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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 645, 8 March 1879, Page 2

Habitual drunkenness, and a constant craving for stimulants, are now declared to be actual and well-defined diseases by leading members of the medical faculty. It has been proved that the craving arises from disordered gastric juice ; from low pulsation of the heart, and from want of tone in the system, more particularly as regards the digestive organs. Habitual drunkenness, arising from one or the other of these causes, it is alleged, can be made amenable to medical treatment. In Victoria, a hospital has been founded under, as we think, the offensive name of the Drunkards' Retreat. It has been established for the cure, as far as medical treatment will effect one, of those unfortunate men and women who are far gone in the disease of inebriety. A tipsy man is a temporary lunatic, and a danger to society, and must of course be dealt with accordingly ; that is to say, he must be restrained from doing harm to his neighbors till he becomes compos mentis again. But we know that nine cases out of ten the ' l drunks" who get 24 hours in the lock-up get drunk again as soon as they regain their liberty. To assist them in evading this almost inevitable result should be the very object of such institutions as the Retreat. It is rather startling, however, to read in the report of Dr. Macarthy, the Superintendent of the place, such a statement as thiß : " Those who deny or pretend to deny the truth of Revelation are not likely to be cured, as the moral motive i3 absent ; such a person is like a ship without rudder or anchor." If a belief of the sort mentioned is not of avail to keep the patient from excess before he enters the retreat, we can scarcely credit that the success of his cure depends on his acceptance of the truths of Revelation afterwards. NotHing could be more injudicious than to start with a foregone conclusiou that unbelievers are incurables. It is a sure way of handicapping them heavily in the race for reform. Every patient should bo thoroughly encouraged in the belief that he can be cured, whatever his religious creed may be. When we start a Drunkards' Retreat in New Zealand, says a southern contemporary let us include Turks, infidels, and heretics of every description, and resolve that they are all within the pale of possible recovery.