RT Journal
T1 THe disease of inebriety.
JF Journal of the American Medical Association
JO Journal of the American Medical Association
YR 1899
FD August 26
VO XXXIII
IS 9
SP 554
OP 554
DO 10.1001/jama.1899.02450610056014
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1899.02450610056014
AB Of late years the opinion that inebriety is a disease has been so largely put forward that it has, with many, quite obscured the fact that it is also a vice. In common usage the term covers every form and degree of excess in the use of liquor, from periodic dipsomania—which it may be said does not cover every form of occasional spree, as some would have it—to the common besotted habitual drunkard. It, like charity, certainly covers a multitude of sins, and it would be well for us to keep in mind this fact. Only in a small proportion of cases is drunkenness due originally to a disease properly so called. There are very few drunkards who have been irresistibly impelled to their depraved appetites, and there can not be said to be such an overwhelming majority of them who could not reform were they willing to take themselves