Œnomania, or Methyskomania; its Prevalence and Treatment

Extract

It is a fact, which few attentive observers of the state of society around will either deny or dispute, that while our “Hospitals for the Insane” enclose within their walls numbers of the class commonly known as “dangerous lunatics;” and while our prisons and houses of correction incarcerate a still greater number of the enemies of peace and order and the well-being of the community; and whereas our nosocomiums give shelter and treatment to the sufferers from bodily maladies, in all their terrible variety; there are yet at large, and to a sad extent uncared for, multitudes of persons who are the victims of a malady as dire as any in the entire catalogue of disease, and who are, moreover, as dangerous and damaging, by habit and act, to the best interest of society as any criminal or lunatic in existence. The class of persons referred to are those who, from long addiction to intemperance in the use of stimulants, have ceased to possess any available amount of self-control, and have thus become, in effect, to a great extent, if riot unaccountable and absolutely insane, at least closely allied to that unhappy class of mental sufferers. It is true that, with the exception of this one mental derangement, these persons may be in all other respects mentis compotes, and able to manage their ordinary affairs. But the same remark applies to nearly all monomaniacs. It is also true that the attacks of their malady, and their succumbing to it, are in many instances periodical, and that, unless during the prevalence of one of these attacks, the persons in question may be quiet and orderly, and to all appearance respectable members of society; but the like is the case with not a few forms of insanity which have their equally well-marked periods and paroxysms.