The disease of inebriety from alcohol, opium, and other narcotic drugs : its etiology, pathology, treatment and medico-legal relations / arranged and compiled by the American Association for the Study and Cure of Inebriety.

  • American Association for the Study and Cure of Inebriety.
Date:
1893
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disease of inebriety from alcohol, opium, and other narcotic drugs : its etiology, pathology, treatment and medico-legal relations / arranged and compiled by the American Association for the Study and Cure of Inebriety. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER VIT. GENERAL PREDISPOSING CAUSES. A study and grouping of the general causes will afford data, from which we can understand inebriety in its first manifestations. The first group, called General Causes, are those which frequently produce inebriety in common with other insanities. Of these mechanical injuries seem prominent, such as injuries or concussion of the brain and spinal cord, and consequent alterations of nutrition. Blows on the head are not unfrequently followed by violent paroxysmal drunkenness ; railroad accidents, where the concussion and surprise are sudden and overwhelming, causing intense re-action on the nervous system (produc- ing at first insignificant physical lesions), often develop inebriety and mania. A chaplain in the late war, injured in the leg by a shell, although but a simple flesh wound, was several months in the hospital before recovery. From this time he became an incontrollable drunkard, and eventually died. A prominent physician was precipitated from his carriage on the head, and received flesh wounds of a minor character. Very soon after inebriety was devel- oped, and he ended his life a raving maniac in an asylum. The rule in many cases indicates that injuries of the brain, spinal cord, or any part involving numerous nerve trunks may end in cerebral disturbance, of which drunkenness is a very common stage of the lesion, the injury being small in comparison to the mental disturbance which follows. Peripheral irritation or reflex excitability has been noticed as a common cause in many cases. In a letter to the