THE CLAIMS OF INEBRIATES TO PUBLIC SYMPATHY. 
A REPORT 
MADE TO THE 
Connecticut State Medical Society, 
By B. N. COMINGS, M.D. 
MAY 28, 1873. [From Proceedings of Connecticut Medical Society, May, 1873.] 
REPORT OF 
COMMITTEE ON INEBRIATE ASYLUMS. 
BY B. N. COMINGS, M.D., OF NEW BKITAIN. 
Statistics.—There is at present no organized system for collect- 
ing statistics in this State by which we could learn the exact 
number of inebriates in the commonwealth. Careful statistics 
have been gathered in a few communities, from which we may 
safely make an approximate estimate that there are not less than 
twenty thousand inebriates in the State, and probably twice 
this number of moderate drinkers. In one of the cities, with only 
twelve thousand inhabitants, a careful estimate gives four hundred 
and ninety-seven drunkards, eight hundred and twenty-four occa- 
sional drunkards, two thousand four hundred and eighty-nine 
habitual drinkers, of whom three hundred and thirty are females. 
Of all the men over twenty-one years of age who have died for 
the last five years, fifteen out of every forty-one, or more than one- 
third, were intemperate. Taking the facts, so far as known, as a 
basis of estimate, not less than one-fourth of all the men over 
twenty-one years of age, who die in Connecticut, are intemperate. 
Increase of Intemperance.—It is an alarming fact that intem- 
perance is rapidly on the increase in the commonwealth. The 
percentage of increase, as indicated by the increase of crime, and 
the increase of the number of places where intoxicating liquors 
are sold, and as indicated by statistics, where they have been 
carefully collected, is more than ten per cent, annually, thus 
doubling the gross percentage every ten years. Thirty years 
ago, of five hundred operatives in the factories of one of our vil- 
lages, there were only twenty who used intoxicants; now, by 
actual estimate, there are one hundred in the same number of 
operatives; but the increase for the last ten years is estimated to 
be greater than for the twenty previous years. In several of our 2 
cities there has been a very large increase in the number of places 
where intoxicants are sold, averaging, at the present time, one for 
every one hundred inhabitants, including men, women, and children. 
Temperance Discussion.—For the last half century the subject 
of intemperance has occupied a large share of public attention, and 
been a fruitful theme of discussion in the pulpit, on the platform, 
and in the various publications of the day. Much of this discus- 
sion has been a random and a superficial consideration of the follies 
and absurdities of intemperance as a vice, without any calm philo- 
sophical inquiry into the physiological and scientific principles 
which are involved in this the greatest humanitarian problem of 
the age. The proper limits of a reasonably lengthy report will 
not permit us to discuss all the points involved in such a problem; 
we shall therefore only ask your attention to a brief consideration 
of the claims of inebriates to the sympathy and aid of the public, 
and the means by which their condition may be improved. 
Until quite recently intemperance has been regarded by the med- 
ical profession and the public mind generally as a pernicious habit 
or a vice which its victims may abandon at will. The inebriate 
has been the constant and fruitful subject of ridicule and satire, 
and of denunciation and legal prosecution. He has been a target 
for public declaimers and a victim for the petty courts. The rum- 
seller has turned him out of doors when his presence has been 
likely to keep away better customers, and the moderate drinker 
has treated him with scorn and contempt because he suggested too 
emphatically a condition to which his own habits were tending. 
He is, therefore, socially without friends and legally an outcast 
and a criminal, not welcome in the social circle, in the church, or 
in good society. The time has now come when it is the imperative 
duty of the medical profession, as the students of the infirmities 
of the race, to investigate his case and extend, if possible, a help- 
ing hand. 
Intemperance a Disease—Dr. Willard Parker, of New York, 
stated in the meeting of the American Association for the Cure of 
Inebriates : “ I feel that inebriety is as much a disease as scarlatina 
or small pox.” Other prominent medical men in this country and 
in Europe have been equally emphatic in this opinion, and it is 
becoming a settled theory of the profession. A distinguished 
divine has recently said that he felt “ that the doctors made a mis- 
take in teaching that drunkenness was a disease.” He regarded 
it as a sin, and would have it severely punished. Among theolo- gians there is a very general disposition to coincide with the rever- 
end D.D. But how a series of acts w7hieh destroy a man’s moral 
sense, weakens his power of volition, disorganizes nearly every vital 
organ in the body, and fixes permanent changes in the brain, the 
controling organ of all, can be a sin and nothing more, we cannot 
comprehend. Two very lengthy articles have recently appeared in 
a Boston journal in which the writer attacks with great vehemence 
the theory that drunkenness is a disease. His argument is based 
on the assumption that the man acts freely in becoming a drunkard, 
and has the power of choice or will, and therefore cannot be 
diseased, and he apparently assumes that the medical theory de- 
nies that drunkenness is a vice, both of which are absurd. A 
man who has a morbid appetite from disease does not necessarily 
lose the power of volition thereby. His will-power may be 
weakened, but it is not likely to be destroyed. A disposition 
to palliate the crimes of such men as Foster has probably intensi- 
fied the opposition to the theory that drunkenness is a disease. 
But this, it must be remembered, was the plea of the lawyers and 
friends, and not of the medical profession. The true physiological 
view is entirely misapprehended from a superficial idea of it. 
Continued use of alcoholic stimulants induces a disease, known as 
alcoholism, inebriety or dypsomania. The moral quality of any 
act of drunkenness is not necessarily changed by the fact of disease, 
but the degree of the guilt may be estimated by the extent of the 
disease. To the physiologists alcoholism is not a vice, it is a 
consequence of a series of vicious acts, it is the organic penalty 
for drunkenness, and because the criminal is suffering the penalty 
of a violated law, he is not thereby excusable in continuing the 
same violation while he still retains some of the qualities of a free 
moral agent, and so much of this will-power as he may have lost 
was by his own free-will act. Let it be distinctly understood 
that neither the inebriate nor his friends have either a moral or 
legal right to demand that he shall be exempt from those penalties 
which the common sentiments of mankind have affixed to the com- 
mission of high crimes. The theory that alcoholism is a disease 
demands that the inebriate shall be taken care of and reformed 
when practicable, and when not practicable put where society 
can be protected from his brutality. The highest good of society 
as well as the best good of the individual demand that the fallen 
shall be lifted up and reformed, and the Christianity we profess 
confirms this demand. We have alluded to this matter because 4 
it has been made an issue in theory by such high authority we 
can not consistently ignore it, and because it practically involves 
the great question, whether the inebriate shall be treated only as 
a criminal and an outlaw, and severely punished with tines and im- 
prisonment, or whether he shall, under favorable circumstances, be 
treated as a victim of disease. It is the most important problem 
we are likely to be called upon to solve. A proper solution of it 
involves the highest good of a very large percentage of our fellow 
men. If alcoholism is an idea of the imagination, a mere fancy 
and not a disease, and the inebriate not a victim of disease, then 
he is not our patient—then the case belongs to the moralist and 
the legal authorities, who, it must be confessed, have not hitherto 
been very successful in his reformation and cure. We believe the 
medical profession will very generally adhere to the opinion that 
inebriety is a disease, and that the victim of it should be treated 
with kindness and sympathy, with a view to his reformation and 
cure, unless he has become so brutalized that reformatory means 
promise no hope in his case. 
