The bases of the temperance reform: an exposition and appeal./ With replies to numerous objections. By Rev. Dawson Burns.

76 The Hrague of Social- Iiinem2pranice.
holic intemperance, as a personal and social disease, is
produiced by a perversion of natural function, or by the
infusion of a foreign element into the system. If the
former, the remedy must be soight in a readjustment
of natural powers, by educational, moral, and religious
means operating within; if the latter, no real remedy can
exist which does not aim at excluding the virus alre,ady
imbibed, and preventing its further reception. In cholera, fever, and plague, there is no cure till the patient
ejects the virulent matter; and could the entrance of
that matter be entirely prevented, the existence of these
diseases would, under the ordinary laws of nature, be
strictly impossible. Now, an examination of alcoholic
intemperance in its origin can only terminate in one result-that is, in the conviction tlat zit belongs, bolth ihysAca/y anzd'orally, lo /he class of fermetnlalvtie (zymoolz'c) diseases. No mere depravation of natural appetite will produce it; never does it exhibit itself till alcohol has been
consumed; and what is specially to be remarked (as indicating not merely an analogy but a family relation
between the plague and drunkenness) is, that alcohol
acts, in the production of the intemperate habit, by
fioisonzIZ the blood and arresltig. the healthy operalion of the
nzervous systici;.* In this manner, and in no other, the
craving for alcoholic drinks is produced-which is always
a physical malady in its inception-until, by continuous
indulgence, it takes a settled and chronic form, not rarely passing into delirizziz ireiens, or leading its victim
through the stages of so-called oinomania (wine-madness) or dipsomania (thirst-madness) to a miserable
* It is a curious coincidence (if only such) that alcohol, though not a ferment, is, as before explained, the result of a double fermentative processthe putrefaction of albumen, which sets up the saccharine fermentation; and
both these processes are allied. Liebig says: "Both fermentation and putrefaction are processes of decomposition of a similar kind-the one of substances destitute of nitrogen, the other of substances containing that element."
4,I
I