The anatomy of drunkenness

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BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

ANONYMOUS GIFT

THE

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CHAPTER X.

Pathology of Drunkenness, - 103

Chapter I Preliminary Observations

Drunkenness is not, like some other vices, peculiar to modern times. It is handed down to us from " hoar antiquity ;" and, if the records of the antediluvian era were more complete, we should probably find that it was not unknown to the remotest ages of the world. The cases of Noah and Lot, recorded in the sacred writings, are the earliest of which tradition or history has left any record ; and both occurred in the infancy of society. Indeed, wherever the grape flourished, inebriation prevailed. The formation of wine from this fruit, was among the earliest discoveries of man, and the bad consequences thence resulting, seem to have been almost coeval with the discovery. Those regions whose ungenial latitudes indisposed them to yield the vine, gave birth to other products 1 which served as substitutes ; and the inhabitants rivalled or surpassed those of the south in all kinds of Bacchanalian indulgence — the pleasures of drinking constituting one of the most fertile themes of their poetry, in the same manner as, in other climates, they gave inspiration to the souls of Anacreon and Hafiz.

Drunkenness has varied greatly at different times and among different nations. There can be no doubt that it prevails more in a rude than in a civilized state of society. This is so much the case, that as men get more refined, the vice will gradually be found to soften down, and assume a less revolting character. Nor can there be a doubt that it prevails to a much greater extent in northern than in southern latitudes.* The nature of the climate renders this inevitable, and gives to the human frame its capabilities of withstanding liquor: hence, a quantity which scarcely ruffles the frozen current of a Norwegian's blood, would scatter madness and fever into the brain of the Hindoo. Even in Europe, the inhabitants of the south are far less adapted to sustain intoxicating agents than those of the north. Much of this depends upon

* In making this observation, I have only in view the countries north of the equator ; for as we proceed to the south of that line, the vice increases precisely in the same manner as in the opposite direction. To use the words of Montesquieu, "Go from the equator to our pole, and you will find drunkenness increasing together with the degree of latitude. Go from the same equator to the opposite pole, and you will find drunkenness travelling south, as on tins side it travels towards the north."

the coldness of the climate, and much also upon the peculiar physical and moral frame to which that coldness gives rise. The natives of the south are a lively, versatile people ; sanguine in their temperaments, and susceptible, to an extraordinary degree, of every impression. Their minds seem to inherit the brilliancy of their climate, and are rich with sparkling thoughts and beautiful imagery. The northern nations are the reverse of all this. With more intensity of purpose, with greater depth of reasoning powers, and superior solidity of judgement, they are in a great measure destitute of that sportive and creative brilliancy which hangs like a rainbow over the spirits of the south, and clothes them in a perpetual sunshine of delight. The one is chiefly led by the heart, the other by the head. The one possesses the beauty of a flower-garden, the other the sternness of the rock, mixed with its severe and naked hardihood. Upon constitutions so differently organized, it cannot be expected that a given portion of stimulus will operate with equal power. The airy inflammable nature of the first, is easily roused to excitation, and manifests feelings which the second does not experience till he has partaken much more largely of the stimulating cause. On this account, the one may be inebriated, and the other remain comparatively sober upon a similar quantity. In speaking of this subject, it is always to be remembered that a person is not to be considered a drunkard because he consumes a certain portion of liquor ; but because what he does consume produces certain effects upon his system. The Russian, therefore, may take six glasses a-day, and be as temperate as the Italian who takes four, or the Indian who takes two. But even when this is acceded to, the balance of sobriety will be found in favour of the south : the inhabitants there not only drink less, but are, bona fide, more seldom intoxicated than the others. Those who have contrasted London and Paris, may easily verify this fact ; and those who have done the same to the cities of Moscow and Rome, can bear still stronger testimony. Who ever heard of an Englishman sipping eau sucree, and treating his friends to a glass of lemonade ? Yet such things are common in France ; and, of all the practices of that country, they are those most thoroughly visited by the contemptuous malisons of John Bull.