It is a current statement among temperance men, including those 
who do not believe that intemperance is a disease, that at least one 
hundred thousand persons die annually of intemperance in this 
country, and we have no reason to doubt the correctness of their 
estimate. What is the real cause of the death of this large army 
of persons ? Medical men will not easily comprehend how so 
many persons can die of vice without disease. O.ur understand- 
ing of the matter is, that those persons die of disease induced (by 
the vice of intemperance) in some one or more of the vital organs. 
We know of no other way of accounting for this great mortality, 
except on the theory of disease. Men who are guilty of a vice 
may, and often do, reform, and become permanently good men; 
and unless actual disease has been produced by a life of vice they 
are rid of the vice. The temptation soon ceases to trouble them. 
But this is not true of alcoholism. Repentance and reform do 
not cure this malady. A man who has once been an inebriate is 
always liable to certain phenomena which are characteristic of 
this disease and no other. A person may have practised total 
abstinence for years, and yet, if he chances to become debilitated 
and be in a low nervous state, he is liable to exhibit the charac- 
teristic symptoms of delirium tremens, showing that the organic 
conditions for this terrible disease, though they may have been 
latent for years, were not extinct. The patient was free from 5 
the vice, but not from the disease. The dypsomaniac is never 
cured, to such an extent that his old mania is not liable to be 
aroused by the taste of an alcoholic stimulant. There are persons 
of this class who can never safely touch their lips to the wine 
cup at the communion, or use alcohol medicinally. Some years 
ago, the writer prescribed for a patient, of whose habits he was 
ignorant, two ounces of whiskey with quinine, to be taken in four 
doses, and on the following day was surprised to find the patient in 
a state of beastly intoxication. He had been an abstainer for two 
years. The fii'st dose so excited him that he compelled his wife 
to send to the drug store for whiskey. 
The autopsy of inebriates in a large percentage of cases reveals 
serious organic changes in the brain: such as excess of fluids in 
the ventricles; enlargement of the blood vessels ; hardening in 
some cases, and softening in others. The most important organic 
change is in the molecular structure, which can be shown only 
by the microscope, if at all. If no organic change whatever 
were revealed in the brain, this fact would not necessarily prove 
that the brain was not diseased. In that most obscure and 
treacherous of brain diseases, cerebro-spinal menengitis, post- 
mortem examinations have sometimes failed to reveal any or- 
ganic lesion, when the symptoms had been well marked in the 
patient; in other cases perhaps no more distinctly marked, the 
lesions have been abundant and well defined. The brain is so 
nicely organized, that the most experienced sometimes fail in 
revealing its pathological changes. There are many cases of 
insanity in which no pathologist is able to demonstrate organic 
disease of the brain, when there had been disease sufficient to 
cause death. Some forms of dyspepsia prove fatal without 
showing adequate pathological cause. The facts now before us 
seem very clearly to indicate that inebriety is both a vice and 
a disease. The one a cause, and the other an effect. In its 
combined character, it is more appalling in its consequences, 
and more difficult to manage satisfactorily, than any other that 
has ever afflicted the race. It is to be devoutly hoped that a 
better understanding of its true nature and a more thorough and 
general education of the people may yet stay the ravages of 
this giant evil. If there is any one argument which would seem 
to be more potent than any other in persuading men to abandon 
the use of intoxicants, it is the physiological view that the habit- 
ual use of intoxicants stealthily but surely induces disease of the 6 
brain, the most important organ of the body—a disease which must 
from its very nature he as lasting as life; and besides ruining 
the moral and physical being, transmits the worst possible 
heritage to his posterity. It seems to us that if men will not 
listen to this argument, no other can reach them ; nothing but 
special divine infliience. It is one of the appalling facts of this 
disease, that as it progresses the moral sense and the ability to 
appreciate moral considerations are more and more obliterated till 
the individual is more brute than man. 
Development of Alcoholic Disease.—Like most agencies which 
induce constitutional changes in the human system, alcohol does 
not suddenly produce disease. It does not come over its victims 
like an intermittent fever or an eruptive disease, heralded by 
severe rigor or a paroxysm of fever. Its invasion is like that of 
tubercular disease, which often commences with slight deteriora- 
tion of health, so slight as to escape observation. Then the little 
tubercular virus of the future disease is deposited here and there. 
This enlarges, more is formed, and by and by the diseased action 
is so fully established that it does not require an expert to de- 
tect it. A single act of inebriety does not constitute disease, 
though it may be one of a series which lead to it. Total absti- 
nence or the ability to practice it at will without inconvenience is 
practically the only reliable evidence of the non-existence of the 
disease in question, in a person who has indulged in alcoholic 
stimulants to any considerable extent. The abstinence must not 
be intermittent, but must extend to a longer period than usual. 
Intermittent abstinence is characteristic of dipsomania, one of the 
worse forms of alcoholism. A desire for stimulants more urgent 
and imperative than the normal appetite for the ordinary elements 
of nutrition, nmst be regarded as evidence of disease more or less 
grave, according to the urgency of the desire; and whenever it is 
an inconvenience or a self-denial even to abstain from the use of 
an alcoholic stimulant either habitual or occasional, it is time to 
be admonished of danger. 
There are various phases of disease induced by intemper- 
ance ; of these we can only notice the more prominent. Drunken- 
ness and inebriety only characterize certain stages of indulgence. 
Dypsomania is applied chiefly to intermittent drinkers. Alcohol- 
ism is a general term representing any abnormal condition induced 
by the use of alcohol in any of its forms. Dypsomania signifies 
a mania or insanity for drink, and like any other mania sets at 7 
defiance reason, conscience, social obligations, public opinion, and 
in fact, any of the ordinary restraints of men. The disease of 
alcoholism in its various manifestations, is much more common 
and general than medical men even have been aware of. It has 
long been a mystery, an unsolved problem, why so many men fall 
into intemperate habits when the consequences are so terrible, and 
when there are so many considerations to deter them from it. 
