ALCOHOLISM. 89 



Then again poverty often leads to drink. The home is wretched, and the man 

 ts to the gin-palace. He sleeps in a close, badly-ventilated room, and gets up in 

 .turning suffering from headache, and a feeling of listlessness and depression, 

 lie ser-ks temporary excitement in a dram, and the day so commenced is often con- 

 tinued as it was begun. There is a very common opinion that drink is the simple 

 and uncomplicated cause of the greater number of crimes committed by the poor. 

 The truth is that in recognising the indisputable fact that drunkenness is often 

 followed by crime of a worse kind, we are apt to overlook a large portion of the 

 history of the criminal, and especially the wretched poverty in which he is 

 usually reared. The demoralising influence of this poverty is the central fact on 

 which we ought to concentrate our attention ; it is a common cause of general reck- 

 less behaviour, of which drunken habits are only a part, although they undoubtedly 

 render the commission of fresh crimes more probable. People who are under-fed, or who 

 have their meals badly cooked, or at irregular intervals, often exhibit an intense craving 

 for alcoholic stimulants. Starvation actual severe deprivation of food cannot be a 

 positive predisposing cause of drunkenness, for the opportunity of getting liquor is cut 

 off by the extreme degree of poverty which brings about such a state of things. It 

 is rather the continual sense of embarrassment of and misery consequent on the 

 difficulty or impossibility of paying debts, so common in the lowest ranks of the 

 middle classes, which provokes the habits of drinking, 



A monotonous life often leads to alcoholism, and this is more frequently the case 

 in the upper and middle classes than in the lower, and more frequently in women 

 than in men. Take the wife of a professional man, without children, for example. 

 When her husband has gone out in the morning to his business, whatever it may be, 

 she feels lonely and depressed, she has nothing much to do, and soon gets tired of 

 her ordinary amusement, reading or sewing. She feels dull and listless, and what more 

 natural than that she should resort to the chiffonier for a little temporary stimulus. 

 Generally it begins with a glass of sherry or port, but gradually it grows on her and 

 becomes almost a necessity, and the dose has to be increased to produce the desired 

 effect. The want of active out-door exercise represses elimination, and much 

 increases the evil. It may be thought that this statement is overdrawn, but it is 

 not ; we wish it were. Every doctor in the course of his practice has met with 

 scores of such cases. We have known women who would drink their eau-de-cologne 

 if they could get nothing else. 



Inclemency of weather is another predisposing cause. A man is a cab-driver, 

 out in all weathers, wet and fine. He gets wet through, and has no means of changing 

 his things, but has to stand about, or sit on his box, perhaps in a biting east wind. 

 It is hardly to be wondered at if he tries to put a little warmth into his body by a 

 glass of gin or whiskey. It is of no use telling him that alcohol lowers his tem- 

 perature, and that it lets in the cold instead of keeping it out. You may prove it 

 to him most conclusively in your own way, but if you finish up by asking him what 

 he will take, he will probably choose alcohol in some form or other. 



Long-continued pain sometimes makes people seek ease in alcohol. Tins is the 

 case very often with young women who sufter from neuralgia. Those who have 

 vague uneasy feelings about the stomach sometimes endeavour to relieve them by 