It is a common belief that wine was the only inebriating liquor known to antiquity ; but this is a mistake. Tacitus mentions the use of ale or beer as common among the Germans of his time. By the Egyptians, likewise, whose country was ill adapted to the cultivation of the grape, it was employed as a substitute for wine. Ale was common in the middle ages ; and Mr. Park states that very good beer is made, by the usual process of brewing and malting, in the interior of Africa. The favourite drink of our Saxon ancestors was ale or mead. Those worshippers of Odin were so notoriously addicted to drunkenness, that it was regarded as honourable rather than otherwise ; and the man who could withstand the greatest quantity was looked upon with admiration and respect : whence the drunken songs of the Scandinavian scalds ; whence the glories of Valhalla, the fancied happiness of whose inhabitants consisted in quaffing draughts from the skulls of their enemies slain in battle. Even ardent spirit, which is generally supposed to be a modern discovery, existed from a very early period. It is said to have been first made by the Arabians in the middle ages, and in all likelihood may lay claim to a still remoter origin. Alcohol was known to the alchymists as early as the middle of the twelfth century, although the process of preparing it was by them, at that time, kept a profound secret. The spirituous liquor called arrack, has been manufactured in the island of Java, as well as in the continent of Hindostan, from time immemorial. Brandy appears to have been known to Galen, who recommends it for the cure of voracious appetite ;* and its distillation was common in Sicily at the commencement of the fourteenth century. As to wine, it was so common in ancient times as to have a tutelar god appropriated to it: Bacchus and his companion Silenus are as household words in the mouths of all, and constituted most important features of the heathen mythology. We have all heard of the Falernian and Campanian wines, and of the wines of

* Good's Study of Medicine, vol. i. p. 113 ; second Edition. 1*

Cyprus and Shiraz. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the ancients were in no respect inferior to the moderns in the excellence of their vinous liquors, whatever they may have been in the variety. Wine was so common in the eastern nations, that Mahomet, foreseeing the baleful effects of its propagation, forbade it to his followers, who, to compensate themselves, had recourse to opium. The Gothic or dark ages seem to have been those in which it was least common : in proof of this it may be mentioned, that in 1298 it was vended as a cordial by the English apothecaries. At the present day it is little drunk, except by the upper classes, in those countries which do not naturally furnish the grape. In those that do, it is so cheap as to come within the reach of even the lowest.*

In speaking of drunkenness, it is impossible not to be struck with the physical and moral degradation which it has spread over the world. Wherever intoxicating liquors become general, morality has been found on the decline. They seem to act

* The quantity of wine raised in France alone is almost incredible. The vineyards in that country are said to occupy five millions of acres, or a twenty-sixth part of the whole territory. Paris alone consumes more than three times the quantity of wine consumed in the British Isles. It is true that much of the wine drank in the French capital is of a weak quality, being used as a substitute for small be'er. But after every allowance is made, enough remains to show clearly, if other proofs were wanting, how much the use of wine here is restricted by our exorbitant duties. It would be well for the morals of this country if the people abandoned the use of ardent spirits, and were enabled to resort to such wines as the French are in the habit of drinking.

like the simoom of the desert, and scatter destruction and misery around their path. The ruin of Rome was owing to luxury, of which indulgence in wine was the principal ingredient. Hannibal's army fell less by the arms of Scipio than by the wines of Capua ; and the inebriated hero of Macedon after slaying his friend Clytus, and burning the palace of Persepolis, expired at last of a fit of intoxication, in his thirty-third year. A volume might be written in illustration of the evil effects of dissipation ; but this is unnecessary to those who look carefully around them, and more especially to those who are conversant with the history of mankind. At the same time, when we speak of drunkenness as occurring in antiquity, it is proper to remark, that there were certain countries in which it was viewed in a much more dishonourable light than by any modern nation. The Nervii refused to drink wine, alleging that it made them cowardly and effeminate : these simple people had no idea of what by our seamen is called Dutch courage ; they did not feel the necessity of elevating their native valour by an artificial excitement. The ancient Spartans held ebriety in such abhorrence, that, with a view to inspire the rising generation with a due contempt of the vice, it was customary to intoxicate the slaves and exhibit them publicly in this degraded condition. By the Indians, drunkenness is looked upon as a species of insanity ; and, in their language, the word ramgam, signifying a drunkard, signifies also a madman. Both the ancients and moderns could jest as well as moralize upon this subject. " There hangs a bottle of wine," was the derisive exclamation of the Roman soldiery, as they pointed to the body of the drunken Bonosus, who, in a fit of despair, suspended himself upon a tree. " If you wish to have a shoe of durable materials," exclaims the facetious Matthew Langsberg, " you should make the upper leather of the mouth of a hard drinker -*- for that never lets in water."

