WILL. 543 



your watchfulness ; the only use I shall make of my liberty will be to 

 commit a crime which I abhor.' " * 



The craving for clriuk in real dipsomaniacs, or for opium 

 or chloral in those subjugated, is of a strength of which 

 normal persons can form no conception. "Were a keg 

 of rum in one corner of a room and were a cannon con- 

 stantly discharging balls between me and it, I could not 

 refrain from passing before that cannon in order to get the 

 rum;" "If a bottle of brandy stood at one hand and the 

 pit of hell yawned at the other, and I were convinced that 

 I should be pushed in as sure as I took one glass, I could 

 not refrain :" such statements abound in dipsomaniacs' 

 mouths. Dr. Mussey of Cincinnati relates this case : 



" A few years ago a tippler was put into an almshouse in this State. 

 Within a few days he had devised various expedients to procure rum, 

 but failed. At length, however, he hit upon one which was successful. 

 He went into the wood-yard of the establishment, placed one hand upon 

 the block, and with an axe in the other, struck it off at a single blow. 

 With the stump raised and streaming he ran into the house and cried, 

 ' Get some rum ! get some rum! my hand is off ! ' In the confusion and 

 bustle of the occasion a bowl of rum was brought, into which he 

 plunged the bleeding member of his body, then raising the bowl to his 

 mouth, drank freely, and exultingly exclaimed, ' Now I am satisfied.' 

 Dr. J. E. Turner tells of a man who, while under treatment for inebriety, 

 during four weeks secretly drank the alcohol from six jars containing 

 morbid specimens. On asking him why he had committed this loath- 

 some act, he replied: ' Sir, it is as impossible for me to control this dis- 

 eased appetite as it is for me to control the pulsations of my heart.' " f 



The passion of love may be called a monomania to 

 which all of us are subject, however otherwise sane. It 

 can coexist with contempt and even hatred for the ' object ' 

 which inspires it, and whilst it lasts the whole life of the 

 man is altered by its presence. Alfieri thus describes the 

 struggles of his unusually powerful inhibitive power with 

 his abnormally excited impulses toward a certain lady : 



"Contemptible in my own eyes, I fell into such a state of melan- 

 choly as would, if long continued, inevitably have led to insanity or 



■* For other cases of ' impulsive insanity,' see H. Maudsley's Responsi- 

 bility iu Mental Disease, pp. 133-170, and Forbes Winslow's Obscure 

 Diseases of the Mind and Brain, chapters vr, vii, viir. 



f Quoted by G. Burr, in an article on the Insanity of Inebriety in the 

 N, Y. Psychological and Medico-Legal Journal, Dec. 1874. 



