iv Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



the drunkard. To these and other symptoms which go to make up 

 what Bevan Lewis designates as the motor anomalies of an alcoholic 

 etiology and all the psychical symptomatology, which this writer and 

 Huss and Magnan and Maudsley, Usher, Wilson and many others 

 describe, give us adequate outline of the detail work necessary for the 

 thorough and permanent cure of the inebriate. He will be largely 

 made over and made whole. No three weeks' treatment will suffice. 

 We may break him for the time of his habit in three weeks and yet 

 leave him a wreck for life. Our duty is to repair him and make him 

 anew if he will permit us to do it. We cannot ignore the protean 

 nature of alcoholic symptomatology or forget the fact in our treatment 

 of this disease that no poison except the virus of syphilis plays so ex- 

 tensive a role in the morbid affections, and degenerations of the tis- 

 sues, nervous or non-nervous, as alcohol. 



The point of this paper is psychical assistance and neurotic sup- 

 port, and neurotic and organic reconstruction. We must first secure 

 the man's safety from the thraldom of drink and repair the secondary 

 damage later. We must first put out the fire and save what remains 

 of the still standing structure, prop the weakened walls, and then re- 

 build and remove the damages. The foundation and framework of 

 all reconstruction of the drink-damaged dipsomaniac is in the nervous 

 system. If we can rescue that from immediate and ancestral damage, 

 we can save the man, but we must not leave him, after our treatment, 

 damaged and shattered in his brain or nerves or blood or vital organs. 

 We must make him strong and resistive in the higher inhibitory voli- 

 tion and directing realms of the cerebral cortex and restore the normal 

 functions within and presided over by the lower cerebro-spinal and 

 ganglionic centers. 



It is obvious that in attempting to effectually and permanently 

 cure and reform the inebriate we undertake a large contract, one that 

 cannot be fully complied with in the brief space of a few weeks. 

 When we have broken the chain of morbid habit there yet devolves 

 upon us the duty of after-care that the victim's health may not be 

 permanently shattered, and that insanity and other evils may not 

 follow. 



The first essential to the cure of inebriety is the substitution of a 

 less harmful support to the shattered brain, nerves and damaged vital 

 organs, than alcohol, and I name them in their order of preference. 

 The morphias or opium, strychnia, the quinias and cinchonas, valeri- 

 anates, cocas, the ammonium bromide, etc., etc. 



The second and concomitant essential is water — plenty of water or 



