Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/125

Rh so damaged as to prevent healthy, consistent, uniform brain-action. A certain range of thought and action may seem sane, but an ever-increasing undercurrent of disease carries them further from normal brain-health. These cases excite the wonderment of the hour, and to moralists are phases of human depravity; but to the psychologist are explosions of masked diseases almost unknown and undiscovered.

It will be apparent to all that the most unfortunate treatment with miscarriage of justice is meted out to these cases. Thus, the inebriate maniac in delirium who commits murder and assault is not a criminal to be cured by punishment. His brain has broken down and needs the most careful restorative treatment. He is physically sick, and can never recover except by the use of well-directed remedies and along the line of exact laws and forces.

In the second class, the profound failure of the present methods of management should direct attention to the real means of cure. Science shows, beyond all doubt, that a system of work-house hospitals, where all these cases can come under exact physical care and restraint, and be organized into self-supporting quarantine stations, will not only protect the community and tax-payer, but put the victim in the best condition for permanent recovery. Here he can be made a producer, and taken from the ranks of consumers and parasites of society. If he is an incurable, he can be made self-supporting, and society and the world can be protected from his influence.

In the third class, when public opinion recognizes that the occasional or continuous use of alcohol or other narcotics is dangerous and likely to produce grave mental disturbance, these alterations of character and conduct will be no mystery. Such men will be recognized as diseased, and come under medical care and recover. Medical and scientific men must teach the world the nature and character of alcohol, and the diseases which are likely to come from its use. This moralists, clergymen, and reformed inebriates, can never do. Today these inebriate maniacs appeal for recognition and sympathy from many homes and firesides. They call for help. They ask for bread. We are deaf to their entreaties—we give them stones. In language that can not be mistaken, they tell us of unstable brain-force, of tottering reason, of marked, insidious disease. We call it vice, and treat them as of sound mind and body. They ask for help for the brain, starved, disorganized, and growing feebler. We give them the pledge and prayer, and taunt them as vile, and willful, and wretched sinners. What wonder that the glimmerings of reason and the lights of a higher manhood should disappear in the darkness of total insanity under such treatment? In the delirium of criminal assault, or the imbecilities of the low drunkard, or the strange acts and changes of