Men of culture, men of good sense in other matters, men of 
brilliant prospects for life, men in exalted positions of honor and 
trust, men and women too from every rank and station of life, 
throng this broad road to ruin, not as isolated individuals, not by 
tens and scores, but by thousands and hundreds of thousands, 
making in all a very large percentage of the American people. 
Should we attempt a full report of this phase of the subject, the 
disease has become so general and so appalling in its consequences, 
we fear we should be regarded as too extravagant and visionary 
to be entitled to confidence. We will, however, suggest to any 
who may wish to know the facts, to take a single ward in the 
poorer portion of any of our cities, and carefully examine the 
physical condition of men and women over twenty-one years of 
age. 
Causes of Disease.—The predisposing causes which lead to 
intemperance in different individuals are very numerous. We 
can only ask your attention to those most important and most 
common in their operation. 
Love of Excitement.— A love of excitement as an element of 
character is universal in the race, and does not exist in any other 
animal to any considerable extent. It is one of the leading qual- 
ities which mark and distinguish man from the lower order of 
animals. We can hardly conceive to what a condition man would 
be reduced if his love of excitement was blotted out. Alcoholic 
beverages meet in an artificial way, to a certain extent, this prin- 
ciple in man. But we are not to infer that the love of alcohol is 
an instinct of man, as a recent medical writer has assumed, for all 
human beings do not possess a propensity for the use of alcoholic 
stimulants prior to experience and independent of instruction. 
Except when the love of intoxicants is hereditary, the child uni- 
versally rejects them, unless they are disguised by something he 
instinctively loves. There are whole families, including several 
generations, who seem to have no tendency to intemperance, and 
no ordinary circumstances of temptation can induce them to alco- 
holic indulgence. 8 
Macnish, in his “ Anatomy of Drunkenness,” says: “ We drink 
at first for the serenity which is diffused over the mind, and not 
from any positive love we bear to the liquor, but in the course of 
time an animal fondness for drink is acquired, and men come to 
like the taste of it as a child likes sweetmeats. 
In a normal condition we do not believe that there is an instinc- 
tive or a natural appetite for alcohol, but a parent who has ac- 
quired this appetite may, and often does, transmit it to his pos- 
terity. Hereditary tendency to intemperance has for a long time 
been recognized by medical men. Plutarch Avrote: “ Drunkards 
beget drunkards. There is no reason wh}r the law of heritage 
so generally recognized in the animal should fail of application in 
the case of man.” Burton, in his “ Anatomy of Melancholy,” writ- 
ten before the temperance agitation of our time, very quaintly 
remarks, “ if a drunken man beget a child, it will never have a 
good brain.” Dr. Darwin wrote half a century ago: “ It is 
remarkable that all the diseases from drinking spirituous liquors 
are liable to become hereditary even to the third generation, grad- 
ually increasing, if the cause be continued, till the family becomes 
extinct.” A writer in the British Physiological Journal gives 
the result of his observation in these strong words: “ The most 
startling problem connected with intemperance is that not only 
does it affect the health, morals and intelligence of the offspring 
of its votaries, but they inherit the fatal tendency and feel a craAr- 
ing for the same liquors which acted as poison on their system 
from the commencement of their being. It is especially so when 
both parents are drunkards.” 
Hereditary Transmission.—Examples illustrating this heredi- 
tary tendency, like the following, are abundant in almost any com- 
munity. Mr. , the father of five sons, was a total abstainer 
for five years, during which period he had two sons who were 
never known to drink; at a later period he became a hard drinker 
and died of delirium tremens. Of the three sons born during the 
intemperate period, two have died of delirium tremens, and the 
other is still living an inebriate. Mrs. raised six children. 
During the period of gestation, and the nursing of one of the six, 
she used milk punch, daily. This son became early in life a com- 
mon drunkard. The other children are all temperate. Mrs. , 
an Englishwoman, was a moderate beer drinker, and fed her chil- 
dren rum in their pap to make them quiet. Three of her sons arc 
in State’s prison. The two others at large are common drunkards. 9 
The two daughters, one at fifteen and the other at seventeen, went 
to street life in New York. The father of this family was a tem- 
perate, industrious mechanic. Mr. , a member of a Presby- 
terian church, in good standing, of an excellent family, whose wife 
was of a very decided Christian character, made a daily practice 
of taking cider, or some mild stimulant, and was for many years 
considered temperate, though he ultimately died of softening of 
the brain from excessive drinking later in life, raised a family of 
six sons of extraordinary promise till they reached maturity, when 
they all became intemperate. 
Hereditary Alcoholism not developed till maturity.—Hereditary 
alcoholism, like most other hereditary diseases, does not develop 
until the maturity of the individual; though there are children 
who evince a fondness for the taste of alcohol from the cradle up. 
Only a few days since a child of intemperate parents, too young 
to talk, was seen to cry for whiskey, and when taking it clear 
from the tumbler smacked his lips with evident satisfaction and 
cried for more when it was withheld. The alcoholic diathesis is as 
well-marked and as readily recognized by the observing physiolo- 
gist as the tubercular. The sensual animal organization of the 
child of drinking parents as clearly foreshadows its liabilities as 
the rosy tint of the cheeks, the long eyelashes, the slender neck 
and narrow chest indicate turbercular tendency. The alcoholic 
diathesis is early shoAvn by indecision ot character, weak will- 
power, nervous irritability, tendency to convulsions or epilepsy 
from slight causes. The appetite, which is often morbid or capri- 
cious or extravagant, is often stronger than the reasoning powers 
or the judgment. With such children self-indulgence is a ruling 
passion, which controls and moulds the character. It requires no 
prophetic vision to foresee that children thus organized will be- 
come easy victims to intemperance, if they are brought within its 
seductive influence. The peculiarities of the alcoholic diathesis 
are closely allied to those of hereditary insanity. The same men- 
tal and physical qualities characterize each, and it often happens 
that insanity and alcoholism develop in different individuals of the 
same family, from the same constitutional causes. 
Testimony of Medical Men.—Dr. Dodge, of the New York 
State Inebriate Asylum, says: “ I am of opinion that there is a 
great similarity between inebriety and insanity. The one is twin 
brother of the other. The two diseases are closely connected, 
both in their manifestations and results, and, to a certain extent, 10 
in the means to be used for their removal.” Dr. John Nugent, 
for twenty-six years inspector of lunatics in Ireland, testifies to 
the Select Committee of the House of Commons that his experi- 
ence among lunatics led him to believe that there is a very close 
relation between the results of the abuse of alcohol and insanity. 
