Human Physiology. 43* 



'drink, neglect their children, and make home a hell. Children 

 rob their parents or become vagabonds, thieves, and prostitutes, 

 and may be seen in dozens reeling drunk along the streets. In 

 the iron and coal districts of England, and in all its industrial 

 centres, a large portion of the earnings of the working classes 

 are expended for drink, and two or three days in every week 

 are wasted by thousands in getting drunk and recovering from 

 intoxication. 



Drunkenness is the parent of many vices. It leads to 

 poverty, ignorance, disease, and crime. But who has told us 

 what are the causes of drunkenness, and how they can be 

 removed? Intoxicating liquors produce drunkenness, but the 

 appetite for drink is not created by the presence of intoxicants. 

 The manufacture and sale of liquors supplies a demand which, 

 as in other cases, it also increases. It is doubtful if the supply 

 can be stopped, while the demand continues; but it may be 

 possible to remove the causes which create the desire for 

 intoxication. 



I shall speak later of the causes of the morbid craving for 

 stimulation and intoxication, shown in the use of opium r 

 hashish, caco, mate, tea, coffee, tobacco, and spirituous 

 liquors in the use of which man differs from all other animals. 

 In these habits, as in so many others, England stands in the 

 front rank, if not absolutely in the van, of modern civilisation. 

 In no other country are such quantities of stimulants and 

 intoxicants consumed; and no other shows such numbers of 

 miserable, besotted, drunken, depraved victims of these 

 hideous and abominable vices. For drunkenness produces 

 and intensifies the evils of ignorance and poverty. It is the 

 proximate cause of at least three-fourths of the pauperism, 

 vagabondism, crime, prostitution, disease, and premature mor- 

 tality that afflict and oppress this country. Drink fills our 

 ragged schools, reformatories, asylums, hospitals, workhouses, 

 prisons, and graveyards. Drink, directly and indirectly, costs 



