THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 253 



tive restraint within prison walls. The benumbing effects of 

 drinking habits upon the moral being of man is universally 

 known. " All delicacy, courtesy, and self-respect are gone ; the 

 sense of justice and of right is faint or quite extinct ; there 

 is no vice into which the victim of drunkenness does not easily 

 slide, and no crime from which he can be expected to refrain. 

 Between this condition and insanity there is but a single step," 

 and death, in a worldly sense a deliverance, in spite of many 

 an effort to rally, " terminates the miserable scene ; one by one 

 lights have been removed from the banquet of folly, and the 

 last is now extinguished." (Head Notes 15 and 16.) 



68. An illustration of the disadvantage of drunkenness to 

 the moral tone of a community may be drawn from the results 



of the labors of Father Mathew, about forty years ago, as a 







a stronger dose all trace of intelligence disappears. When old Sly is 

 stretched on the ground insensible from drink and snoring in the mud, 

 he excites compassion and disgust : 



O monstrous beast ! how like a swine he lies ! 



Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image ! " 



Charles Richet, in Revue des Deux Mondes. 



15. Drunkenness and Insanity. " The connection between drunken- 

 ness and crime and drunkenness and poverty, is close and unvarying in 

 its effect upon society. The remarkable increase of insanity in recent 

 years may in part be traced to the use of intoxicating beverages. It has 

 been asserted that at least seven-tenths of all the crime and poverty and 

 calamity to the people of the United States spring from the abuse of 

 liquors." Dr. J. E. Reeves. 



16. The Effects of Mild Stimulation. " Words of caution to young 

 men concerning the injurious effects of tobacco, as well as indulgence in 

 wine or the pleasures of the table, elicit, in ninety-nine out of one hun- 

 dred cases, the reply, ' It does not hurt me.' Does not hurt you ! Wait 

 and see. In years to come, when you ought to be in your prime, you 

 will be a poor, nervous, irritable, nerve-dried creature. Your hands will 

 tremble, your head will ache, your sleep be fitful and disturbed, your 

 digestion impaired in short, the unnatural and transient pleasure at 

 one end of your life will be more than counterbalanced by the discomfort 

 and misery at the other. It is a truth of the greatest moment, which 

 ought to be so impressed upon the mind as to be always rising up within 

 it, that transgressions of the laws, of health, not punished at one end of 

 life, are sure to be at the other." J. R. Slack on the Ten Laws of 

 Health. 



68. Give results of Father Mathew's work. 