If we turn from antiquity to our own times, we shall find little cause to congratulate ourselves upon any improvement. The vice has certainly diminished among the higher orders of society, but there is every reason to fear that, of late, it has made fearful strides among the lower. Thirty or forty years ago, a landlord did not conceive he had done justice to his guests unless he sent them from his table in a state of intoxication. This practice still prevails pretty generally in Ireland and in the highlands of Scotland, but in other parts of the kingdom it is fast giving way : and it is to be hoped that the day is not far distant when greater temperance will extend to these jovial districts, and render their hospitality a little more consonant with prudence and moderation. The increase of drunkenness among the lower classes may be imputed to various causes, and chiefly to the late abandonment of part of the duty on rum and whiskey. This was done with a double motive of benefiting agriculture and commerce, and of driving the "giant smuggler" from the field. The latter object it has in a great measure failed of effecting. The smuggler still plies his trade to a considerable extent, and brings his commodity to the market with nearly the same certainty of acquiring profit as ever. It would be well if the liquor vended to the poor possessed the qualities of that furnished by the contraband dealer ; but, instead of this, it is usually a vile compound of every thing spurious and pestilent, and seems expressly contrived for the purpose of preying upon the vitals of the unfortunate victims who partake of it.

The extent to which adulteration has been carried in all kinds of liquor, is indeed such as to interest every class of society. Wine, for instance, is often impregnated with alum and sugar of lead, the latter dangerous ingredient being resorted to by innkeepers and others, to take away the sour taste so common in bad wines. Even the colour of these liquids is frequently artificial ; and the deep rich complexion so greatly admired by persons not in the secrets of the trade, is often caused, or at least heightened, by factitious additions, such as elderberries, bilberries, red-woods, &c. Alum and sugar of lead are also common in spirituous liquors ; and, in many cases, oil of vitriol, turpentine, and other materials equally abominable, are to be found in combination with them. That detestable liquor called British gin, is literally compounded of these ingredients : nor are malt liquors, with their multifarious narcotic additions, less thoroughly sophisticated or less detrimental to the health. From these circumstances, two conclusions must naturally be drawn ; viz. that inebriating agents often contain elements of disease foreign to themselves ; and that all persons purchasing them should endeavour to ascertain the state of their purity, and employ no dealer whose honour, and honesty are not known to be unimpeachable. Liquors, even in their purest state, are too often injurious to the constitution without the admixture of poisons.*

The varieties of wine are so numerous as almost to defy calculation. Mr. Brande, in his table,f gives a list of no less than forty-four different kinds, and there are others which he has not enumerated. Ardent spirits are fewer in number, and may be mostly comprised under the heads of rum, gin, brandy, and whiskey. The first is the prevailing drink over the West Indies, North America, and such cities of Great Britain as are intimately connected with these regions by commerce. The second is extensively used in Holland and Switzerland, the countries which principally furnish it, and has found its way pretty generally over the whole of Europe. The third is chiefly produced in Charente and Languedoc, and is the spirit most commonly found in the south. The fourth is confined in a great measure to Ireland and Scotland, in

* See Accum's Treatise on the Adulteration of Food ; Child on Brewing Porter ; and Shannon on Brewing and Distillation, f See Appendix.

which latter country the best has always been made. Of malt liquors we have many varieties. Britain, especially England, is the country which furnishes them in greatest perfection. They are the natural drinks of Englishmen — the vinum Anglicorum, as foreigners have often remarked. Every town of any consequence in the empire has its brewery ; and in almost every one is there some difference in the quality of the liquor. Brown stout, London and Scotch porters, Burton, Dorchester, Edinburgh, and Alloa ales, are only a few of the endless varieties of these widely-circulated fluids.

