Part 20

The usual effect of alcoholic poisoning is boisterous exaltation of mind, but there is a depressed type of drunkenness which weeps. Some patients at once are subjected by hallucinations and delusions, others are so depressed that they have a suicidal tendency, others may have a maniacal frenzy that is destructive or homicidal. In these neuropathic conditions muscular co-ordination is commonly well preserved--the patient is "drunk in the head and sober in the legs."

In alcoholism the mental changes are gradual and progressive. The intellect is blunted, the judgment becomes foolish, the moral sense is dulled. The drunkard is always a liar. Delusions not infrequently occur, and it is one of the common symptoms of alcoholic insanity to suspect a wife or husband of conjugal infidelity. If a man that is a drunkard accuses his wife of infidelity, the chances are fifty to one that she is innocent and that he is in the first stages of insanity. This symptom is characteristic also of cocaine intoxication.

Another mental disturbance of acute alcoholism is delirium tremens, which is inexactly called mania a potu by some writers. Delirium tremens is not a form of mania, but an acute hallucinatory confusion, in which the consciousness is much more impaired than it is in a mania. Mania a potu is a real mania, and it is transient commonly, although it may leave permanent mental weakness with delusions.

In chronic alcoholism a paranoid condition may occur, and this often is incurable. This psychosis may come on suddenly or gradually. In true paranoia the delusions are systematised, but in this alcoholic pseudoparanoia the enfeebled intellect can not build up coherently even a delusion. The alcoholic hallucinations are visual and auditory, and we find delusions of persecution, especially of a sexual nature. The patient hears all kinds of insulting remarks made by "voices." These voices often come from his own belly. His enemies send poisonous or foul odours into his room at night, and the groundless suspicions of his wife's infidelity take most outrageous forms of expression. He will swear {110} he has seen her misdeeds. Often the baseless suspicions of his wife begin before any other noticeable impairment of intellect, and are not recognised as delusions. The first step a priest should take in investigating accusations of conjugal infidelity is to find out whether the accuser is a tippler or not.

The delusions of persecution lead to attacks on the supposed enemies which often are homicidal. Occasionally alcoholic insanity takes on a paretic form, or it may be epileptic. Ten per centum of alcoholics are epileptic. When the children of alcoholics are epileptic, the convulsions begin in these children about four years earlier than in children that are epileptics from other causes. If epilepsy is latent, alcoholism will start it into action.

Alcoholism sometimes produces a condition of waking trance followed by amnesia (lack of memory). In such a state the drunkard may transfer property, carry out complicated professional actions, commit crime, take long journeys, travel for days, and so act that no one notices his disordered mental condition. Then suddenly he awakens and he has no recollection whatever of what has happened during this trance. He appears to be conscious, but to have no memory of his consciousness. There is another alcoholic amnesia, found especially in those that drink much during the morning hours, where there is instantaneous forgetfulness. If you ask one of these men to shut a door, for example, he will forget between his chair and the door what he started to do. This condition is difficult to cure even after the use of alcohol has been relinquished.

Dipsomania is a form of impulsive degenerative insanity, and it is probably epileptic in origin. After a few days of insomnia and loss of appetite for food, there is an irresistible impulse to drink alcoholic liquor and to indulge in other excess. The patient drinks until all means of getting alcohol are exhausted. He will take crude alcohol, bay rum, cologne, the alcohol that is about pathologic specimens in a hospital museum. The attack lasts from one to two weeks, and is followed by depression and a feeling of remorse. The onsets are irregular in occurrence, and between them the patient may {111} be temperate or have even an extreme distaste for alcohol. This form of disease is not infrequent among professional men and clergymen, and it is impossible to find out just how far the patient is responsible for his condition. If bishops would investigate the alcoholic tendencies of the families of candidates for seminaries, and reject all that have this taint, there would be much less scandal. It is a serious error of judgment to ordain a seminarian that has even once been under the influence of alcohol, and those seminarians that cover up the tippling of a companion, because he is a good fellow, are guilty of far-reaching crime. The fact is worth investigation whether or not a liquor dealer who never drinks alcohol, but who lives for years in the presence of volatilised alcohol, has much of the alcoholic degeneracy and a tendency to beget neurotic children. Certainly the fumes of wood alcohol have killed workmen that went down only once into a vat containing these fumes, and other alcohols in the form of vapour should have deleterious effects. Fere produced monsters in chickens by exposing eggs to the vapour of alcohol.

In judging a drunkard, it must be remembered that in many forms of alcoholism, after the condition is well established, the patient has little more freedom of will than a brute has. If he is accountable for the habit, he is blamable for the crime that follows. If he is not accountable, and it is often very difficult to prove that he is, he is to be treated as a blamelessly insane man. In proper surroundings, and with skilful direction, a child born with a tendency, or more exactly a temptation, to dipsomania or other alcoholic neurosis can be saved, but commonly the circumstances of such a child's life are the worst imaginable. These children must never take alcohol, even as a medicine, and they must not be pushed in school to nervous exhaustion. A tendency to unchastity can "run in families," like a disposition toward alcoholism, but the disgrace in yielding to this vicious bias keeps many such unfortunates clean. It is to be regretted that public opinion can not give the same aid in alcoholic predisposition.

