Alcohol: Inebriate Asylums : Part 1

The Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink
by T. S. Arthur

(Page 8 of 22)

The careful observation and study of inebriety by medical men, during the past twenty-five or thirty years, as well in private practice as in hospitals and prisons, has led them to regard it as, in many of its phases, a disease needing wise and careful treatment. To secure such treatment was seen to be almost impossible unless the subject of intemperance could be removed from old associations and influences, and placed under new conditions, in which there would be no enticement to drink, and where the means of moral and physical recovery could be judiciously applied. It was felt that, as a disease, the treatment of drunkenness, while its subject remained in the old atmosphere of temptation, was as difficult, if not impossible, as the treatment of a malarias fever in a miasmatic district. The result of this view was the establishment of Inebriate Asylums for voluntary or enforced seclusion, first in the United States, and afterwards in England and some of her dependencies.

In the beginning, these institutions did not have much favor with the public; and, as the earlier methods of treatment pursued therein were, for the most part, experimental, and based on a limited knowledge of the pathology of drunkenness, the beneficial results were not large. Still, the work went on, and the reports of cures made by the New York State Asylum, at Binghampton, the pioneer of these institutions, were sufficiently encouraging to lead to their establishment in other places; and there are now in this country as many as from twelve to fifteen public and private institutions for the treatment of drunkenness.

Of these, the New York State Inebriate Asylum, at Binghampton; the Inebriate Home, at Fort Hamilton, Long Island; and the Home for Incurables, San Francisco, Cal., are the most prominent. At Hartford, Conn., the Walnut Hill Asylum has recently been opened for the treatment of inebriate and opium cases, under the care of Dr. T.D. Crothers. The Pinel Hospital, at Richmond, Va., chartered by the State, in 1876, is for the treatment of nervous and mental diseases, and for the reclamation of inebriates and opium-eaters. In Needham, Mass., is the Appleton Temporary Home, where a considerable number of inebriates are received every year.

Besides these, there are private institutions, in which Dipsomaniac patients are received. The methods of treatment differ according to the views and experience of those having charge of these institutions. Up to this time a great deal of the treatment has been experimental; and there is still much difference of opinion among physicians and superintendents in regard to the best means of cure. But, on two important points, all are nearly in agreement. The first is in the necessity for an immediate and

Absolute Withdrawal of all Intoxicants from the Patient,

no matter how long he may have used them; and the second in the necessity of his entire abstinence after leaving the institution. The cure never places a man back where he was before he became subject to the disease; and he can never, after his recovery, taste even the milder forms of alcoholic beverage without being exposed to the most imminent danger of relapse.

The great value of an asylum where the victim of intemperance can be placed for a time beyond the reach of alcohol is therefore stated by Dr. Carpenter: "Vain is it to recall the motives for a better course of conduct, to one who is already familiar with them all, but is destitute of the will to act upon them; the seclusion of such people from the reach of alcoholic liquors, for a sufficient length of time to free the blood from its contamination, to restore the healthful nutrition of the brain and to enable the recovered mental vigor to be wisely directed, seems to afford the only prospect of reformation: and this cannot be expected to be permanent, unless the patient determinately adopts and steadily acts on the resolution to abstain from that which, if again indulged in, will be poison, alike to his body and to his mind."

In the study of inebriety and the causes leading thereto, much important information has been gathered by the superintendents and physicians connected with these establishments. Dr. D.G. Dodge, late Superintendent of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, read a paper before the American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, in 1876, on "Inebriate Asylums and their Management," in which are given the results of many years of study, observation and experience. speaking of the causes leading to drunkenness, he says:

"Occupation has a powerful controlling influence in developing or warding off the disease. In-door life in all kinds of business, is a predisposing cause, from the fact that nearly the whole force of the stimulant is concentrated and expended upon the brain and nervous system. A proper amount of out-door exercise, or labor, tends to throw off the stimulus more rapidly through the various functional operations of the system. Occupation of all kinds, mental or muscular, assist the nervous system to retard or resist the action of stimulants - other conditions being equal. Want of employment, or voluntary idleness is the great nursery of this disease."

Tobacco

"The use of tobacco predisposes the system to alcoholism, and it has an effect upon the brain and nervous system similar to that of alcohol. The use of tobacco, if not prohibited, should be discouraged. The treatment of inebriates can never be wholly successful until the use of tobacco in all forms is absolutely dispensed with.

"Statistics show that inebriety oftenest prevails between the ages of thirty and forty-five. The habit seldom culminates until thirty, the subject to this age generally being a moderate drinker; later in life the system is unable to endure the strain of a continued course of dissipation.

About the Author

Timothy Shay Arthur (1809 - 1885) was a popular nineteenth-century American author. He is most famous for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There, which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public. Virtually forgotten now, Arthur did much to articulate and disseminate the values, beliefs, and habits that defined respectable, decorous middle-class life in antebellum America.