5 o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing, and the craving presents a similar automatic and periodical rule as 

 lias been observed in relation to the habitual employment of other 

 active and enticing poisonous compounds. 



The nature of these cravings is not more singular than their intens- 

 ity, when once they have been acquired. The most practiced craver can 

 rarely succeed in explaining upon what the craving really depends. It 

 is an indefinable desire. It is neither thirst, nor hunger, nor pleasure, nor 

 reasonable want. It is rather like a wish to be relieved for the moment 

 of some indescribable sense of pain or discomfort. It is often periodi- 

 cal in its occurrence, and it can, I believe, always be made perfectly 

 periodical, a fact which connects it very closely with the work of the 

 organic nervous system. In a word, in the confirmed craver the work 

 of the organic nervous system, which is singularly periodical and 

 rhythmical in the natural state, is, by these agents, turned into a new 

 direction, and is made to take on a new action which in steady form 

 repeats itself. I have in my house an eight-day clock which, though 

 a century old, does good and faithful work, except at two times in the 

 twenty-four hours, when it goes periodically astray. From some little 

 twist or wear in the machinery, it stops for a moment in the act of 

 striking at one particular stroke of the bell, and on listening to it it 

 seems as if the striking had concluded. Then it strikes feebly and 

 goes on again all right. The working of the involuntary nervous sys- 

 tem in health is as automatic and regular as the working of the time- 

 piece; damaged, it is as systematically deranged at particular periods. 



The injury from intoxicants, after the first automatic derangement 

 has been established by them, is not to be measured altogether by the 

 first and usual derangement. Unfortunately, the action of the intoxi- 

 cant extends beyond the mere effect of the craving that springs from it, 

 and involves in its evils structural parts of the animal body. The nu- 

 trition of the degraded structures, the sense of muscular and mental 

 fatigue is soon rendered easy of development; and,j<m passu, the 

 mind, seeking for aid in the influences it likes, finds a supposed aid in 

 the intoxicant. It takes the destructive agent more frequently, there- 

 by establishing a more frequent periodicity of desire, and a more 

 earnest craving. By these combined influences, as is so commonly 

 observed in the intemperate from alcohol, the craving increases as 

 the animal powers decline, and the tendency to death is vastly quick- 

 ened in its course. To ordinary comprehension, in these instances, 

 the craving and the sinking are the same acts. They become so at 

 last in effect, but their beginnings are quite distinct, and they are, 

 in the strictest expression of fact, distinct phenomena even to the end. 



The craving for these intoxicants, so strong in the habituated 

 among men, is not confined to human kind. The beast that can be 

 brought to taste these agents, and that can be affected by them, can be 

 equally well taught to crave for them, and to look out for them also 



