of the two great stimulants, whisky and tobacco, on the bodies and
habits of the votaries of excitement. There is a great difference in the
action of the two substances; and I know no more curious subject for the
investigation of the metaphysical physician, than the analysis of the
various effects upon the mind produced by all the stimulating narcotics
which are used by man, for the purpose of yielding pleasure or
mitigating pain. I have myself committed to paper some thoughts upon
this subject, which may yet see the light; and many of the conclusions I
have deduced from my reasoning and experience, may be found to be
curious, as well as instructive. I have found, for instance, that people
of sanguine temperaments are greater drinkers than smokers; and those of
a dull, phlegmatic cast are greater smokers than drinkers. A man that
smokes will almost always drink; but a man that drinks will not always,
nor indeed often, smoke. The two habits are often found combined in the
same individual; but it is, notwithstanding, a fact, that, if the smoker
and drinker could always command the spirit, he would very seldom or
ever trouble himself with the other. I am led into these remarks by a
case that occurred in my practice not very long ago, where the two
habits joined in an extraordinary manner their baneful influences in
closing the mortal career of one of those unfortunate votaries.
I was first called to William G----, a very ingenious artist, when he
lay under a severe attack of what we call _delirium tremens_, or
temporary insanity, produced by, or consisting of (for the proximate
cause is often the disease itself), highly irritated nerves, the
consequence of a succession of drinking fits. I found that he had been
"on the ball," as they say, for three weeks, during which time he had
drunk forty-two bottles of strong whisky. Like many other people of
genius, whose fits of inspiration (for artists have those fits as well
as poets) make them work to excess, and leave them, as they wear out,
the victims of ennui and lassitude, he was in the habit of applying
himself to his business with too much assiduity, for the period,
generally, of about a month. Exhausted by the excitement of thought and
invention kept up too long, he fell regularly down into a state of dull
lethargy, which seemed to be painful to him. He felt as if there was a
load upon his brain. A sense of duty stung him, after a few days'
idleness, poignantly; and, while he writhed under the sting of the sharp
monitor, he felt that _he could not_ obey the behest of the good angel;
and yet could not explain the reason of his utter powerlessness and
incapacity for work. If he had allowed this state, which is quite
natural, and not difficult of explanation, to remain unalleviated by
stimulants for a day or two, he would have found that, as the brain
again collected energy, he would have been relieved by the _vis
medicatrix_ of nature herself; but he had no patience for that; and
drink was, accordingly, his refuge and relief. The first glass he took
was fraught with the most direful power--it threw down the floodgates of
a struggling resolution; the relief of the new and artificial impulse
raised his spirits: another application inflamed his mind; and then
bottle after bottle was thrown into the furnace, until the drink-fever
laid him up, and brought upon him the salutary nausea which overcame the
rebellious desire. This system had continued for more than ten years. He
had been gradually getting worse and worse; and, latterly, he had
resigned himself to the cognate influence of the narcotic weed.
When I got an account of this young man--for he was still comparatively
young--and saw some of the exquisite pieces of workmanship, both in
sculpture and painting, he had executed, I felt a strong interest in his
fate. He was, indeed, one example out of many, where I had contemplated,
with tears that subdued my professional apathy, genius, commonly
supposed to be the rarest, if not the highest gift of mortals, working
out, by some power inherent in itself, the ruin of the body, mind, and
morals of its possessor. This victim I saw lying under the fell power of
one of the most frightful of diseases, brought on by his own
intemperance; and not far from his bed lay a half-finished
Scripture-piece--a work which, if finished, would have brought him money
and fame. He presented the ordinary appearances of his complaint.
Emaciated and pale, he laboured under that union of ague and temporary
madness which _delirium tremens_ exhibits. All the motions of his nerves
seemed to have been inverted; those servants of the will had got a new
master, which kept them, by his diabolical power, in continual action.