He cited the case of a professional man who had become addicted 
to intemperance, whose four children were either mal-formed or 
insane. The population of Ireland had decreased two millions in 
the last twenty-five years, but there is the same amount of insanity 
now that there was when the population was larger by two mil- 
lions. He attributed this in a great measure to indulgence in 
drink. As to whether drunkenness leads up to disease, or whether 
the disease leads up to drinking, he thought they both acted on 
each other as cause and effect. If there is a disposition to insanity, 
drink is sure to develop it. On the other hand, there are other 
persons who show their insanity by a disposition to drink. He 
cited the case where one brother became insane and the other a 
drunkard. Dr. Arthur Mitchell, Commissioner for Lunacy for 
Scotland, stated that nineteen per cent, of the cases of insanity 
was caused by intemperance. The children of drunkards are in 
larger proportion idiotic than other children, and in a larger propor- 
tion become themselves drunkards, and are also in a larger pro- 
portion liable to the ordinary forms of acquired insanity. Dr. 
Forbes Winslow, from an experience of thirty years among the 
insane and intemperate of the upper classes of English society, 
stated “ that a large percentage of frightful mental and brain 
disturbances can be traced to the drunkenness of parents, confirm- 
ing the great physiological law that like begets like. In a list of 
criminals he observed a case in which a father was a drunkard, 
grandfather a drunkard, grandmother an idiot, and in the whole 
line of that family they figured as drunkards, criminals and idiots. 
All the forms of vice were hereditarily transmitted. In Norway, 
in ten years of free liquor traffic, after the removal of the spirit 
duty, insanity increased fifty per cent., and congenital idiocy one 
hundred and fifty per cent. Dr. Crane, an English physician, 
says the children of inebriates have twenty-nine times as many 
idiots among them as the children of the temperate. Dr. Thomas 
Nelson, Superintendent of Queensbury, Edinbiu-gh, says: “There 
is a hereditary taint which may lead a person to fall into dissipa- 
tion very easily, and there is a peculiarity of temperament which 
marks a person for an incurable drunkard.” 11 
I have quoted this concise synopsis of the testimony given by a 
few of the leading medical men before the select committee of the 
House of Commons, because there ai-e many who seem inclined to 
discredit both the fact of the alcoholic diathesis as well as its 
hereditary nature, and because the vast importance of this heredi- 
tary transmission is so little known and so inadequately appre- 
ciated. We might add to this a large amount of testimony from 
prominent medical men in our own country, but we only ask your 
attention to the following declaration, prepared and signed by the 
leading medical men of New York. “We are of the opinion that 
the use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage is productive of a large 
amount of physical disease; that it entails diseased appetites upon 
offspring; and that it is the cause of a large percentage of the 
crime and pauperism of our cities and country.” Signed, Edward 
Delafield, M.IX, President of Physicians and Surgeons, and of 
Roosevelt Hospital; Willard Parker, M.D., Ex-President Acad- 
emy of Medicine; A. Clark, M.D., Professor College of Physicians 
and Surgeons, and Senior Physician Bellevue Hospital; James 
Anderson, M.D., Ex-President Academy of Medicine and President 
Physicians Mutual Aid Association; E. R. Peaslee, M.D., Ex- 
President Academy of Medicine; C. R. Agnew, M.I)., Ex-Presi- 
dent Medical Society of the State of New York; Stephen Smith, 
M.I)., Surgeon Bellevue Hospital, Commissioner of Health and 
President American Health Association ; Alfred C. Post, M.D., 
LL.I)., Professor of Surgery in University Medical College and 
Ex-President of N. Y. Academy of Medicine; Elisha Harris, M.D., 
Secretary Amer. Public Health Association, late Sanitary Superin- 
tendent Metropolitan Board of Health, and Corresponding Secre- 
tary Prison Association of N. Y.; Erasmus I). Hudson, M.D., Phy- 
sician and Surgeon ; E. I). Hudson, Jr.,M.D., Professor of Theory 
and Practice of Medicine, Woman’s Medical College of N. Y. In 
firmary; Ellsworth Elliot, M.D., President of N. Y. County Med- 
ical Society; Stephen Rogers, M.D., President of the Medico Le- 
gal Society of N. Y.; Andrew F. Smith, M.D., Visiting Physician 
to St. Luke’s Hospital, &c.; J. E. Jarmin, M.D. ; Verranus Morse, 
M.D., Brooklyn ; E. T. Richardson, M.I)., Brooklyn ; William H. 
Hall, M.D.; Walter R. Gillette, M.D., Physician to Charity Hos- 
pital, Lecturer University Medical College ; J. R. Learning, M.D., 
Physician to St. Luke’s Hospital, President University Alumni 
Association, Emiritus Professor of Medicine, etc. ; James O. Pond, 
M.I)., T reasurer N. Y. Academy of Medicine; and others. 12 
The subject of hereditary transmission was very fully and ably 
presented to this Society at the annual meeting in 1870, by Dr. 
Bronson of New Haven, and we ask your attention again to the 
following emphatic sentences. “ An individual is in structure and 
function but the recapitulation of all that has gone before. An 
abridgement of his ancestry and of himself. The family pattern, 
whatever it may be, is faithfully copied and its modification succes- 
sively adopted.” This doctrine, that the sins of the father shall 
be visited upon the children, is as old as the decalogue, and we 
cannot over-estimate its importance in our treatment of the vices 
and infirmities of our fellow men. 
Hereditary taint not confined to children of Low Drunkards.— 
This inheritance of moral and physical evil is not confined to the 
children of the low drunkard. It is, if possible, moi'e sure to be the 
inheritance of the moderate or temperate drinker, who daily con- 
fines himself within certain prescribed limits. The brain of such 
a man is never absolutely free from the alcoholic influence, while 
the common drunkard’s may be clear of it for intervals of several 
days, or it may be weeks when this peculiar diathesis might not be 
transmitted. The degeneracy of the children of our prominent 
statesmen and politicians, as well as of many others in higher life, 
sadly confirm this view of the subject. The writer was in college 
with a young man who bore a great name, but who was then an ine- 
briate at eighteen, and went to an early grave from intemperance. 
That great name has no living representative, while the name of 
Adams, as an almost solitary exception, remains honored among 
the great men of to-day. The elder John Adams was noted for his 
temperate, frugal habits; John Quincy, “the old man eloquent,” 
was an abstemious cold water drinker to the day he died so glo- 
riously in the House of Representatives, the great theater of his 
life. 
