timony before a Committee of the
House of Commons, that there seemed to be "a peculiar elective affinity
for the action of alcohol on the nervous system after it had found its
way through the circulation into the brain," by which the whole organism
was disturbed, and the man rendered less able to resist morbid
influences of any kind. He gave many striking instances of the growth
and power of appetite, which had come under his professional notice, and
of the ingenious devices and desperate resorts to which dypsomaniacs
were driven in their efforts to satisfy their inordinate cravings. No
consideration, temporal or spiritual, had any power to restrain their
appetite, if, by any means, fair or foul, they could obtain alcoholic
stimulants. To get this, he said, the unhappy subject of this terrible
thirst "will tell the most shameful lies--for no truth is ever found in
connection with the habitual drunkard's state. He never yet saw truth in
relation to drink got out of one who was a dypsomaniac--he has
sufficient reason left to tell these untruths, and to understand his
position, because people in that condition are seldom dead drunk; they
are seldom in the condition of total stupidity; they have generally an
eye open to their own affairs, and that which is the main business of
their existence, namely, how to get drink. They will resort to the most
ingenious, mean and degrading contrivances and practices to procure and
conceal liquor, and this, too, while closely watched; and will succeed
in deception, although fabulous quantities are daily swallowed."

Dr. John Nugent gives a case which came within his own knowledge, of a
lady who had been

A MOST EXEMPLARY NUN

for fifteen or twenty years. In consequence of her devotion to the poor,
attending them in fevers, and like cases, it seemed necessary for her to
take stimulants; these stimulants grew to be habitual, and she had been
compelled, five or six times, to place herself in a private asylum. In
three or four weeks after being let out, she would relapse, although she
was believed to be under the strongest influences of religion, and of
the most virtuous desires. There had been developed in her that
disposition to drink which she was unable to overcome or control.

The power of this appetite, and the frightful moral perversions that
often follow its indulgence are vividly portrayed in the following
extract, from an address by Dr. Elisha Harris, of New York, in which he