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Show : Why the Steady DRINKER Is Said to Be NEVER SANE 1 ( a VB.B steady drinker Is never fully sane. There are I thousands of steady drinkers who walk and work J- among us every day (for a while but seldom for many years), who will declare this is all nonsense, ) that they are quite as bright and intellectual as tho man j who is not a steady drinker. I Dr. T, D'. Crothers, superintendent of the Walnut I Lodge Hospital, Hartford, Conn., with other authorities on alcoholic poisoning, declares that an alcoholic Is , never absolutely sane. By an alcoholic he means a man who is a steady drinker, a man who drinks constantly, every day, who never, or at least seldom Is intoxicated, . and who makes his boast that it does not hurt him, and that ho can do as good work as any man. ! Such a man is constantly gathering poisons that form ! from within and without The constant drinking forms !' a steady degree of thiB poisoning and a derangoment of i the nerves which breaks out in some acute disease. '! In addition to this, Dr. Crothers declares that tho ! steady drinker is degenerate. Even the steady drinker doeB not always realize this, and the publlo is seldom j aware of it, because It is something that is always hld- den. The alcoholic deviates from tho normal, ho Is abnormal ab-normal in many ways, ho lacks control of himself In many ways, and his organic vigor is enfeebled. The confirmed alcoholic or steady drinker, according to Dr. Crothers, may seem to have average capacity, yet in some thingB he has a weakness bordering almost on imbecility. A steady drinker may bo performing professional pro-fessional work that seems of a high grade, but there is connected with it tho moral' palsy and sexual Insanity of one plainly demented, yet he Is known only by his professional work, and therefore the actual horrors of alcoholism are kept covered up. There was, and among many there Is to-day, a belief that alcohol is a stimulant and a tonic possessed of some power to give force to the cells and functional ability, but this Is only a tradition. Studies of exact science in the laboratory show that alcohol is an anos-thetic, anos-thetic, a depressant and a narcotic, and that its first eftects on the sensory centres are to diminish their acuteness and pervert their activity. t is in this way that alcohol deludes its victims with idjse consciousness ways be contradicted it properly tested with lust ments. The first effect of sending the blood to the hi and surging through the brain with increased velofl is not increased vigor, but increased irritation wi comes just before anesthesia and diminution of now Tho drinker is thus deceived. t Pneumonia, nephritis and oerebral hemorrhage I all common, and fatal, results of prolonged alcohol! or steady drinking. The drink Impulse 13 like epllej In the sudden, conculslve, impetuous and overwhelm; desire of the victim to secure the narcotic which i drink offers. As this Is continued It becomes a dlsea and Is recognized as such among medical modi day. The steady drinker Is just as much a victim ol disease as Is tho Inmato of an asylum. -I Many of tho extreme characters In history wore at holies; anarchiBtB, revolutionists and such people, a their extraordinary reasonings, are held by the mo2! experts as proof that alcoholism is a form of inEaul that the steady drinker Is never fully sane. j Just as certain disoases devour or destroy the c3 so alcohol poisoning produces a condition which ca for a return of the same toxin, or poison, and thlaj i whero the victim ceases to be normal. Horedity U 1 powerful factor. Just as insano parents, while I , handing actual insanity down to their children, do 1 queath to them a body that Is unprepared to resist; sane tendencies, so do alcoholic parents leave to thi children a weakened body that craves stimulant, i such children easily become alcoholics if they are, lowed to use intoxicants. i Alcohol is one o the most far-reaching and subi poisons known. Dr. Crothers declares that more 81 pension of the craze for spirits is by no means a cu Insane patients are frequently discharged from asylu? because they appear to be quite normal, yet it is ss iugly the rule instead of tho oxceptlon that such pooj become Insane again and havo to be taken back. T are not actually cured; there is merely a period they seem normal. .J For forty years Dr. Crothers has studied alcohol! and he declares" that only by the greatest caution aJ care in living a clean life physically and U10nyfv victims of alcohol obtain a euro. In fact ho holds U it Is quite as difficult to cure an alcoholic as it is to civ a person suffering from some other form of insanity.. With proper care and treatment and proper asp on the paxt of the victims themselves, Dr. Crotna thinks that fully half of the steady drinkers &5nt. cured. Considering the advances of medlcmo to-day, v ability to cure only GO per cent is evidence of the gra nature of alcohol poisoning, and of tho peculiar form insanity It really brings on. He estimates that there a. more than a quarter of a million alcoholics In wsai, known as the chronic class, that receive little or J treatment This Is because thoy do not realize that they m really abnormal. But neither does the average lnsJ man believe he la mentally deficient, 4 J it |