DIPSOMANIACAL FALSEHOOD.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2754, 20 January 1882, Page 2

DIPSOMANIACAL FALSEHOOD.

DrKichardsgn has contributed ah able article on the above subject to the “ Church of' England .Temperance Chronicle,’’ in which he points out that “ whenever strong drink produces a permanent effect' upon the human body there is established in the affected per son, perhaps unexceptionally, the habit of falsehood. No'one had 'met'with ja' dipsomaniac whose word could be.reliod oh. Women or i meni the. ineinbers of the dipsomaniac class'had to some extent, and often to' the saddest or extremist extent, forgotten .the truth. This is so certain that falsehood becomes a part of the diagnosis, if we may- , so say of these cases. The shame of exposure of the untruthfulness fades away-; the,dislike to it, once, probably natural, honorable,, and moral, ‘fades away. It is as if the very knowledge of truth—as if the distinction between what is true and what is not true—had become utterly lost or The most earnest appeal to all that is left good in these lost natures is rarely of permanent service, while the practice, which is the bane, is retained, Thereare two modes of accounting for this remarkable phenomenon. It may be said that the habit of untruthfulness is begotten with, not of, the habit of in toxioatiou. The habit may he, looked upon, ; in this light, as a part of a general degeneration of doterioration of character.. Again it may be said that the habit, .is begotten, of intoxication. It may be looked upon, in this light, as an effect of the intoxication, in-the same Way as color blindness may.-be thei direct effect of a chemical which, like alcohol, produces, when taken into the body in quantities, nervous aberration, Inscrutable as it may seem, and indeed it is, I believe this last explanation is th 6 nearest to the correct explanation of the phenomenon. , I mean by this to express that a part of the diseased constitution produced by the repeated action -of alcohol in the body is indicated by, the' loss of appreciation Between the true and the untrue, which we call the habit of falsehood. It is a form of conscious falsehood unconsciously uttered that is peculiar to itself; it comes oh with the action of alcohol ; it passes off when the complete abstention from alcohol is secured ; and when it is established in in the hlcohollically affected* if is’not applied simply to hide the shame that

attaches to intoxication, but extends to other acts which may be in themslves as innocent or commendable us they may be wicked or detestable.”