health. Since a beneficent doctor first described this cure to the
British Medical Association, hundreds have been restored and ultimately
reclaimed.

And now as to the persons who are called "soakers." Scattered over the
country are thousands of men and women who do not go to bestial
excesses, but who steadily undermine their constitutions by persistent
tippling. Such a man as a commercial traveller imbibes twenty or thirty
nips in the course of the day; he eats well in the evening, though he is
usually repelled by the sight of food in the morning, and he preserves
an outward appearance of ruddy health. Then there are the female
soakers, whom doctors find to be the most troublesome of all their
patients. There is not a medical man in large practice who has not a
shocking percentage of lady inebriates on his list, and the cases are
hard to manage. An ill-starred woman, whose well-to-do husband is
engaged in business all day, finds that a dull life-weariness overtakes
her. If she has many children, her enforced activity preserves her from
danger; but, if she is childless, the subtle temptation is apt to
overcome her. She seeks unnatural exaltation, and the very secrecy which
is necessary lends a strange zest to the pursuit of a numbing vice. Then
we have such busy men as auctioneers, ship-brokers, water-clerks,
ship-captains, buyers for great firms--all of whom are more or less a
prey to the custom of "standing liquors."

The soaker goes on without meeting any startling check for a good while;
but, by slow degrees, the main organs of the body suffer, and a chronic
state of alcoholic irritation is set up. A man becomes suspected by his
employers and slighted by his abstemious friends; he loses health,
character, prospects; and yet he is invariably ready to declare that no
one ever saw him the worse for drink. The tippling goes on till the
resultant irritation reaches an acute stage, and the faintest disturbing
cause brings on _delirium tremens_. There is only one way with people
thus afflicted. They must be made to loathe alcohol, and their nerves
must at the same time be artificially stimulated. The cure is not
precisely easy, but it is certain. If my directions are followed out,
then a man who is in the last stage of alcoholic debility will not only
regain a certain measure of health, but he will turn with horror from
the stuff that fascinated him. In the case of the soaker a little wine
may be given at meal-times du