lcohol
on the brain. It is the brain which is mainly effected. In temporary
drunkenness, the brain becomes in an abnormal state of alimentation, and
if this habit is persisted in for years, the nervous tissue itself
becomes permeated with alcohol, and organic changes take place in the
nervous tissues of the brain, producing _that frightful and dreadful
chronic insanity which we see in lunatic asylums, traceable entirely to
habits of intoxication_. A large percentage of frightful mental and
brain disturbances can, he declared, be traced to the drunkenness of
parents.

Dr. D.G. Dodge, late of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, who, with.
Dr. Joseph Parrish, gave testimony before the committee of the House of
Commons, said, in one of his answers: "With the excessive use of
alcohol, functional disorder will invariably appear, and no organ will
be more seriously affected, and possibly impaired, than the brain. _This
is shown in the inebriate by a weakened intellect, a general debility of
the mental faculties_, a partial or total loss of self-respect, and a
departure of the power of self-command; all of which, acting together,
place the victim at the mercy of a depraved and morbid appetite, and
make him utterly powerless, by his own unaided efforts, to secure his
recovery from the disease which is destroying him." And he adds: "I am
of opinion that there is a

"GREAT SIMILARITY BETWEEN INEBRIETY AND INSANITY.

"I am decidedly of opinion that the former has taken its place in the
family of diseases as prominently as its twin-brother insanity; and, in
my opinion, the day is not far distant when the pathology of the former
will be as fully understood and as successfully treated as the latter,
and even more successfully, since it is more within the reach and bounds
of human control, which, wisely exercised and scientifically
administered, may prevent curable inebriation from verging into possible
incurable insanity."

GENERAL IMPAIRMENT OF THE FACULTIES.

In a more recent lecture than the one from which we have quoted so
freely, Dr. Richardson, speaking of the action of alcohol on the mind,
gives the following sad picture of its ravages:

"An analysis of the condition of the mind induced and maintained by the
free daily use of alcohol as a drink, reveals a singular order of facts.
The manifestation fails altogether to reveal the exaltation of any
reasoning power in a useful or satisfactory direction. I have never met