Social Habits.—There are probably more men who commence 
alcoholic indulgence with the social glass than in all other ways 
combined. Young men and boys of highly social nature, without 
any hereditary taint, very easily acquire the habit of using intoxi- 
cants by falling in with the social customs of American society, 
and the alcoholic disease is established long before they become 
conscious of the evil consequences which are sure to overtake them. 
When there is a hereditary taint the social net is wide spread 
and very attractive, and they that enter it are sure to be firmly 
caught. Indulgence is in such perfect harmony with their organ- 13 
ization, that intemperance is as easy and natural to them as scar- 
latina or measles. Their systems are morally certain to take the 
disease at first exposure, and the younger the exposure the more 
rapid will be the progress of the disease. The brain in the young 
is more easily affected by alcohol than in the aged. A young 
man of twenty acquires a morbid appetite for intoxicants much 
easier and more rapidly than a man at forty. A person who prac- 
tices total abstinence until forty years of age is tolerably sure to be 
temperate for life, but there are plenty of men who are moderate 
drinkers up to about this period, when alcoholism is fully estab- 
lished, and then rapidly rush on to the inebriate’s end. 
Medicinal use of Alcohol.—We cannot overlook a prevailing 
sentiment that the medicinal use of alcoholic stimulants is fre- 
quently a cause of inebriety. The country is flooded with patent 
bitters and nostrums, which contain a very little poor medicine 
and a large amount of poorer whiskey. 
If we may judge by the shelves of druggists and grocers and 
the advertisement of newspapers, and the handbills which deface 
the rocks and fences by the roadsides, the quantity used must be 
very large. There are some persons in every community who con- 
stantly patronize these preparations, because their self-respect or 
their social position will not permit them to frequent the saloon, 
or the open bar, or keep a private bottle in the presence of their 
families. So it often happens that the family physician is called to 
prescribe for symptoms that are very difficult to explain on the 
hypothesis of a temperate life. 
Prescription of Alcoholic Stimulants.—We wish we might feel 
that there is no other improper medicinal use of alcoholic stimu- 
lants, but it occasionally comes to our knowledge that persons who 
have been under medicinal treatment for a few weeks are known 
soon after to exhibit a fondness for drink. We will reporta single 
case in point. A boy sixteen years of age, of a good family and 
no hereditary taint, was very low for several weeks with typhoid 
fever, and was kept constantly under the influence of wine or 
whiskey. He recovered of the typhoid fever to have dypsomania 
and die at twenty a broken-down and ruined inebriate. It cannot 
be denied that there is a very loose and reckless prescription of 
alcoholic stimulants, a use positively inconsistent with modern 
science and the best good of the sick; an indefinite method of 
prescribing, which leaves the patient at his own discretion as to 
the amount to be taken, and the length of time it is to be used; a 14 
free and easy way of prescribing which gives a professional sanc- 
tion to moderate drinking. When the physiological conditions 
actually exist which render alcoholic stimulants the only appro- 
priate remedy, we do not believe that injurious effects are likely 
to arise from a judicious prescription. 
Treatment of Alcoholism.—The most appalling fact connected 
with the disease of alcoholism is, that there is no positive and per- 
manent cure of it. If alcohol once produces its peculiar molecular 
changes in the brain, the most delicate and important of all the 
organs, there is no specific remedy known to the profession. What 
is done cannot be undone, more than we can recall the past or 
restore an amputated limb. The appetite once formed, seldom, if 
ever, dies. By extraordinary watchfulness and care, it may, how- 
ever, be repressed and held in subjection. 
Dr. Collins testified before a British parliamentary commission, 
that he had come to regard it a well-established fact, that the 
appetite once formed for intoxicating drinks never becomes extinct, 
but adheres to a man through life. Dr. Morel, a French physician 
and author, says “ I have never seen a patient cured of this pro- 
pensity, whose tendency to drink was dei’ived from the hereditary 
predisposition.” 
When the appetite for intoxicants is once formed, or when this 
appetite becomes a disease, an abnormal condition of the brain is 
permanently established. Thenceforward there must be an irre- 
pressible conflict between reason and appetite, a conflict in which 
reason must incessantly maintain the defensive and concede noth- 
ing. The slightest concession is an ignominious defeat. Total 
and absolute abstinence from all that can intoxicate is the only 
condition of safety. Here “ the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” 
We know of no personal achievement nobler and grander than the 
triumph of the inebriate over his appetite. We always bow with 
respect to such a man whenever we meet him. 
The only successful treatment of this disease consists in the 
employment of such physical and moral means as shall enable 
the inebriate to persist in total abstinence, and so long as he can 
maintain this position he is said to be cured. This in a certain 
sense is the only cure which is effected in any disease. The 
insane may be discharged from the asylum sane and remain so 
for months or years, and become insane again on exposure to the 
original exciting causes of the disease. As a matter of fact the 
inebriate is reformed but not cured, and it is of the utmost import- 15 
ance that the reformed person shall be deeply impressed with this 
view of his case. Whenever the reformed Hatter themselves 
that because they have abstained a few weeks or months, and 
even for a longer period, they are cured, and may indulge to a 
slight extent, a return to their cups is an absolute certainty. A 
merchant in one of our cities reformed, was a total abstainer for 
twelve years, accumulated a handsome property, held a good 
standing in the church, and in the community, and then had a 
slight attack of diarrhoea, for which a physician whom he met at 
a drug-store administered a prescription containing a small quan- 
tity of brandy. This the merchant drank without any knowledge 
or thought as to its contents. Like a drop of blood to the caged 
tiger, the old appetite was aroused. He drank to intoxication, 
and continued to drink with a mania which was irrepressible, and 
died in three months of delirium tremens. Not long since a man, 
who had been reformed, under Good Samaritan influence, for more 
than two years, and been very active and successful in reforming 
others, went to New Haven on business in apparent good health, 
was by some means, unknown to his friends, induced to drink. A 
terrible debauch and delirium ensued, and he died in three days 
from'the time he left home. These are marked but by no means 
rare cases. The Washingtonian, Good Samaritan, and other kin- 
dred movements, have everywhere been attended with similar 
cases of relapse from total abstinence to debauch. 
Benevolent Organizations.—These organizations have been 
more successful in permanently reforming men than any other 
public measures which have been tried, except inebriate asylums. 
