Alcoholic drinks as diet, as medicines, and as poisons : the oration delivered to the Medical Society of London for the year 1878 / by Alfred Carpenter.

  • Carpenter, Alfred, 1825-
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Alcoholic drinks as diet, as medicines, and as poisons : the oration delivered to the Medical Society of London for the year 1878 / by Alfred Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    like the so-called “ sunstroke,” it is in a great measure caused by the imbibition of the drink, but it is not consistent with our ideas of justice to punish a man because he has had either of the conditions mentioned, which are undoubtedly diseases. The frequency with which sunstroke is urged as a reason or plea for mitigation of punishment by the drunkard in the dock of a police-court is not a little remarkable, and although I have never myself allowed that plea to be used in arrest of punishment in those cases in which the free will of the individual was manifest beforehand, yet it did sometimes avail when the individual was not a free agent. The plea set up has satisfied me that there is an intimate connection between the embolism which causes the so-called sunstroke, and the Alcoholic soaking in which the victims indulged. Like to outbursts of passion and to other vicious practices, there is an ability to exercise free will at first, but “ Facilis descensus Averni, “ Sed revocare gradum, superasquc' evadere ad auras, “ Hoc opus, hie labor est.” The work and labour required to return to the right path is greater than most men, unaided by restraint, are able to use. The battery of nerve force, in which free will and the higher orders of mental powers are produced, is damaged by the re-agent and is unable to set up those actions which are required for the production of self-control and self-respect. Thus that which was a vice in its early stages becomes a disease later on in life. The man who refuses to exercise his own self