Besides wines, ardent spirits, and malt liquors, there are many other agents possessing inebriating properties. Among others, the Peganum Harmala or Syrian rue, so often used by the sultan Solyman ; the Hibiscus Saldarissa, which furnishes the Indian bangue, and from which the Nepenthes of the ancients is supposed to have been made ; the Balsac, or Turkish bangue, found on the shores of the Levant ; the Penang, or Indian betle ; the Hyoscyamus Niger ; and the Atropa Belladonna. In addition to these, and many more, there are opium, tobacco, Cocculus Indicus, and the innumerable tribes of liqueurs and ethers, together with other agents of a less potent nature, such as clary, darnel, and saffron. The variety of agents capable of exciting drunkenness is indeed surprising, and in proportion to their number seems the prevalence of that fatal vice to which an improper use of them gives rise.

Chapter II Causes Of Drunkenness

The causes of drunkenness are so obvious, that few authors have thought it necessary to point them out : we shall merely say a few words upon the subject. There are some persons who will never be drunkards, and others who will be so in spite of all that can be done to prevent them. Some are drunkards by choice, and others by necessity. The former have an innate and constitutional fondness for liquor, and drink con amove. Such men are usually of a sanguineous temperament, of coarse unintellectual minds, and of low and animal propensities. They have, in general, a certain rigidity of fibre, and a flow of animal spirits which other people are without. They delight in the roar and riot of drinking clubs ; and with them, in particular, all the miseries of life may be referred to the bottle.

The drunkard by necessity was never meant by nature to be dissipated. He is perhaps a person of amiable dispositions, whom misfortune has overtaken, and who, instead of bearing up manfully against it, endeavours to drown his sorrows in liquor. It is an excess of sensibility, a partial mental weakness, an absolute misery of the heart, which drives him on. Drunkenness, with him, is a consequence of misfortune ; it is a solitary dissipation preying upon him in silence. Such a man frequently dies broken-hearted, even before his excesses have had time to destroy him by their own unassisted agency.

Some become drunkards from excess of indulgence in youth. There are parents who have a common custom of treating their children to wine, punch, and other intoxicating liquors. This, in reality, is regularly bringing them up in an apprenticeship to drunkenness. Others are taught the vice by frequenting drinking clubs and masonic lodges. These are the genuine academies of tippling. Two-thirds of the drunkards we meet with, have been there initiated in that love of intemperance and boisterous irregularity which distinguish their future lives. Men who are good singers are very apt to become drunkards, and, in truth, most of them are so, more or less, especially if they have naturally much joviality or warmth of temperament. A fine voice to such men is a fatal accomplishment.

Ebriety prevails to an alarming degree among the lower orders of society. It exists more in towns than in the country, and more among me. % chanics than husbandmen. Most of the misery to be observed among the working classes springs from this source. No persons are more addicted to the habit, and all its attendant vices, than the pampered servants of the great. Innkeepers, musicians, actors, and men who lead a rambling and eccentric life, are exposed to a similar hazard. Husbands sometimes teach their wives to be drunkards by indulging them in toddy and such fluids, every time they themselves sit down to their libations.

Women frequently acquire the vice by drinking porter and ale while nursing. These stimulants are usually recommended to them from well-meant but mistaken motives, by their female attendants. Many fine young women are ruined by this pernicious practice. Their persons become gross, their milk unhealthy, and a foundation is too often laid for future indulgence in liquor.

The frequent use of cordials, such as noyeau, shrub, kirsch-wasser, curacoa, and anissette, sometimes leads to the practice. The active principle of these liqueurs is neither more nor less than ardent spirits.*

Among other causes, may be mentioned the excessive use of spirituous tinctures for the cure of hypochondria and indigestion. Persons who use strong tea, especially green, run the same risk.

* Liqueurs often contain narcotic principles; therefore their use is doubly improper.