The secret of whatever success has attended these efforts has 
been owing largely to the reciprocal aid the members extend to 
each other. Jones and Smith have been companions in drink, and 
together take the pledge with an earnest purpose to keep it. 
Jones flatters himself that he is all right and in no danger of fall- 
ing, but he feels that it is a doubtful matter with Smith, so he 
manages to meet him often, perhaps daily, and cheers him with 
words of encouragement and hope. He knows it must be a ter- 
rible struggle for Smith to keep his pledge. At the same time 
Smith is deeply anxious about Jones, and is bound to keep watch 
of him, and does follow him day after day; thus each of the two 
men are kept from falling by a persistent effort to save the other. 
Sympathy for each other is a marked characteristic of all inebri- 
ates who are trying to reform, and is an important element of sue- 16 
cess in their treatment. This is one of the reasons why their 
treatment can he more successfully conducted in an inebriate 
asylum, where the patients are brought into association with 
each other. 
Inebriate Asylums.—The treatment of inebriates as a separate 
class of diseased persons is of recent origin. The oldest public 
institutions in this country are the Washingtonian Home of 
Boston, and the New York State Inebriate Asylum, which were 
opened in 1857. The Inebriate Home for King’s County, New 
York, and the Washingtonian Home of Chicago were established 
in 1867. There are now nine establishments, public and private, in 
this country for the treatment of inebriates. All of these institutions 
are comparatively in their infancy, and have experienced the usual 
difficulties which attend new institutions. 
Insane Asylums. — Through the long ages the insane were 
regarded as possessed of evil spirits, or willfully vicious and 
wicked, and, in all cases, as dangerous and untrustworthy mem- 
bers of society. When Pinel took charge of the Bicetre Asylum 
in 1792, it combined all in one the qualities of a jail, a house 
of correction, a penitentiary and a hospital. Assassins, sick pa- 
tients, paupers, and idiots, lived in fearful promiscuousness. The 
insane were kept separate in pens six feet square, with only a 
small opening through the door, to admit light and air. There 
was a bed of loose straw renewed only once a month. The pa- 
tient had a chain around the waist, manacles and fetters on the 
wrists and ankles. He received neither care nor medical treat- 
ment. Pinel ordered the irons to be struck off all the patients, 
and then began the era of common sense and humanity. Looking 
back, as we now do, less than a century, it seems incredible that 
such barbarous and inhuman practices could have prevailed so 
long. 
At our stand-point to-day we know that thirty to forty per cent, 
of chronic cases, and seventy to eighty per cent, of acute cases of 
insanity are incurable. Our present advanced knowledge of the 
diagnosis, pathology and the general treatment of insanity, has 
come to us mainly through the asylum, and if it had accomplished 
no other good, it has proved of inestimable value as a school of 
scientific observation of mental diseases. The result of this noble 
and humane experiment has been most satisfactory, and the ques- 
tion of the practical utility of an asylum for the treatment of the 
insane is decided for all time. Closely allied to this great move- ment, and in part growing out of it, is a still greater problem— 
what can be done for the inebriate ? 
Present Treatment of the Inebriate a Failure.—The present 
public treatment of the drunkard in spirit and principle is practi- 
cally what the treatment of the insane was in the last century. 
The laws of this commonwealth, as well as many others, make 
the drunkard a vagabond and a criminal. Our large cities sup- 
port daily police courts, three-fourths of whose business is to 
administer tines and punishment to the unfortunate victims of 
intemperance. The idea of reformation does not enter into the 
system. It is entirely penal, and not very humane at that. Gov. 
Jewell made especial effort to obtain the criminal statistics of this 
State for the year 1871, and in his annual message, 1872, reported 
to the Legislature the appalling facts, that there were between 
ten and eleven thousand criminal prosecutions, of which twenty- 
two hundred and seven were in New Haven, one thousand 
five hundred and sixty-three in Hartford, eleven hundred and 
twenty-four in Bridgeport, three hundred and thirteen in Norwich, 
and one hundred and twenty-eight in New London, etc. Eight 
towns in which no intoxicating liquors were sold reported no 
criminal prosecutions. It is well known that crime has increased 
in this commonwealth at a fearful rate since the war. Last year 
there were three thousand three hundred and eighty prosecutions 
before the police court in New Haven, and over two thousand in 
Hai'tford. By an abstract of returns concerning jails for the year 
ending March 31, 1873, it appears that there were two thousand 
nine hundred and fifty-seven committed to the county jails. Of 
these, only two hundred and twenty-nine reported themselves as 
temperate; fifteen hundred and ninety-eight are registered as mode- 
rate drinkers; eleven hundred and twenty-nine as habitually 
intemperate. Only a small portion of the cases of prosecution 
are sent to the county jail. Some are fined and others sent to the 
town house. In New Britain there were six hundred and fifteen 
arrested, five hundred and forty-three prosecuted, and only sixty- 
four sent to jail. Taking this estimate as a basis, it will make 
the number for the State twenty-five thousand one hundred and 
thirty-four, an increase of fifty per cent, on Gov. Jewell’s returns. 
By the returns of the clerk of the police court, the increase in New 
Haven is also over fifty per cent., amounting to one arrest for 
every twenty-four inhabitants. In Hartford, however, the increase 
was only thirty per cent. The number of arrests or prosecutions 18 
does not represent so many different individuals. The returns of 
the county jails indicate that more than one-half had been com- 
mitted before. Jailor Fenn informs me that the passion for drink 
is so strong with some of these persons that they commence drink- 
ing as soon as they are discharged, and are returned again in a few 
days or weeks, and are thus reported several times during the 
year. 
It has become a very grave question whether our present sys- 
tem of jurisprudence is not radically wrong. These returns indi- 
cate that twelve-thirteenths of these cases of prosecution were 
inebriates, who were in all respects treated as other criminals, no 
effort having been made to reform them. Your committee desire 
to say most emphatically that we regard this as a great wrong 
and a grave mistake in political economy,—a wrong to the 
community as well as to the unfortunate victims of this barbarous 
system of the past. It is both the right and duty of society to 
protect itself against crime; but it is neither morally right nor 
the part of wisdom to ruin the criminal when it can reform him. 
We believe coming generations will regard our treatment of the 
inebriate with the same amazement and abhorrence that we from 
our position contemplate the abuse of the insane in the dark days 
of the by-gone centuries. We have munificently provided for the 
blind, the deaf, and the insane. This is as it should be. Every 
citizen of Connecticut has reason to be proud of our humane insti- 
tutions ; but we have as yet treated with indifference a much 
larger class of persons, whose influence on the well-being of our 
citizens is vastly more important, because more numerous, than 
all of the above classes, which would be largely reduced if our 
inebriates were properly cared for. 
