Remarks on the utility and necessity of asylums or retreats for the victims of intemperance.

Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the utility and necessity of asylums or retreats for the victims of intemperance. 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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    REMARKS, &c. The scenes of suffering and distress which result from the excessive use of intoxicating drinks, are too familiar to us all to need description. If any one will survey, carefully, the circle of his own acquaintance, he will scarcely fail to find one or more families whose peace is destroyed and whose fair hopes concerning some beloved son, or father, or brother, are blasted by the curse of intemperance. There is perhaps no indulgence to which there are so many temptations, and no temptations to indulgence which are so numerous, so various and so skilfully adapted, by the spirit of evil, to all ranks, classes and ages of mankind. In the sketch of the pencil which embellishes this document, we are presented with a scene of domestic woe, the counterpart of which has been beheld, many a time and oft, in deeper or softer shades, in our towns and villages. The father in the full strength of manhood gives himself up to the bottle. The wife, whom he has solemnly and sincerely vowed to love and cherish, would still be fair and beautiful, if neglect and abuse had not broken her loving heart, and poverty and despair become her por- tion. She bears her sick boy in her arms, while the babe clings to her neck, and the only remaining one of the little circle that might be so happy around a cheerful fireside, is brought to premature sorrow, and instead of the bright smile and joyous leap of child- hood, he is doomed to tears of suffering and grief. The storm rao-es ! The man who once was so tender of his wife that he would not suffer the winds of heaven to visit her face too roughly is now changed to a monster ! He feels no sympathy for her and her little ones, nor does he blush to think that his brutal appetite has brought them to want and infamy. Where