The disease of inebriety from alcohol, opium, and other narcotic drugs : its etiology, pathology, treatment and medico-legal relations / arranged and compiled by the American Association for the Study and Cure of Inebriety.

  • American Association for the Study and Cure of Inebriety.
Date:
1893
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disease of inebriety from alcohol, opium, and other narcotic drugs : its etiology, pathology, treatment and medico-legal relations / arranged and compiled by the American Association for the Study and Cure of Inebriety. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    pose. Up to this time these views were clear and distinct- ive, although not published until 1809. They were entirely independent of all previous observations. In 1802, Dr. Cabanis, of Paris, wrote fully indorsing the views of Condillac, that inebriety, like insanity, was a disease which should be studied, and that it was a distinct form of mental disorder, needing medical care and treatment. Pro- fessor Platner, of Leipsig, published a paper in 1809 (the same year Rush’s writings appeared), affirming that ine- briety was like an insane impulse and a form of insanity which should receive medical care and be studied by the aid of science. In 1817, Salvator, of Moscow, a physician of some emin- ence, published a pamphlet called “ Ebriosity, its pathology and treatment.” He divided drunkenness into two forms, intermittent and remittent, and urged that they be treated by physical means. Esquirol, in 1818, described a condition of the nervous system in which inebriety was sure to follow. In 1822, Buhl Cramner, a distinguished physician of Berlin, wrote a small book defining inebriety as a state of irritation of the brain and nervous system, to be cured by physical means because it was purely of physical origin. In Europe the writings of these four men, Platner, Sal- vator, Esquirol and Cramner, placed the subject on a scien- tific basis, paving the way for a wider and more thorough study. Although Dr. Rush had written on the general subject more definitely than the others, his writings were practically unknown. In 1830, a committee of the Connecticut State Medical Society, appointed the year before to report 011 the necessity of an asylum for the medical care and treatment of inebri- ates, recommended in an elaborate essay that it was expedi- ent to establish an asylum for the cure of inebriates. This report, written by Dr. Todd, the superintendent of