Drunkenness, its nature and cure, or, Asylums for inebriates : an address delivered before the Ohio State Medical Society at its annual session, June 1859 / by M.B. Wright.

  • Wright, M. B. (Marmaduke Burr), 1803-1879.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Drunkenness, its nature and cure, or, Asylums for inebriates : an address delivered before the Ohio State Medical Society at its annual session, June 1859 / by M.B. Wright. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    vermin over his body, and by the nearness of faces with hideous and mocking aspect. In a word, there is no malady involving the brain that occasions such unspeakable agony as delirium tremens. Take this phase of drunkenness back to the first link, and we will have presented to us, more clearly, perhaps, the nature of the first promptings to drink. Delirium tremens is not so much the effect of direct and immediate stimulation, as its complete or partial withdrawal. A brain that has been kept for a long time in a state of forced action, sinks into an almost powerless condition, if left to itself, and the de- mand for its accustomed stimulus is fearfully wild and ungovernable. Without this stimulus, the mind wanders into regions filled with fanciful objects, and beset with evil. It has Scylla on the one hand, and Charybdis on the other. If the man drinks, he is in danger of being killed; if he does not drink, he is in danger of dying. To a degree, this reflects the condition of the moderate, regular drinker. His disease is yet in its mild form. The morbid impression made upon the brain continues, and increases with the continuance of drinking, until delirium tremens is induced. This unnatural state of the brain often yields to appropriate remedies, while many cases terminate fatally, and others settle down into incur- able insanity. To the latter condition, I wish, for a moment, to direct your attention : In the county of Hamilton, a man was convicted of the murder of his wife, and sentenced to be hung. The time came when he was required to ascend the scaffold, and to have the noose of the execu- tioner around his neck ; but as the few moments allotted him between time and eternity had nearly terminated, his sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. The circumstances and details of the crime were horrible, and the public and press were indignant that so foul a monster had escaped just punishment. Remember, the mind of that man never returned to right reason. Delusions, with which he was surrounded while drinking, and which impelled him to the commission of crime, remained in a modified form during the two years of his solitary incarceration. If you had seen that man a few days before he died, tearing and jerking the bones from his frozen and mortified feet, his face reflecting the most intense fury, you would have had no occasion to ask, Is not his brain diseased ? A quotation from the letters of Coleridge, written at a time when he was addicted to an excessive use of opium, will conclude this