Success of Inebriate Asylums.—Considering the nature of 
intemperance as a disease, and the fact that all of the inebriate 
asylums in this country are comparatively new institutions, and 
consequently of limited experience, the success which has attended 
their efforts is very encouraging and hopeful. Dr. Parish, Presi- 
dent of the Pennsylvanian Sanitarian, stated to the select com- 
mittee of the House of Commons, that from thirty-three to forty 
per cent, of the admissions, as based upon subsequent inqiiiries, 
were apparently cured as completely and permanently as any other 
form of disease, mental or physical. That the proportion of cures 
is not larger is attributed to a lack of power to induce or compel 
the patients to submit to treatment for a longer period. Dr. 19 
Dodge, of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, testified before 
the same committee: “ I am informed by reliable and trustworthy 
authority, that of the whole number of patients treated in the 
New York State charitable institutions, the proportion of com- 
pletely cured is only from thirty to forty per cent. That includes 
the acute and chronic cases, and I am warranted in claiming for 
inebriate asylums an equally favorable result.” The annual 
report of the New York asylum for the year 1872 gives the num- 
ber of patients, 256 ; discharged with great hopes of a permanent 
cure, 198; discharged unimproved, 58. The Pennsylvanian Sani- 
tarian admitted 278; cured, 70; insane, 3; improved, 130; in- 
curable, 35 ; still under treatment, 15. Dr. Day of Boston, who 
has devoted especial attention to the treatment of inebriates since 
1857, and to whom we are personally indebted for many valuable 
suggestions, reports full fifty per cent, cured. In estimating the 
results of treatment in inebriate asylums, we must bear in mind 
that many of the patients are retained for only a short period, not 
long enough to fully establish a reformation. The average time is 
only from ninety to one hundred days. Nearly all the patients go to 
the asylum in the worst possible condition, mere wrecks of human- 
ity ; most of them are confirmed drunkards who are completely 
broken down and bankrupt in morals and health, if not in fortune, 
and in everything which constitutes true manhood. 
Treatment of Dypsomania.—The least hopeful cases are the sub- 
jects of dypsomania, a form of disease which manifests itself in 
periodic attacks. The victim of this disease is sometimes a total 
abstainer for long intervals, when he breaks loose from all restraint 
and abandons himself to drink and persists in it with the frenzy of 
a maniac. All the powers of his being are apparently given up to 
drink. Reason and conscience are for the time being dormant. 
Appetite rules with an undisputed sway. But this cannot last 
long without producing death or a reaction. The stomach becomes 
exhausted and rejects the accustomed stimulus. What was before 
sought after with the greatest zest and earnestness is now loathed 
and abhorred. While the passion for drink is dominant, the dyp- 
somaniac will encounter heat, cold or storm, sell his own clothes, 
the keep-sakes of his wife or the bread of his children, to procure 
the stimulus he craves. When the attack has passed he will de- 
cline a gift of the same beverage. He has decided now to drink 
no more. He is in earnest for total abstinence, and is often a most 
vivid and successful advocate of the temperance reform. He is 20 
now greatly surprised that other men are not as earnest for tem- 
perance as himself. But when his periodic mania comes around 
again he plunges at a single leap from the highest pinnacle of total 
abstinence to the lowest gutter of inebriety. It is only when this 
class of men are brought to appreciate their liabilities to fall, and 
are led to rally their highest moral energies against it, that they 
withstand one of these periods. It is therefore a very difficult 
matter to reform such men, and still more difficult if the disease is 
hereditary. As we have already intimated, the mutual support 
which this class of patients render to each other is a very impor- 
tant means of cure and cannot be overlooked in their treatment. 
With the approach of these attacks there is a feeling that they 
arc without friends and that fate is against them ; that a terrible 
destiny awaits them which they cannot escape. The presence of 
another person who has successfully withstood the same trials in- 
spires confidence and hope. It is obvious that such patients can- 
not be treated successfully in private practice, nor can they be 
reformed by a short period of treatment in an inebriate asylum. 
They are difficult to manage under any circumstances; but we 
are not to despair of their reform provided they are subjected to 
the right kind of treatment, a sufficient length of time. The aver- 
age period of ninety or one hundred days is too short for this class 
of patients. They should be detained in the asylum at the discre 
tion of properly constituted authorities, until they have withstood 
several of these periodic attacks without falling. In the New 
York State Inebriate Asylum, as given by the report of last year, 
the periodic drinkers are in the proportion of ninety-six to one 
hundred and sixty constant drinkers. 
Constant Drinkers.—The constant or daily drinkers require a 
shorter period of treatment, and are more easily and successfully 
managed. The greatest trial with this class of patients is during 
the first days or weeks of abstinence. Constant drinkers usually 
require constitutional treatment to restore their general health and 
detention long enough to fully overcome the unrest and nervous- 
ness which follow abstinence from their accustomed stimulants. 
This will depend upon the general health and habits of each 
patient, the length of time he has been an inebriate and his consti- 
tutional antecedents. The percentage of cures is in all cases 
largely in favor of those who have been retained a period of six 
months or more. There is no medical secret in the treatment of 
inebriates, no specifics, and no routine practice which applies to 21 
all cases. Perhaps no disease which afflicts the race is more subtle 
and incomprehensible than alcoholism. To insure success in its 
treatment requires the highest order of tact and practical skill. 
It is usually not one malady alone which is to be treated, nearly 
every vital organ is more or less impaired, and it is absolutely 
essential to success that the constitutional treatment should be 
Avise and efficient. The moral and mental treatment should be 
judiciously adapted to the peculiar mental and physiological char- 
acteristics and idiosyncrasies of each patient. 
Separate Asylums for Inebriates.—The universal testimony of 
all medical men who have devoted especial attention to the treat- 
ment of inebriates is in favor of separate asylums for this class of 
patients. Those who have had large experience in the manage- 
ment of the insane condemn in decided terms the admission of ine- 
briates to the insane asylum. 
A bill was before the Legislature of Pennsylvania last winter, 
making it a misdemeanor for any physician to give a certificate 
for an inebriate commitment to a lunatic asylum. The feeling 
against it is very decided and positive both in this country and in 
England. Not to multiply testimony on this point, we will only 
give an authority Avhich will not be questioned in Connecticut. 
