TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 897, 10 May 1889, Page 7

TEMPERANCE.

THE ‘INEBRIATE’ PROBLEM. The truth is that drunkenness, in a very large proportion of cases, is either a disease, or the effect of disease. As there is a disease called insanity, so there is/a disease which may justly be called inebriety ; or, more accurately, narcomania—a malady of higher nerve-centres, characterised by a dominating impulse to, or crave for, intoxication. The unhealthy desire is not for liquor for its own sake, but for immediate, if temporary, relief of the intolerable agony ol the diseased inebriate, which any kind of anaesthetic narcotic undoubtedly supplies for the drunkenness is mostly alcoholic, simply because alcohol is the most readily available intoxicant in the United Kingdom. Indulgence, however, in chloral, opium, chlorodyne, ether, and other narcotics, is steadily gaining ground among us. The recognition of a physical aspect of the drink question is the key to the solution of the * Inebriate ’ Problem. If the young were taught in all our schools the nature and properties of alcohol, there would he good ground for hope that a truer and more correct knowledge would permeate the British people. The great trnth which we must master is that inebriety is a true disease, a veritable madness for intoxication, ungovernable mania for the Lethe of narcotic oblivion. —Theological Monthly.