The latter species is singularly hurtful to the constitution, producing hysteria, heartburn, and general debility of the chylopoetic viscera. Some of these bad effects are relieved for a time by the use of spirits ; and what was at first employed as a medicine, soon becomes an essential requisite.

Certain occupations have a tendency to induce drunkenness. Innkeepers, recruiting-sergeants, pugilists, &c. are all exposed in a great degree to temptation in this respect ; and intemperance is a vice which may be very often justly charged against them. Commercial travellers, also, taken as a body, are open to the accusation of indulging too freely in the bottle, although I am not aware that they carry it to such excess as to entitle many of them to be ranked as drunkards. " Well fed, riding from town to town, and walking to the houses of the several tradesmen, they have an employment not only more agreeable, but more conducive to health than almost any other dependant on traffic. But they destroy their constitutions by intemperance ; not generally by drunkenness, but by taking more liquor than nature requires. Dining at the traveller's table, each drinks his pint or bottle of wine ; he then takes negus or spirit with several of his customers ; and at night he must have a glass or two of brandy and water. Few commercial travellers bear the employ for thirty years — the majority not twenty."*

* Thackrah on the Effects of the Principal Arts, Trades, and Professions, p. 83.

Some writers allege that unmarried women? especially if somewhat advanced in life, are more given to liquor than those who are married. This point I am unable from my own observation to decide. Women who indulge in this way, are solitary dram-drinkers, and so would men be, had not the arbitrary opinions of the world invested the practice in them with much less moral turpitude than in the opposite sex. Of the two sexes,/ there can be no doubt that men are much the more addicted to all sorts of intemperance.

Drunkenness appears to be in some measure hereditary. We frequently see it descending from parents to their children. This may undoubtedly often arise from bad example and imitation, but there can be little question that, in many instances at least, it exists as a family predisposition.

Men of genius are often unfortunately addicted to drinking. Nature, as she has gifted them with greater powers than their fellows, seems also to have mingled with their cup of life more bitterness. There is a melancholy which is apt to come like a cloud over the imaginations of such characters. Their minds possess a susceptibility and delicacy of structure which unfit them for the gross atmosphere of human nature ; wherefore, high talent has ever been distinguished for sadness and gloom. Genius lives in a world of its own : it is the essence of a superior nature — the loftier imaginings of the mind, clothed with a more spiritual and refined verdure. Fewsmen endowed with such faculties enjoy the ordinary happiness of humanity. The stream of their lives runs harsh and broken. Melancholy thoughts sweep perpetually across their souls ; and if these be heightened by misfortune, they are plunged into the deepest misery.

To relieve these feelings, many plans have been adopted. Dr. Johnson fled for years to wine under his habitual gloom. He found that the pangs were removed while its immediate influence lasted, but he also found that they returned with double force when that influence passed away. He saw the dangerous precipice on which he stood, and, by an unusual effort of volition, gave it over. In its stead he substituted tea; and to this milder stimulus had recourse in his melancholy. Voltaire and Fontenelle, for the same purpose, used coffee. The excitements of Newton and Hobbes were the fumes of tobacco, while Demosthenes and Haller were sufficiently stimulated by drinking freely of cold water. Such are the differences of constitution.

" As good be melancholy still, as drunken beasts and beggars." So says old Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, and there are few who will not subscribe to his creed. The same author quaintly, but justly remarks, " If a drunken man gets a child, it will never, likely, have a good brain." Dr. Darwin, a great authority on all subjects connected with life, says, that he never knew a glutton affected with the gout, who was not at 2* the same time addicted to liquor. He also observes, " it is remarkable that all the diseases from drinking spirituous or fermented liquors are liable to become hereditary, even to the third generation, gradually increasing, if the cause be continued, till the family becomes extinct."*

We need not endeavour to trace further the remote causes of drunkenness. A drunkard is rarely able to recall the particular circumstances which made him so. The vice creeps upon him insensibly, and he is involved in its fetters before he is aware. It is enough that we know the proximate cause, and also the certain consequences. One thing is certain, that a man who addicts himself to intemperance, can never be said to be sound in mind or body. The former is a state of partial insanity, while the effects of the liquor remain ; and the latter is always more or less diseased in its actions.