Dr. Butler, formerly of the Retreat, says: “ Inebriates cannot be 
successfully treated in an insane asylum, because with only here 
and there an exception, the inebriate will not consent to the 
restrictions and regulations of an asylum, especially in regard to 
his liberty, and his detention for a length of time sufficient for his 
permanent recovery. Very generally the inebriate lacks not only 
self-control, but a due and reasonable appreciation of the necessi- 
ties of his disease. He has, moreover, an unreasonable confidence 
in his own power of self-control. lie very reluctantly assents to 
the rules, regulations and restrictions of the asylum, so demanded 
by the necessities of the lunatic, and regards then as inapplicable 
to himself because he is not insane. Frequently inebriates will 
come to the asylum of their own accord, promising to remain as 
long as I wish to have them; but in a few weeks becoming, ap- 
parently, in good health, they either demanded or took their dis- 
charge, there being no legal authority for their detention. It fol- 
lows, therefore, that I have no faith in asylums where they are not 
detained by process of law, and where no discharge within a year 
can be obtained, without the approbation of the superintendent 
and the concurrence of the board of directors. But I have faith 22 
in their recovery when they are detained a sufficient length of time, 
and have seen some very gratifying examples of successful treat- 
ment.” 
The investigation we have been able to make, in regard to the 
inebriates of the State, and their claims to sympathy, has deeply 
impressed us with the conviction that their treatment is radically 
wrong in principle and penurious in its results, tending only to 
increase the evils -we deprecate. But we wish it distinctly under- 
stood that we do not advise any larger liberty for wrong doing. 
We feel that the spirit of the age, and our present knowledge of 
the causes of vice, ought to enable us to adopt such measures as 
shall greatly reduce the amount. As we have already intimated, 
our present system is strictly punitive and not reformatory. The 
principle of punishing drunkenness, and the minor offenses which 
are induced by it, the same as other crimes, we do not ajjprove. 
To imprison the drunkard with common criminals, to be contam- 
inated by their influence, is practically consigning him to a school 
of vice and crime, and is thereby multiplying the number of crim- 
inals in the commonwealth. In no case should an inebriate, or a 
common drunkard arrested for intoxication, or any minor offense 
growing out of it, be placed in a cell or apartment in which a 
criminal charged with an aggravated or malicious crime is confined. 
Special provision tending to their reform should be made for ine- 
briates, and when deprived of their liberty in any manner they 
should be retained for a period long enough to thoroughly rid them 
of the immediate effects of alcohol, and not only long enough to 
teach them that they can live without stimulants, but are positively 
better off without them. If the first period of detention fails of 
reformation, the second and subsequent commitments should be 
for longer periods. The inebriate should be made to understand 
that the object of his detention is not punishment, but reformation. 
To carry into effect these views some special legislation will be 
required. A State Inebriate Asylum is a necessity. But on the 
basis of Gov. Jewell’s statistics, the recent reports of the county 
jails, and the police courts to which we have already referred, it 
will be wholly impracticable to build asylums for all the persons 
who are presented for drunkenness and the misdemeanors for this 
cause. 
Legislative Action.—A part of the duty required of this commit- 
tee is to present the matter under consideration in such form, that 
the society may take suitable action thereon and present the subject 23 
to the Legislature at its present session. In obedience to this re- 
quirement, we recommend the appointment of a special committee 
to bring the subject suitably before the Legislature, with a view 
to obtain, if possible, the enactment of a special law to be entitled: 
An Act for the Reformation of Persons of Intemperate Habits. 
Under this act there should be at least three classes of subjects. 
First. Those who are guilty of misdemeanor or breach of the 
peace, while under the influence of intoxicating drink. 
Second. Those who neglect the support of their families, squan- 
der their property, are guilty of idleness or vagrancy, in conse- 
quence of intemperance. 
Third. Those who may voluntarily seek treatment in an asylum 
or those whose friends may apply for their admission. 
For the first offence of the first and second classes, a nominal 
fine of from one to five dollars ; for the second offence, within 
twelve months, a fine of from five to twenty-five dollars; for a 
third offence, within twelve months of the second, detention in a 
jail or house of correction not less than four nor more than twelve 
months ; for a fourth offence, detention not less than eight nor 
more than twelve months; for any subsequent offence within twelve 
months of last discharge, detention for one year. 
For the third class of persons no admission to the Inebriate 
Asylum for a period less than four months nor a discharge within 
a year without the approval of the Superintendent of the Asylum, 
and of three of the County Commissioners, except the full board 
are present, when the concurrence of six shall be required. 
On recommendation of the keeper in charge and of three of 
the County Commissioners, any person of the first and second 
class may be transferred to the asylum for such period as they 
may decide upon, not less then four nor more than twelve months. 
Under this act an asylum should be established with accommoda- 
tions for fifty patients on a farm owned by the State, and suitably 
located for the purposes of such an institution. 
Under this act, any city or town may establish a house of 
correction, provided the accommodations, the employment and 
the regulations, are such as to be approved by the Board of Com- 
missioners. 
Under this act, the Legislature shall appoint a Board of Com- 
missioners of one from each county, who shall hold office for four 
years, two new members being appointed each year and one-half 
of the number to be practicing physicians. This board shall be 
designated as Commissioners of Reformatory Institutions. It shall he the duty of these Commissioners to meet as a whole 
board twice annually. First immediately after any new appoint- 
ment, and again at least two weeks before the meeting of the 
Legislature. One half of the Board shall visit, in their half of 
the State, all the jails, houses of correction or public institutions 
of correction quarterly, including the Inebriate Asylum. They 
shall be authorized to establish rules and regulations for such 
institutions when not fixed by the Legislature. It shall be their 
duty to make an annual report of the condition of these institu- 
tions, with complete statistics of the number and classes of per- 
sons, ages, previous habits, etc., the expenses of the institutions, the 
number of persons admitted and discharged, and any other 
statistics the Governor may require. It should also be their 
duty to act on the applications for admission or discharge which 
may be submitted to them under this act. At the first meeting 
after the appointment of the board they shall establish the prices 
of labor and board in each of these institutions, which shall be 
as near actual value as practicable, except in the Inebriate Asy- 
lum where the prices may be varied according to the circumstances 
of the patients. Whenever the amount of wages shall exceed the 
price of board, the balance shall be credited to the individual and 
paid to his family monthly, or in case of no family, paid in full on 
his discharge. The expenses of the Inebriate Asylum should be 
paid in part by the patients when practicable. One half of the 
fines received for violations of the liquor law, and one half of the 
fees paid for licenses granted under the license law, should be 
devoted to the Inebriate Asylum. 
All of which is respectfully submitted in behalf of the Com- 
mittee. 
B. N. COMINGS.