Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

be gained by the change, except "to become loaded with fat, the chin double, the eye prominent, and the whole face bloated and stupid. The circulation is clogged, while the pulse feels like a cord, and is full and labouring, but not quick. During sleep the breathing is stentorious. Every thing indicates an excess of blood; and when a pound or two is taken away, immense relief is obtained. The blood, in such cases, is dark and sizy. In seven cases out of ten, malt-liquor drunkards die of apoplexy or palsy. If they escape this hazard, swelled liver or dropsy carries them off."

The wine drunkard, lays the flattering unction to his soul, that in consequence of his drinking a liquor dedicated to the gods, and the chosen beverage of the rich and the great, he may be able to escape the penalty of intemperance, whereas the only difference between him and the brandy drinker is, that his poison is a little slower but not less sure. All wines are more or less solutions of alcohol, and the man who drinks a bottle of Madeira per day, will thus take nearly half a pint of pure alcohol, or almost a pint of pure brandy. The vinous acid, it is true, neutralizes, in some degree, the spirit of this potation, but he who indulges in it is, nevertheless, a drunkard, and hence the revolting inconsistency of such an individual declaiming against brandy drinkers, when he himself is one of the most flagrant sinners against sobriety, for which he makes but a poor sort of atonement by even becoming a member of a Temperance Society.

Opium and tobacco when they produce intoxication, manifest their own peculiarities. The extacy produced by the first, if we are to believe the "Confessions of an [English] Opium Eater," far transcends the delirium excited by wine." Its use is said by this writer to be increasing in England, and greatly among the working classes at Manchester; a consequence very likely to result from the miseries which the manufacturing system entails upon a people. "The effects of tobacco are inebriating, and those who habitually indulge in it may, with propriety, be denominated drunkards." The use of this noxious and disgusting weed, if not intemperate in itself is the cause of intemperance in the use of other things. Tobacco, in nine cases out of ten, leads to wine, brandy, and whiskey, and is the first link in the series of drunkenness.-It is time, however, that we should now speak of the consequences of habitual intemperance, or in other words, of the

Pathology of Drunkenness.-The liver is the first organ which is assailed in a confirmed drunkard, and those who have sought for allegories in all the fables of antiquity, have supposed with

some ingenuity, that the story of Prometheus stealing fire from heaven, and animating clay, alluded to the effects of wine and intoxicating drugs upon the human body, and the punishment of having his liver devoured by a vulture, may be supposed to refer to the consequences which men draw upon themselves by over indulgence. This viscus is usually found after death in drunkards, essentially altered in its size and appearance, and without doubt is the part where the vulture of this habit gnaws with most pain to the sufferer, and brings on that depression of spirits, and dreadful sinking, which follow the abatement of a fit of intoxication. The stomach next sympathises, and becomes both feeble and irritable, and at last indurated. Indigestion succeeded by occasional spasms marks its approaching decay, whilst the brain, that organ which is the light of man, begins also to wane and become dim. Dr. Armstrong tells us, that the brain gets diseased, the diameter of the vessels being diminished, while the coats are thickened and less transparent than usual. In some places they swell out and assume a varicose appearance. The organ itself has no longer the same delicate and elastic texture, becoming either unnaturally hard or of a morbid softness, and slight effusions in the various cavities are apt to take place. Under these circumstances there is a strong risk of apoplexy. To this derangement of structure is to be ascribed the mental debasement, the loss of memory and gradual extinction of the intellectual powers. With these symptoms, the blood, breathing, and perspiration of the drunkard become painfully affected, and the vision is impaired by the most acrid inflammation of the eyes. If there is a predisposition to gout, this serpent of the system comes out from his coil, and then distressing tremors of the limbs, palpitation of the heart, hysteria, epilepsy, and lastly, before the closing scene, a loathsome emaciation and atrophy-the signs of premature old

age.