* Botanic Garden.

Chapter III. Phenomena Of Drunkenness

The consequences of drunkenness are dreadful, but the pleasures of getting drunk are certainly ecstatic. While the illusion lasts, happiness is complete ; care and melancholy are thrown to the wind ; and Elysium, with all its glories, descends upon the dazzled imagination of the drinker.

Some authors have spoken of the pleasure of being completely drunk ; this, however, is not the most exquisite period. The time is when a person is neither " drunken nor sober, but neighbour to both," as Bishop Andrews says in his "Ex — ale — tation of Ale." The moment is when the ethereal emanations begin to float around the brain — when the soul is commencing to expand its wings and rise from earth — when the tongue feels itself somewhat loosened in the mouth, and breaks the previous taciturnity, if any such existed.

What are the sensations of incipient drunkenness ? First, an unusual serenity prevails over the mind, and the soul of the votary is filled with a placid satisfaction. By degrees he is sensible of a soft and not unmusical humming in his ears, at every pause of the conversation. He seems, to himself, to wear his head lighter than usual upon his sholders. Then a species of obscurity, thinner than the finest mist, passes before his eyes, and makes him see objects rather indistinctly. The lights begin to dance and appear double. A gayety and warmth are felt at the same time about the heart. The imagination is expanded, and filled with a thousand delightful images. He becomes loquacious, and pours forth, in enthusiastic language, the thoughts which are born, as it were, within him.

Now comes a spirit of universal contentment with himself and all the world. He thinks no more of misery : it is dissolved in the bliss of the moment. This is the acme of the fit — the ecstacy is now perfect. As yet the sensorium is in tolerable order ; it is only shaken, but the capability of thinking with accuracy still remains. About this time, the drunkard pours out all the secrets of his soul. His qualities, good or bad, come forth without reserve ; and now, if at any time, the human heart may be seen into. In a short period, he is seized with a most inordinate propensity to talk nonsense, though he is perfectly conscious of doing so. He also commits many foolish things, knowing them to be foolish. The power of volition, that faculty which keeps the will subordinate to the judgement, seems totally weakened. The most delightful time seems to be that immediately before becoming very talkative. When this takes place, a man turns ridiculous, and his mirth, though more boisterous, is no£ so exquisite. At first the intoxication partakes of sentiment, but, latterly, it becomes merely animal.

After this the scene thickens. The drunkard's imagination gets disordered with the most grotesque conceptions. Instead of moderating his drink, he pours it down more rapidly than ever : glasa follows glass with reckless energy. His head becomes perfectly giddy. The candles burn blue, or green, or yellow ; and where there are perhaps only three on the table, he sees a dozen. According to his temperament, he is amorous, or musical, or quarrelsome. Many possess a most extraordinary wit ; and a great flow of spirits is a general attendant. In the latter stages, the speech is thick, and the use of the tongue in a great measure lost. His mouth is half open, and idiotic in the expression ; while his eyes are glazed, wavering, and watery. He is apt to fancy that he has offended some one of the company, and is ridiculously profuse with his apologies. Frequently he mistakes one person for another, and imagines that some of those before him are individuals who are, in reality, absent or even dead. The muscular powers are, all along, much affected : this indeed happens before any great change takes place in the mind, and goes on progressively increasing. He can no longer walk with steadiness, but totters from side to side. The limbs become powerless, and inadequate to sustain his weight. He is, however, not always sensible of any deficiency in this respect : and while exciting mirth by his eccentric motions, imagines that he walks with the most perfect steadiness. In attempting to run, he conceives that he passes over the ground with astonishing rapidity. To his distorted eyes all men, and even inanimate nature itself, seem to be drunken, while he alone is sober. Houses reel from side to side as if they had lost their balance ; trees and steeples nod like tipsy Bacchanals ; and the very earth seems to slip from under his feet, and leave him walking and floundering upon the air. The last stage of drunkenness is total insensibility. The man tumbles perhaps beneath the table, and is carriedaway in a state of stupor to his couch. In this condition he is said to be dead drunk.