NEW CURE for DRUNKENNESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7258, 21 February 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

NEW CURE for DRUNKENNESS.

A novel idea in the use of intoxicating stimulants came to the notice of a San Francisco reporter in the case of an old friend, who, some time ago, was the living personification of the old, old story of a brilliant mind clouded from the effects. of intoxicants. In his start in life this friend bad bright prospects for a grand future. The appetite for liquor, however, increased upon him to such an extent that he was soon almost entirely incapacitated for work. Hβ rapidly went down hill, and all efforts to rouse him to a sense of his degradation were futile. The reporter last saw him in this condition over a year ago. One day last week he met a spruce and well-dressed man who bore a resemblance to this friend, but whom he did not recognise until the individual threw oat his hand and called the reporter by name. "I suppose yea hardly know me," he said, a smile wreathing his health-blooming face. The reporter admitted that he at first had hardly been able to, and then becoming confidential, as old friends do on meeting, he soon learned the cause oE the change. "Yes," said the friend, " I used to be a very hard drinker, as you know. I tried several times to qait, but I could not. The appetite for strong drink was too much for me. If I went without it for a while I became a nervous wretch. I had to drink or die. A thought was suggested to me one day, though, and I made up my mind to make one supreme effort to rescue myself. I reasoned in this way: A man takes liquor into the stomach, and the stimulant, through the blood, affects the brain. Now, I thought if I could satisfy my appetite without the liquor affecting my brain, I would be all right. If I conld get the taste of the liquor, the aroma, the essence of it, without taking it into the stomach, I knew I could drink at pleasure and not become intoxicated, as drunkenness could not ensue if the liquor did not enter the stomach. I say this idea was suggested to me, and it wa3 in this way : I had noticed that men who made a business of buying and selling wines in large quantities sampled them and ascertained their quality and bouquet by taking two or three mouthfuls in succession, rolling it around their tongues, as one might say, bathing their palate in it —in short, subjecting it to the severest tests by the organs of taste—and then ejecting it from the mouth without swallowing any. The remembrance of this came upon me one day when I was perfectly sober but terribly despondent. I resolved to try it. I did, and have met with tbe most gratifying success. You may laugh, but it is the solemn truth. I took a large drink, of liquor, but instead of letting it pass into my stomach, I checked it in my throat and gargled it for a minute, and then spat it out. To my joy I found my thirst for it almost as much appeased as though I had swallowed the liquor. I tried it again and again with the same effect. I was not made drunk. 1 have followed this plan ever since, and have not been drunk since, although 1 have gargled the liquor, never swallowing a drop, as many as a dozen or more times a day—tbe same number of drinks I need to take. The plan is a very simple, one, and is, I believe, the only one for a slave to the cup." "Has your appetite increased?" "Oα the contrary, it has decreased. By the means I adopted my brain has become clear and strong again, and my will power is aa good as it ever was before I became a hard drinker. In gargling the liquor I get all the benefit of the flavour, and all the satisfaction to my appetite, without losing my senses."