In this stage, the mind fares worse, if possible, than the decaying carcase in which it is sepulchred. Melancholy, with a gloom which no imagination can fancy, or tongue can tell, sinks deeply into the soul. "The weapon the drunkard employs to drive away care is turned upon himself. Every time it is used it becomes less capable of scaring the fiend of melancholy, and more effectual in wounding him that uses it." He becomes indifferent to society, to his friends and the occupations which once gave him the most pleasure. Overwhelmed by despair, the most dreadful calamities seem to produce no impressions— he goes to the grave of the dearest and most valuable friend he has on earth, apparently unconscious of his loss. there is any hereditary disposition to madness, it is sure to be VOL. V.-No. 9.

31

If

excited, and often in the dreadful form of delirium tremens. We must employ the words of our author to describe this frightful malady.

"Delirium tremens seldom takes place except in confirmed drunkards. It occurs generally after an excessive fit of drinking, which has continued for some days without intermission, but I have also known it to arise from a person having been too suddenly deprived of the stimulus to which he had been long accustomed. A medical friend lately mentioned to me the case of one of his patients who fractured his leg, and who, in consequence of the abstemiousness requisite in such a case, was seized with this disease four days after the accident. Delirium tremens came on with lassitude, loss of appetite, and frequent exacerbations of cold. The pulse is weak and quick, and the body covered with a chilly moisture. The countenance is pale, there are usually tremours of the limbs, anxiety, and a total disrelish for the common amusements of life. Then succeed retching, vomiting, and much oppression at the pit of the stomach. When the person sleeps, which is but seldom, he frequently starts in the utmost terror having his imagination haunted by frightful dreams. To the first coldness, glows of heat succeed, and the slightest renewed agitation of body or mind sends out a profuse perspiration. The tongue is dry and furred: every object appears unnatural and hideous. There is a constant dread of being haunted by spectres. Black or luminous bodies seem to float before the person; he conceives that vermin, and all sorts of impure things are crawling upon him, and is constantly endeavouring to pick them off. His ideas are wholly confined to himself and his own affairs, of which ho entertains the most disordered notions. He imagines that he is away from home, forgets those who are around him, and is irritated beyond measure by the slightest contradiction. Calculations, buildings, and other fantastic schemes often occupy his mind; and a belief that every person is confederated to ruin him is commonly entertained This state generally lasts from four to ten days, and goes off after a refreshing sleep; but sometimes either from the original violence of the disease, or from improper treatment, it proves fatal. There is another termination, which the complaint sometimes though rarely assumes. It may run into madness or confirmed idiotism. Indeed, when it continues much beyond the time mentioned, there is danger of the mind becoming permanently alienated. Subsultus, low delirium, very cold skin, contracted pupil, strabismus, short intermitting pulse, and frequent vomiting are indications of great danger. This disease is to be distinguished from typhus in not being contagious, and in having neither the petechiæ nor cadaverous swell that often occur in this variety of fever. The delirium is not so impetuous in its attack, and there is from the beginning less prostration of strength. From phrenitis it is readily distinguishable by being attended with a more moderate degree of fever, by the want of turgescency, redness of the eyes and intolerance of light. The face likewise instead of being flushed is pale and the pulse weak. It is distinguishable from mania, by being without the wild, furious glassy eye of persons labouring under that disorder.

"Those patients who have been driven to intoxication from some great affliction, are generally in eminent danger; for during the progress of the complaint, their raving incessantly turns upon the recent calamity, and produces an irritation and exhaustion most difficult to be counteracted. But confirmed drunkards, who have previously laboured under chronic hepatitis, or some similar organic affection perhaps stand the worst chance; at least I have seen two subjects of this kind who have sunk rapidly under the disease."*

Our author concludes his chapter on the Pathology of Drunkenness, with the following summary :—

"Such are the principal diseases brought on by drunkenness. There are still several others which have not been enumerated nor is there any affection incident ether to the body or mind which this vice does not aggravate into double activity. The number of persons who die in consequence of complaints so produced is greater than unprofessioual people imagine. The fact is well known to medical men, who are aware that many of the cases they are called upon to attend, originate in liquor, although the circumstance is totally unknown either to the patient or his friends. This is particularly the case with regard to affections of the liver, stomach, and other viscera concerned in digestion."

