The Causes of Dipsomania.

Cromwell Argus, Volume 2, Issue 90, 1 August 1871, Page 3

The Causes of Dipsomania.

A correspondent of the Australasian thus accounts for the too general and abnormal appetite for intoxication :—The wholesome body craves wholesome food, the unhealthybody food similar to itself, but which may, nevertheless, be beneficial to it. Eating and drinking are in the healthy to effort of nature to supply a normal deficiency, while in the unhealthy they are a similar effort to supply an abnormal deficiency. And, consequently, the means taken to do so aro of an abnormal character. The close analogy between the body and the mind cannot but suggest itself here. The strong healthy mind delights in food which adds to its health and strength, the depraved mind in trash which but increases its depravity ; each being attracted by that which is congenial to itself. But why do both body and mind thus crave ingredients which apparently feed disease? I hazard this answer. Because, perhaps,. nature acts on the homoeopathic axiom, similia similibus curantar —on the principle that two evils will prove mutually destructive. What, then, is the condition of body winch gives birth to dipsomania? Whence proceeds this insatiable craving for intoxicants 1 In my opinion, from a lack of vital force or energy ; or if that phrase be objected to, the force by which the atoms of the body act and I'e-act on one another, and in the aggregate on the external world. This weakness may arise either from some grave organic deficiency, in which case cure will be very difficult, because, even if stimulants were removed, it would manifest itself in some other form, perhaps equally bad ; or it may arise as it most commonly does, from over exertion, either of body or mind. A man toils to the point of absolute prostration, and becomes conscious of a very painful feeling accordingly, to remove which he has recourse to intoxicating drink, which, indeed, is tile only thing that can give him immediate relief, and therein nature in her prompting does not lie. It is clear that a given individual can eat but a limited amount of food, the quantity of course being variable. It is equally clear that if in his daily avocations he employs more force than his daily food supplies, the tissues of the body will be drawn upon, and emaciation must ensue. I am quite aware that some men will do more work on one pound of meat than others on two, but this fact does not at all affect the argument. When a man works, then, to such an extent as to consume more force than be derives from what he can eat, be is on the verge of the precipice of drunkenness, down which thousands in my opinion have been hurled from no other earthly cause. He feels that ordinary food is too slow in its operation to enable him to keep up the expenditure of energy he is called upon to make; and both to maintain the steam at high pressure point, and to remove the painful feeling of exhaustion, the assistance of drink is invoked. It is the same with brainwork as with manual labor. Every thought destroys a portion of the brain-tissue, which must be replaced by nourishing diet and sleep, else madness, or some serious nervous disorder, soon supervenes. I think there are few who have not experienced the difficulty of thinking deeply, and who have not felt that the excitement thereby produced was very weakening. It is not without an object that I have dwelt on the intimate nection which, in my opinion, exists between overwork and drunkenness ; and I cannot but wonder that it has never occurred to any of our wise men that if the Anglo-Saxons arc the hardest drinking, they are also the hardest working people on the face off the globe. Let the comfortable, respectable people change places for a time with their less highly-favoi'cd brethren, the objects of their virtuous homilies and rebukes —let them try a coilrse of hard labor with insufficient diet—for a man may nearly starve on mutton and damper—and the other privations of that lot in life, not to speak of the contumely, and thousand affronts and humiliations to which poverty is exposed, and see how long they Would keep aloof from the lethe of drink.