wanted, 'it will not
come at the call." It is therefore not surprising that steady
drinking, even when not excessive, is more disastrous in the final outcome
than the convulsive sprees of the neurotic inebriate. In the latter, the
intervening seasons of total abstinence prevent the establishment of
habitual disability in the nervous powers; while in the habitual drunkard,
nervous disabilities, latencies and inhibitions be- come perpetual,
insurmountable, in a word, constitutional.
.
. . A gentleman of my acquaintance has been a steady drinker of ardent
spirits for nearly thirty years. His moral nature is latent, if, indeed,
he has any. He is not vicious or malignant, but he is an incessant and
shameless, because motiveless, liar. With great coolness he will invent
stories totally without foundation and on the most trifling subjects,-all
the attendant circumstances and details being of the utmost exactness. And
so he cackles on, and will continue so to do till the end of life.
Now
this seems very foolish indeed, and likewise very inoffensive. But this
man is, in truth, on the verge of insanity. Not only is he morally
bankrupt, but his intellect is both sterile and disordered. Amongst
the great army of the unrecognized insane there are none more common, or
more really dangerous, than the chronic and steady drinkers of ardent
spirits. These men in early life acquired the usual habits, both of
thought and action, that belong to the average citizen. Automatically,
with the guide and hints of the examples of others in their midst, they
manage, without much effort, to keep in the ordinary grooves of daily
life.... But let some supreme crisis intervene, so as suddenly to throw
him upon his own unaided powers; let instant rage or, what is more
consonant with his nerve defect, jealousy, come over his mind and
disposition, he will then be thrown out of the grooves of automatic life
and, acting upon his own true nature, he will herald to the world his real
condition. Then desperation, murder, suicide, true representatives of his
actual mental state, will burst unexpectedly upon the scene. To the great
body of chronic inebriates this crucial test of insanity is never applied;
they live without recognition, and die with their dreadful infirmity
unknown and unsuspected....
(JAMA
1888;1 1:371-374)
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Edited by Elizabeth Knoll, PhD, and
Micaela Sullivan-Fowler, Research Associate, AMA Division of Library and
Information Management.
JAMA,
Sept 23/30,1988—Vol. 260-No.12
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