A confirmed alcoholic should be prevented, if possible, from marriage, because his sins will be visited upon his posterity. {112} The first children of an alcoholic may be mentally sound, the younger children are more or less mentally weak, the youngest are not uncommonly imbeciles, or idiots, or under shock they grow insane. Fortunately many of the children of alcoholics die at an early age, and the family of a drunkard very seldom lasts beyond four generations. In the first generation moral depravity and alcoholic excess are found; in the second, chronic drunkenness and mania; in the third, melancholia, hypochondria, impulsive and homicidal ideas; in the fourth, idiocy, imbecility, and extinction of the family. The lower the social caste of the drunkard, the greater the liability of meeting these blights.

Priests should take a deep interest in societies established for the promotion of temperance, and the only temperance for most persons is total abstinence. No man knows what latent tendency to alcoholism he may have, especially in America, where great grandfathers are unknown and the climate and life are trying on the nervous system. The adulterated liquors sold everywhere at present make the danger greater than it ever was. Whatever may be the truth as regards heredity, there is no doubt concerning the strong influence of environment; therefore get into the temperance societies the children of alcoholic parents, of parents that are shiftless, hysterical, irritable. If a man has a violent temper or if he is unchaste, get him and his children into the society to check the downward drift. A bad temper is a neurotic taint, and it commonly is a first step toward alcoholism. Do not forget to warn the people against patent medicines that contain alcohol.

If you go over the list of the families in a parish, it is startling to find how few there are without one or more "black sheep." The human black sheep, in a good environment, is always physically imperfect, and never so black as the gossips paint him. He may be a powerful football player, but there is something wrong with his gray matter. He is morally deaf, he was born so, and he is to be excused if he can not always hear the still, small voice. This may sound like lax doctrine, but it is true, nevertheless.

We must recognise that moral weakness is very often, {113} partly at least, a physical defect, and there is no such state as "moral insanity" where the intellect is normal. Now, I do not wish to be quoted as holding that all moral depravity has a physical basis; most of it is the unalloyed stuff; the Lombroso criminal is not a scientific fact; but there is a moral condition very frequently met with which is largely physical in origin. Given so many grains of cocaine or morphine or so many ounces of alcohol, and you can make a liar of a man once on the way toward sanctity. Given an attack of hysteria in a holy nun, and she at once becomes a liar, an altogether blameless liar, but no influence that does not remove the physical cause will cure the lying.

The morally weak do not at present obtain enough religious instruction. Their religion is more a matter of inheritance and habit than of positive energy. It is "in the bones," sometimes in the fists, rather than in the soul. They prefer the Sunday newspaper to the Sunday sermon. The remedy here seems to be in making the Sunday school solidly interesting and its teaching impressive.

Alcoholism in the parents, especially drunkenness at the moment of conception, is one of the chief causes of idiocy in children. Fere, as was said before, by injecting a few drops of alcohol beneath the shell of hens' eggs, or by exposing the eggs to the vapour of alcohol, could produce monsters almost invariably. In 1000 cases of idiocy at the Bicetre, Bourneville found a history of alcoholism in 620, or 62 per centum: in the fathers of 471, in the mothers of 84, in both parents of 65; and in one-half of the remaining 38 per centum no history was obtainable--probably most of these also had the alcoholic taint. The administration of alcohol to infants, of gin and whiskey, of essences of peppermint and anise, to relieve colic or induce sleep, and the dosing with opiates like paregoric, are also well-established causes of idiocy.

The idiot is practically dead, except for the trouble he gives in caring for him; but another unfortunate, the imbecile, most commonly the offspring of alcoholics, is often capable of great mischief. The higher grades of imbeciles, those nearest the normal, are almost invariably criminals. Not all criminals, of course, are imbeciles, but a vast number of petty and brutal {114} criminals are imbeciles. We keep these unfortunates most of their lives in jail, while we fine their drunken fathers, the cause of the imbecility, "five dollars and costs."

Imbecility has grades,--from marked lack of intellectual power, a stage little beyond idiocy, up to the presence of a mind capable of fair education,--but in all cases there is real defect, either of intellect or of will. Sometimes, where the will is so weak that the patient becomes a criminal in spite of all training, the intellect is practically normal to the superficial observer.

The grades of imbecility can not be clearly marked off from one another, but, roughly speaking, there are three. The lowest grade of imbeciles understands simple commands, and has a slight manual dexterity. They express themselves by signs and in monosyllables. They can not concentrate attention upon anything, nor can they be taught to read or write. Careful training can advance them so far that they may do rough, menial work, and they are industrious when directed by a present superior. They are inclined to masturbation. If they are not teased, they are quiet; if annoyed, they may become dangerous.

