Vicious circles in disease / by Jamieson B. Hurry.

  • Jamieson Boyd Hurry
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vicious circles in disease / by Jamieson B. Hurry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Misery and poverty frequently lead to alcoholic indulgence. As we read in the Book of Proverbs “ Give wine unto the bitter in soul ; let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.” 1 2 But alas ! the alcohol in most cases intensifies both misery and poverty. Tea. Tea is also associated with a Circle, especially when infused long and drunk strong, as in Ireland ; for the resulting dyspepsia further recourse to tea is the usual remedy, a fresh brew being used to remove the very symptoms that former brews have produced. Morphia. In morphinomania the habitue is en¬ snared by the toils of a habit Circle from which escape is all but hopeless ; for this drug, while satiating the immediate craving, creates an appetite for further indulgence, and weakens that self-control without which no salvation is possible : “ This condition gives rise to a true Vicious Circle. . . . The morphinomaniac flies to his syringe before meals in order to awaken an appetite which is always indifferent. After meals the injection is repeated in order to assist digestion. ... As time goes on, the drug is used more and more often and in larger and larger quantities/’3 1 Ch. XXXI. 2 This forms one of the numerous Circles that baffle the social reformer. Poverty, insanitation, unemployment, mal¬ nutrition, ill-health, misery, alcoholism are all intimately correlated. 3 Tourette, Maladies du Systeme Nerveux, p. 244 ; cf. also Curschmann, Lehrbuch der Nervenkrankheiten, p. 930.