Drunkenness and the physiological effect of alcohol / by Charles Mercier.

  • Charles Arthur Mercier
Date:
[1908?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Drunkenness and the physiological effect of alcohol / by Charles Mercier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    \r, -6-- *4 Urtifa-'Ru aiiUuki AWt^-^: DRUNKENNESS AND THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT OF ALCOHOL.* By Chables Mercier, M.D., F.E.G.P. At the present time the medical world is being stirred by a new interest—an interest in the history of medicine—and therefore I make no apology tor addressing you on the subject of drunkenness, although its importance is mainly historical. In other respects it is of fading and diminishing importance. We are told, in one of the most brilliant plays that ever was written, that damns have had then day; and, however prema- ture the assertion may have been with respect to damns, there is no gainsaying that, in this country at least, drunkenness has had its day. We are now a sober nation, and instances of the affection of which I am to treat to-night must be sought for mainly in history. It is true that we are still, upon rare occasions, called upon to treat a case of delirium tremens; and some of us still hear, from time to time, the once familiar phrases, Five shillings or seven days, Forty shillings or a month, but these formulae are rapidly becoming obsolete. It is true that if we listened to some of the advocates of total abstinence, we should suppose that drunkenness was never so rampant or so prevalent as it is now; but these people have failed to move with the times. Their fulminations are out of date. They refer to a state of things that has long passed away. The antagonism to alcohol has fossilised into a super- stition, and total abstinence is advocated for all and sundry, irrespective of whether they are temperate or not. For this reason it is losing, if indeed it have not already lost, its influence. For my part, I abominate intemperance; but I recognise that intemperance is not confined to indulgence iD alcohol. There is intemperance in speech and in statement, as well as intemperance in drink, and, while it is admitted on all •Being the Inaugural Address delivered before the Midland Medical Society.