His arms were continually in motion, aiming at some object present or
ideal; but, instead of making direct for it, vibrating in sudden
snatches backward and forward; his legs were also in continual
agitation, kicking up the bedclothes, then being stretched forth, as if
held by a spasm; and his eyes, red and fiery, seemed to fly from object
to object, as if the vision of a thing burned the orbs, and made them
roll about for a resting-place. Thousands of _muscae volitantes_, or the
imaginary flies that swarm round the heads of victims of this complaint,
tormented him by their ideal presence, and kept his snatching, quivering
hands in continual play, till, by seizing the bed-posts, he seemed,
though only for a moment, to get a relief from his restlessness. He knew
no one; and sudden burning thoughts flashing upon his heated brain,
wrung from him jabbering exclamations, containing intensive words of
agony or mirth. The rest of his convulsed muscles was only purchased at
the expense of such a morbid increase of the sense of hearing, that the
scratch of a pin on the wall pained him as much as if the operation had
been performed on his brain--a symptom often so strongly marked in
regular brain-fever, and often detected in this last stage of the
drunkard's disease. The sense of the pupil of the eye was of the same
morbid character. A stream of light produced in him a scream, suggesting
the analogy of the sound of the night-bird, the owl, when light is
suddenly let into a nest among the young brood. The delights of life,
sunbeam and sound, were transformed into poisons; so that his own vivid
pictures, or the most melodious of songs, would have produced a
convulsive spasm. Food was nauseous to him, and water swallowed by
gulps, in the intervals of spasms, was all that could be taken without
pain, to quench the burning fires within.
Such is a faithful picture of a disease produced by ardent spirits. I
recommend it to the votaries of intemperance. The moment I saw the
patient, I knew his disease; and the particulars furnished to me by an
old woman who kept his house only corroborated my opinion. The remedies
in such cases are well known to us, and were instantly applied. He
remained in the same state nearly all the next day; but began to show
symptoms of recovery on the morning following. Nature prevailed, and he
got gradually better; having, while his weakness was on him, a strong
_antipathy_ to ardent spirits--a symptom of the drunkard I have often
observed. The interest I felt in him made me call often; and I had a
long conversation with him on the philosophy and _morale_ of his
intemperance. He went himself to the very depths of the subject; and I
found, what I have often done in regard to other drunkards, that no one
knew better the predisposing causes, the resisting energies, the
consequences--everything connected with the fearful vice; but all his
philosophy ended, as these often do, in the melancholy sentence, that
"there are powers within us greater than reason or philosophy."
After the fearful attack he had had, he remained sober for about a
month, and got a great length with his Scripture-piece. I called often
to see his progress, to inspirit him in a continuation of his efforts,
and support him in his self-denial. Matters seemed to be progressing
well, and I hinted as much to his housekeeper; but she shook her head,
and replied, calmly, "that she had seen the same scene acted, ten times
a-year, for ten years." She added, "that he would break out again in a
day or two;" and accordingly, on the next day, I discovered he had begun
to lag in his work, to draw deep sighs, and to exhibit a listlessness,
all premonitory signs of a relapse. Knowing that he was at times a
smoker, I suggested to him the trial of tobacco, at this critical
period. He said he had tried that remedy before; but acknowledged that
perhaps he had not carried it far enough. I therefore set him agoing;
advising him to keep to it steadily, for I had succeeded once before, in
a very extreme case, in drawing out the one vice by the
other--undoubtedly a lesser. So he began well, and persevered for about
a week, during which time he had also got pretty well on with his work,
having finished in that time two of the most difficult heads in the
whole piece.
I had now some greater hopes of him, and told the housekeeper to do what
she could to aid me in my efforts. Two days afterwards I called, and met
the old woman at the door. She shook her head ominously as I passed her.
I opened the door, and went in. On a chair opposite to his picture sat
the artist, with his pallet in his left hand--the brush had fallen from
his right--his head was hung over the back of the chair, and his
cravatless neck bent almost to breaking. Beside him sat a bottle empty;
there was no glass beside it. I took up the vessel, and smelled it. It
had been filled with whisky. I now looked at the picture. It was
destroyed. His burin had been drawn over it like a mop, and dashed
backwards and forwards, as if he had taken a spite at it, and been
determined to put an end in one moment to the work of six months!
There was now no occasion for a doctor; a drunkard fairly broken out is
far beyond our help or care. I left him, and told the housekeeper to
call and tell me when the fit was over. She did so; and I called again.
I found him sitting on the same chair, perfectly sober, but so thin and
wan, that he seemed like one taken from that place "where one inheriteth
creeping things, and beasts, and worms." His languid bloodshot eye was
fixed on the picture, and tears were stealing down his white cheeks.
When I entered, he held his hands up to his face, to cover the shame
that mantled on his cheek, and deep sobs heaved his bosom. I was moved,
and sat down beside him without speaking a word.
