Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/399

 ALCOHOLIC HYPNOTISM 385

Neither the police nor the physician thought the affair a case of intoxication. There was nothing characteristic in his manner of walicing. He was sent to the asylum. On his entrance the brother guardian did not suspect him of alcoholism. The patient could not speak or see. They thought he was blind because his pupils did not stir when a handkerchief was waved before his eyes ; his look was fixed ; his expression lifeless. They offered him something to eat. At first he refused without speaking or otherwise expressing anything. When they pre- vailed upon him to drink a cup of coffee and eat a little bread, he seemed to awake from a dream, demanding where he was.

On Thursday he was perfectly himself. He said that on Monday, having already drunk a good deal of alcohol, in the evening he entered a cafe in a street. There he found a friend, with whom he took several drinks. He left the cafe, not know- ing how, and from that moment memory failed him.

Consciousness only returned Wednesday afternoon. He remembered what had happened since then and previous to that time.

It was in vain that they sought to awaken any remembrance. Memory preserved not the least vestige of any event occurring between Monday evening and Wednesday afternoon. The sub- ject declared that for a long time he had been given to alco- holic excesses. At the beginning, especially, he had had frequent attacks of the " drink fever." He had been very drunk two hundred times, he said ; but nothing like this had ever happened to him. He persisted in the belief that his com- panion had put something foreign into his drink. It had never made him seriously ill, nor caused any trouble. His complex- ion was anaemic. There was a slight trembling of the tongue and hands. He showed different signs of degeneracy: ill-formed skull, unsymmetrical ears, etc.

There was no notable point of anomaly in his mental state. One of his sisters had been in the asylum, where she died. She was insane and had nervous attacks.

Here was a state of unconsciousness, of amnesia, brought on by alcohol and lasting nearly forty-eight hours.