INEBRIATE MANIACS. 109 



INEBRIATE MANIACS. 



By T. D. CKOTIIERS, M. D. 



PSYCHOLOGISTS and students of mental science have long been 

 aware of the presence of a new division of the army of the insane, 

 a division which is steadily increasing, more mysterious and obscure 

 than the ordinary insane, and constituting a new realm of the most 

 fascinating physiological and psychological interest. It consists of the 

 alcoholic, opium, chloral, ether, and chloroform inebriates. They ap- 

 pear in law courts, as both principals and associates in all degrees of 

 crime, and are called drunkards, tramps, and dangerous classes. In 

 conduct, character, and motive, they constantly display many promi- 

 nent symptoms of insanity, such as manias, delusions, deliriums, and 

 imbecilities. Yet public opinion refuses to recognize these symptoms, 

 because they are associated with intervals of apparent sanity in act 

 and conduct. Clergymen and moralists teach that these cases are sim- 

 ply moral disorders, growing out of "a heart deceitful and desperately 

 wicked," and only remedied by moral and legal measures. Scientists, 

 who study the history and progress of these cases, find that they are 

 diseases, following a regular line of march, from definite causes, on 

 through certain stages of growth, development, and decline, the same 

 as in other maladies. 



Many theories are urged to explain the presence of this army of 

 inebriates ; one of which asserts that inebriety is evidence of the 

 moral failure of the age, of the increasing wickedness of the times, 

 of the triumphs of the growth of evil over the good, etc. Another 

 theory assumes that the great increase in the manufacture of all forms 

 of alcohol and other drugs, and the facility with which they are pro- 

 cured, will fully explain the presence of this class. A third theory 

 considers them the defective, worn-out victims of this crushing, grind- 

 ing civilization ; the outgrowths of bad inheritance, bad living, and 

 the unfit generally, who are slowly or rapidly being thrown out of 

 the struggle. A fourth view regards them as simply coming into 

 prominence, through the great advances in the physiology and patholo- 

 gy of the brain and nervous system, in which the physical character 

 of these cases is recognized-. 



Inebriate maniacs have been called " border-land " lunatics, mean- 

 ing persons who move up and down on the border-line between sanity 

 and insanity, and, when studied closely, divide naturally into many 

 classes. One of these classes, which in most cases represents extreme 

 chronic stages, appears prominently in the daily press, in reports of 

 criminal assaults and murders. "When the genesis of the crime and 

 the so-called criminal are studied, unmistakable symptoms of mental 



