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Show TREATING ALCOHOLISM AS A DISEASE. In our front page we copied, last week, from the Literary Digest an article on alcoholism- The writer, presumedly a doctor, gave his lay readers to understand that, after fifty years of experimentation, experimen-tation, wrangling, vituperation and endless discussion discus-sion the doctors have not yet come to an agreement agree-ment touching the therapeutic properties of alcohol al-cohol or its effect on diseased conditions of the heart when administered in small doses. At last the profession has arrived at an almost unanimous verdict that the drunkard and the periodic "spree-er" "spree-er" are suffering from an almost incurable disease. From Great Britain there comes a very interesting interest-ing report by Dr. Braithwaite, inspector under the British Inebriates' Act. The document clearly ! proves that the official and the scientific views and the opinions of men of common sense on drunken-I drunken-I ness agree in regarding the victim as a diseased person per-son and not as a criminal. With us the drunkard is legally a criminal and municipalities treat him as such. One of the points on which Dr. Braithwaite Braith-waite insists will hardly be welcomed by prohibition prohibi-tion orators as its tendency is to weaken the force of one of their stock arguments. That poverty, disease and mental instability are largely to be attributed at-tributed to drunkenness is a favorite text for temperance tem-perance sermons. Dr. Braithwaite is of the opinion that heavy drinking is not so much the cause of these conditions as their effect. It is often both, but more frequently the latter. This position is in harmony with the contention that drunkenness is itself a disease. Worry, care, disappointment, sleeplessness, sleep-lessness, chronic indigestion, failure in expectations, expecta-tions, sorrow and melancholy conspire to drag a man down, to produce nervous degeneration and a condition con-dition of the system leading to recklessness, to stimulants or narcotics. After a man has met with a great humiliation or has failed in his business or profession, bis temptation to drown thought in drink is very strong, and when poverty becomes the companion of weakened mentality, drunkenness is very often inevitable. Very likely in an earlier period per-iod in our social and commercial development conviviality con-viviality was more often a cause than an effect of failure in life. Then tippling was fashionable, it was in fact a social custom and almost universal, and a man might become a slave to the habit before his friends noticed anything very wrong. Today when total abstinence or at least moderation is an absolute essential to success in business or the professions a mair can hardly make the first step without scandalizing his friends 'or damaging his prospects. To be drunk, or rather to be seen drunk, is to be disgraced, and stern and earnest will be the protests and warnings that employers or friends j will utter.. Thanks. to this public and private sentiment sen-timent thousands are saved who, in earlier days, would be permittee! to go on till salvation became impossible. In discussing Dr. Braithwaite's report the medical experts of Great Britain think it is not wise to push the arguments on cause and effect to extremes. That is to say, it would be just as absurd ab-surd to consider every man who gets drunk as an interesting invalid as it is to treat every case as a crime. This is also the common sense view, and it is so obvious that it should hardly need to be pointed point-ed out. However, we have far to go before we are in danger of erring in maudlin sympathy for the inebriate. We continue to send him to jail, and thus help in his degradation. Hifl Immediate relatives rela-tives abuse him shamefully or bis wife, if he be a married man, attacks him with words indurated to stony hardness, in the morning when hl3 iieTve are on edge after a night's hard drinking, and when he feels miserably "played out" and is tempted tempt-ed to suicide. This treatment is as inhuman as it is unwise. If criminal history records any oaso of a drunkard who was cured of his habits and made a better man by a month's, imprisonment and a month's cdntact with criminals of all sorts we hav not heard of it. Whether the taint of alcoholism can be passed down from generation to generation is a subject on which scientists and specialists differ. dif-fer. Precise knowledge on this question should be valuable. If a craving for stimulants may be inherited, in-herited, there is surely no time to be wasted if wp are to grapple with the problem. In the opinion of the English expert, Dr. Braithwaite, the children of alcoholic parents very often inherit a derange.! nervous system that is apt to quickly break down under strain. This may constitute a predisposition predisposi-tion toward the formation of drinking habits, even if it cannot be said to be a craving. Dr. Braith waite notes that in British reformatories, the proportion pro-portion of women inebriates is much greater than men. In fact there were 1503 females in the reformatories re-formatories to 210 men, and the inspector has n. 'doubt that women are more susceptible to alcoholic temptation and yield at an earlier age. There can be no doubt at all that among wom?n drunkenness is the result and not the primary cause of their degradation. They sound depths of shame never reached by man, and being, as a rule, of a less robust and vigorous temperament, they frel more keenly the need of an anodyne. Moreover, they have aches and pains and petty worries to which man is a stranger, and our social code insist-that insist-that a woman once fallen can never rehabilitate herself. It is not, therefore, a matter for surpri-e that, among men and women who drink at all. the proportion of women drunkards should be what the figures from Great Britain indicate. It is a fortunate for-tunate thing and a blessing for the sex that in the United States the practice of men. and women drinking together in public places is condemned I by public opinion, and forbidden by law in many I municipalities. I . . |