y or moral responsibility, and would act out
his insane passion, whether he were a lawyer, an army officer or a
hod-carrier. In other words, that social position gave the wife of an
inebriate no immunity from personal violence when alone with her
drunken husband."

Dr. Angier did not reply, but his face became thoughtful.

"Have you given much attention to the pathology of drunkenness?" asked
one of the gentlemen.

"Some; not a great deal. The subject is one of the most perplexing and
difficult we have to deal with."

"You class intemperance with diseases, do you not?"

"Yes; certain forms of it. It may be hereditary or acquired like any
other disease. One man may have a pulmonary, another a bilious and
another a dypso-maniac diathesis, and an exposure to exciting causes in
one case is as fatal to health as in the other. If there exist a
predisposition to consumption, the disease will be developed under
peculiar morbific influences which would have no deleterious effect
upon a subject not so predisposed. The same law operates as unerringly
in the inherited predisposition to intemperance. Let the man with a
dypso-maniac diathesis indulge in the use of intoxicating liquors, and
he will surely become a drunkard. There is no more immunity for him
than for the man who with tubercles in his lungs exposes himself to
cold, bad air and enervating bodily conditions."

"A more serious view of the case, doctor, than is usually taken."

"I know, but a moment's consideration--to say nothing of observed
facts--will satisfy any reasonable man of its truth."

"What do you mean by dypso-mania as a medical term?"

"The word," replied Dr. Angier, "means crazy for drink, and is used in
the profession to designate that condition of alcoholic disease in
which the subject when under its influence has no power of
self-control. It is characterized by an inordinate and irresistible
desire for alcoholic liquors, varying in intensity from a slight
departure from a normal appetite to the most depraved and entire
abandonment to its influence. When this disease becomes developed, its
action upon the brain is to deteriorate its quality and impair its
functions. All the faculties become more or less weakened. Reason,
judgment, perception, memory and understanding lose their vigor and
capacity. The will becomes powerless before the strong propensity to
drink. The moral sentiments and affections likewise become involved in
the general impairmen