Inebriety : its etiology, pathology, treatment and jurisprudence / by Norman Kerr.

  • Norman Shanks Kerr
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inebriety : its etiology, pathology, treatment and jurisprudence / by Norman Kerr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with every one near him, and at times may be seen to do battle with a jeering yelling crowd. His looks and his actions are the looks and actions of a madman. A third, a business man of probity and worth, as soon as he takes an extra glass or two, is truly off his head. His employe's note the symptoms and guard his interests, or he would soon be ruined. In the drink- ing fit he has committed forgery, or he has given his signature to money promises of great value for no consideration. But these are simply the deeds of one who is insane for the time. When his drinking bout has ended he is as correct in his behaviour as ever, and about his sanity there can be no question. Periodic inebriety affords extraordinary examples of temporary insanity. One man becomes the Mania of , ,. - . . . periodic embodiment or piety, oraculary delivering inebriety. so]emn re]jgjous counsel to all with whom he drinks, though in his intervals of abstaining sober- ness he is an avowed atheist. Another labours under the delusion that he is the last man, and bids all his fellows an affectionate farewell. A third is literally mad. He can be controlled only with the utmost difficulty, and by the employment of considerable force. There is no end to the variety of hallucinations and of insane acts committed by periodic inebriates when mad through drink. Look at the periodical inebriate. Though almost as clear-headed and as well-disposed as his abstaining brethren in the intervals between the attacks, during each outbreak he is guilty of freaks, and acts of stupidity or violence, which may truly be said to be the acts of a maniac. A woman was imprisoned two hundred different times for drunkenness and theft. Each time she had