INEBRIATE ASYLUMS OR HOSPITALS. To the Members of the Massachusetts State Board of Health. GENTLEMEN:-A few days only before the last fatal illness of our excellent friend and co-laborer, Dr. Derby, he urged me to prepare an article on State Inebriate Asylums. I did not then agree to his proposition, but, since his death, I feel that a duty is laid upon me to carry forward any objects he had at heart. Surely, no man I have ever known devoted himself with a more self-sacrificing love or with a more intelligent zeal for a cause than he did to that which we advocate; viz., the improvement of the public health. Any proposition, therefore, made by such a man, and coming to me, as it were, from his open grave, becomes sanctified by death, and not to be refused. Were I now to decline, I should feel that I was recreant to the dying request of a well-beloved friend, and false to his noble example. Would that I could hope to prepare anything that would entirely commend itself to his mature judgment and his literary skill. As a tribute to his dear memory, I dedicate this paper, trusting that it may be of some service to the noble cause of temperance. THE SUBJECT. I shall not confine myself closely to the subject proposed by Dr. Derby, although that, viz., the necessity for the State to establish one or more inebriate asylums or hospitals for the cure of drunkards, will be my chief aim. As in my communications made to you on former occasions, I. shall divide my present one into several parts, under different heads. DRUNKENNESS NOW AND FORMERLY. Drunkenness is one of the roots of all evil to the person, to his family, his friends, and finally to the State at large. It ruins the health of the individual who indulges in it. It fills our prisons with criminals who have voluntarily deprived themselves of reason before their entrance on crime. Our State almshouses are crowded with its direct or indirect victims, and they are a great burden to the tax-paying, temperate people of the Commonwealth. These statements seem truisms-I presume they will be admitted by every one. The records of the police,* of our courts and almshouses fully sustain them. The facts are lamented by all reasonable persons, even if they be temperate users of alcohol themselves. Even literature feels the influence of the avowed or silent anathemas passed at the present day upon this great curse of humanity. We find few poets who now salute in jovial strains the flowing bowl. In order to get any fervent praises of wine, we must go back to those days when to drink deeply was esteemed an honorable feat, and to lie under the table after a dinner rout was not deemed unseemly. Again, there can be no doubt of the truth of the converse proposition, viz., that society at the present hour is permeated by the temperance idea to a degree that would appear ludicrous to our fathers, when drunkenness passed with little rebuke, save from some satirist like Hogarth, of England, or Troost, of Holland, who delighted to show out boldly upon their living canvas the vices of their age. The grossest and most absurd actions. were done within the memory almost of our day, and they were met usually only with a laugh, as at a mere practical and natural joke committed while in "one's cups," and therefore to be venially dealt with. No one lost caste "on 'change" or in social life by the performance of acts which would now be deemed disgraceful under similar circumstances. Exact justice, therefore, to the past and to the present times, must, I think, convince every one that drunkenness prevailed with the consent of the community to a * From 1864 to 1873 inclusive, the yearly average of drunkards noted and recorded by the police of Boston, was as follows:- During first six years, 17,840; during last four years, 19,472. (See Report by E. H. SAVAGE, CHIEF OF POLICE, p. 57, 1873.) |