To this authority, we will add that of the celebrated Dr. Willan, who says "that the wretched victims of a fatal poison, 'fall at length into a state of fatuity, and die with powers of 'mind and body totally exhausted. Some, after repeated fits ' of derangement, expire in a sudden and violent phrenzy. Some ' are hurried out of the world by apoplexies; others perish by 'the slower processes of jaundice, dropsy, apthous ulcerations ' of the alimentary canal, and gangrenous ulcerations of the ex'tremities."

Such is the fate of the confirmed drunkard. It is true that some of the fraternity, like Funnel in the Spectator, may sum up for many years, the hogsheads which they have annually consumed, and in the pride of their insatiable gullets, seem to defy the approach of the great enemy of man-but he is sure to come at last in no very mild or merciful form. Dr. Trotter informs us, that he knew a marine on board one of the king's ships, who drank four gallons of beer a day, but he soon grew bloated and stupid, and died of apoplexy. Some men may, likewise, riot for a length of time in the intemperate use of wine, and with the gutta rosacea and Bardolph's nose, act as lighthouses shining on a dangerous coast, which we are to avoid. But gout in the stomach or apoplexy is, in the end, their inevi

table doom.

* Dr. Armstrong.

We shall say little of spontaneous combustion, although this involuntary species of conflagration seems, in many cases, to have been well authenticated. The slow fires which consume the drunkard, are sufficiently awful, without the superadded tortures of an internal conflagration, of flames which, as far as bodily torments go, are quite equal to the auto-da-fes at Smithfield or Goa. Many curious cases are given in the Journal de Physique, and in the work on Medical Jurisprudence by Paris and Fonblanque. The phrase of "being burnt up with liquor," has ceased to be a figure of speech, whilst chemistry has attempted to explain the principles of this curious self-ignition, by the supposed formation of phosphoretted hydrogen in the body. A man who emits from his mouth such a gas, carries a lighted candle into a powder magazine, whenever he approaches the cheerful blaze even of his own fire-side; but, by a just dispensation, he is only able, however, to blow himself up. Our author tells us, "that in post mortem examinations, nothing is more common 'than to find the body charged with inflammable gases, whence 'the insufferable odour which exhales from it. That such a 'quantity of these might accumulate as to support combustion, 'is, perhaps, not impossible; but it is to be remembered, that 'they are the result of decomposition, and that such decompo'sition cannot take place to any extent in the living fibre.

The judicial consequences of intemperance are certainly not the last among its pains and penalties. Whilst liquor does make mad, the madman from this cause, cannot plead his insanity when brought to the bar of justice for some act perpetrated in the unconscious phrenzy of his delirium. "A drunkard,” says Sir Edward Coke, "who is voluntarius dæmon, hath no privilege thereby, but what hurt or ill soever he doth, his drunkenness doth aggravate it." This may be considered as a rule of law throughout the civilized world, and is sustained by a uniform current of legal decisions in England and this country.

[ocr errors]

The Method of Curing the habit of Drunkenness.-Hic labor hoc opus est. The chapter of our author on this subject is instructive, and not devoid of consolation to those who are prone to think this habit invincibly incurable. "The first step to be 'adopted,' says he, 'is the discontinuance of all liquors or sub'stances which have the power of intoxicating. The only 'question is, should this be adopted at once or by degrees?" Our author inclines to the latter opinion; whilst, with more reason, we think, Dr. Trotter maintains the former as the soundest practice. He says, "we daily see in all parts of the 'world men, who, by profligacy and hard drinking, have brought 'themselves to a gaol; yet, if we consult the register of the

« VorigeDoorgaan »