Imbeciles of the middle grade can converse in a narrow vocabulary, and they commonly stammer. They may be taught to read monosyllables; they can not do even the simplest sum in addition, yet they show a certain shrewdness. They are irritable and quarrelsome, inclined to lying and stealing, and they have no sense of shame. They will not do any regular work, but change from one occupation to another. They may have sexual instincts and cause trouble on that account. They are slow to understand, their memories are defective, and they are always very vain. Their belly and what they shall wear are the chief things in their lives. They are less criminal than the highest grade of imbeciles.

The third class, the high-grade imbecile, is the most important, because he is commonly a criminal. His intellect is below the average, and his will is very flabby. He learns little at school, and what he does learn is acquired slowly. He reads and writes badly and he may be able to add simple {115} columns of numbers, but he can not multiply or divide. Sometimes such an imbecile has a remarkable facility in getting a speaking knowledge of two or three languages, and he may learn a trade. There is a high-grade imbecile that is cunning and shrewd, but he has no will, and he is a criminal. As imbeciles approach the normal in intellect they recede from it in abnormality of will.

Autopsies on imbeciles show an infantile development of the forebrain. Imprisonment does no good in these cases. They are not taught anything in prison, not even a trade, because the labour organisations and the protected industries will not permit prison labour. They should be confined so that they will not pervert youth and propagate their kind. It is impossible to say how far a given imbecile is morally accountable for what he does, but the accountability is not full in the best cases. A neurasthenic, however, is not to be mistaken for an imbecile. A neurasthenic person may have a tender conscience, an imbecile has no conscience. In imbecility the fault is in the will, rather than in the intellect, in the middle and highest grades. Many women, especially, that are hopeless fools intellectually have strong wills, but an imbecile never has a strong will except in the sense that stubbornness is strength. Stubbornness is perverted strength.

Morphine and Cocaine Intoxication,--Morphine, an alkaloid of opium, is used very extensively as an intoxicant. Since 1890 the importation of opium into the United States has increased fourfold, although physicians are now using less opium than they formerly did.

The insomnia, worry, moral distress, which bring on the alcoholic habit in some persons, lead to morphinism in others. Some physicians, by carelessly prescribing morphine for neuralgia, migraine, dysmenorrhoea, or any pain, make their patients slaves of this drug.

The degenerative effects of morphine are not so great nor so rapid as those of alcohol. It does not shorten life so much as alcohol does, nor are the children of a person addicted to the use of the drug so liable to idiocy and imbecility. The mind is enfeebled--slowly in some cases, rapidly in others. The patient will resort to almost any means to obtain the {116} drug, if he is deprived of it. Authorities hold that he will lie without reason, merely for the perverse pleasure in deceiving, that he is uncertain and treacherous, with a dull conscience and morbid impulses. There are exceptions to this in cases where the drug is easily obtained by the patients. Opium and morphine diminish the sexual appetite in males, even to impotence. The bodily changes are slow but profound.

When a user of morphine has been deprived of the drug for from ten to fifteen hours, he becomes so weak he can not stand; he gets diarrhoea with cramps; he sweats, trembles, and collapses. Later, mental disturbance comes on. He grows delirious, sees insects and small animals, as the delirium tremens patient does, and his suffering is very great. It is extremely difficult, and commonly impossible, to cure the morphine disease after it has been firmly established, and a deliberate acceptance of the habit is evidently a grave vice. Where a patient has become addicted to the use of the drug, through the fault of a physician, or through ignorance, the treatment from the social point of view of such a patient is commonly cruel.

Cocaine intoxication is much worse than morphinism. It is a new excess, which was unknown before 1886. Many users of morphine can carry on business, but the cocaine habitue can not do so. He is always extremely busy doing nothing. He writes long letters which are never finished. He changes from work to work, and even his conversation wanders. His bodily weight decreases rapidly, even one-third of his whole weight may be lost within a few weeks. The skin hangs in folds and is of a dirty yellow colour, the facial appearance is that of extreme distress, and the muscles are feeble. Fainting, irregular cardiac action, sweating, and insomnia are other symptoms.

Insanity is an occasional sequence, with hallucinations, especially of hearing. Such a patient hears roaring noises and voices; his secret thoughts are shouted out, he thinks, to crowds; loud screams, shrieks of murder, and similar noises appall him. Again, he sees swarms of flies, ants, roaches, which cover him and crawl into his mouth, nostrils, {117} and ears. He feels bugs crawling under his skin, and he has a multitude of similar interesting experiences.

Such patients grow homicidal. Like alcoholics, they are jealous and suspicious of their wives, but, unlike the alcoholic, the cocaine user is commonly reticent; he is not willing to talk of his troubles.

The prognosis is always bad, even in the best cases. This drug can be withdrawn from a patient more rapidly than is possible in chronic poisoning from morphine, but a relapse is to be expected.