The anatomy of drunkenness / By Robert Macnish.

  • Robert Macnish
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The anatomy of drunkenness / By Robert Macnish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    races, and are chiefly distinguished by an uncommon testiness of disposition. They are quick, irritable, and impatient, but withal good at heart, and, when in humour, very pleasant and generous. They are easily put out of temper, but it returns almost immediately. This disposition is very prevalent among Welshmen and Highland lairds. Mountaineers are usually quick- tempered ; but such men are not the worst or most unpleasant. Sterne is undoubtedly right when he says that more virtue is to be found in warm than in cold dispositions. Commodore Trunnion is a marked ex- ample of this temperament; and Captain Fluellen, who compelled the heroic Pistol to eat the leek, is another. VII. Periodical Drunkard.—There are persons whose temperaments are so peculiarly constituted, that they indulge to excess periodically, and are, in the intervals of these indulgences, remarkably sober. This is not a very common case, but I have known moie than one instance of it; and a gentleman, distinguished by the power of bis eloquence in the senate and at the bar, is said to furnish another. In the cases which I )iave known, the drunken mania, for it can get no other name, came on three or four times a-year. The persons, from a state of complete sobriety, felt the most intense desire for drink; and no power, short ot
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