"O God!" he exclaimed, "what am I to do with myself? Is there no remedy
against this vice?--has the great Author of our being thus left us with
an inheritance of reason, and a power that sits like a cockatrice on our
brains, and laughs at the God-sent gift? See--see the fruit of six
months' hard labour! I expected fame from that, and money. I would have
got both. The fiend has triumphed. When I awoke from my dream, I heard
his laugh behind the canvas. I am undone."
And he wrung his hands like a demented person, and sobbed bitterly. I
was still silent; for any words I could have uttered would have
destroyed the impressiveness of the scene before me. When I had allowed
the sensation of remorse to sink deeper into him, I spoke:--
"I am glad that you have wrought this destruction," said I. "You have
produced an antidote to your own poison--let it work. I have no
medicines in my laboratory that have half the efficacy of that once
splendid emanation of your genius--now the monument of your folly, and
to be, as I hope, the prophylactic to save you from ruin and death."
"Ah, God help me! it is a dear medicine," groaned he. "I feel that I
never can produce such a work again."
And he hung down his head, as if the blackest cloud that covers hope had
thrown over him its dark shadow. I again observed silence, and he
remained with his head on his breast for several minutes, without
exhibiting a symptom of life beyond the deep sigh that raised his ribs.
"You must hang that picture upon the wall," said I. "It is the most
valuable you ever painted. Look at it daily, and, before the sun goes
down, begin another on the same subject."
My words produced no effect upon him, and indeed I knew that he was in a
condition that entirely excluded external aid to his revolving thoughts.
He was in the pit of dejection, which lies on the far side of the
elevation of factitious excitement--a place of darkness, where the
scorpions of conscience sting to madness, and every thought that rises
in the gloomy, bewildered mind appears like a ghost that walks at
midnight over open graves and bones of the dead. To some, these spectres
have spoken in such a way as to rouse the dormant principles of
energetic amendment, that lie beyond the reach of precept, or even that
of conscience; but to the greater part of mankind this place of wailing
and gnashing of teeth yields nothing but an agony that only tends to
make them climb again the delusive mount from which they had fallen,
though only again to be precipitated into the dreadful abode where, in
the end, _they must die_. I knew that words had no effect upon my
patient. I rose accordingly, and left him to the unmitigated horrors of
his situation, in the expectation that he might be one of the few that
derive from it good. I had no fear of his falling again, immediately,
into another fit; for the period of nausea was only begun, and he was
safe in the keeping of a rebelling stomach, whatever he might be in that
of burning conscience.
He remained, as his housekeeper told me, in that state of depression for
two days, often recurring to the monument of his folly, the destroyed
Scripture-piece; weeping over it, and ejaculating wild professions of
amendment, clenched by oaths in which the blessed name of God was made
the guarantee of the strength of a resolution which the demon of his
vice was standing with glaring eyes ready to overturn. I have no faith
in outspoken resolves of wordy declamation: not sure of ourselves, we
fortify our weak resolutions through the ear and the eye, by spoken and
written adjurations, and promises of amendment. After the medicine of
dejection had wrought its utmost effect, I waited upon him. He was
arrayed in melancholy and gloom: but the agony of the lowest pit was
gone, and he stood on a dangerous middle place, between a temporary
fulfilment of his resolutions and a relapse. With a patient of this sort
I never _continue_ a system of argumentation and disputation. I am
satisfied it does injury; for it reaches the moral sore only to irritate
it, and an argument surmounted, or sworn resolution vanquished, is a
triumph and a _pabulum_ to the spirit of the foe greater than years of
domination. I told him, what he confessed frankly, that he stood, for a
day or two, on the dangerous ground from which he had so often fallen,
and requested him authoritatively, as if I had assumed the reins of his
judgment which he had thrown over the back of his passions, to begin
instantly another painting, and try once more the American weed. Command
sometimes, persuasion never, succeeds with a drunkard. He set about
stretching his canvas, and put on the first coat of the foundation of
his picture. I told him I would call again in a week; but that, as it
was not a part of my profession to reclaim drunkards, I would
discontinue my efforts in his behalf, if I found that, at the end of
that time, he had swerved from his resolution. The sense of degradation
in the mind of these lost votaries of intemperance, while it inclines
the unhappy individuals often to resign themselves to the command (from
which, however, they often break) of those they respect, responds keenly
to the manifestations of disregard and loss of esteem with which they
are visited in consequence of their failing. He felt strongly the manner
of my treatment, and I thought and observed even tears working for vent
from his still bloodshot eyes.
"You, and all good men, have a privilege to despise him who has not the
approval of his own conscience," he said. "I could bear your persuasive
reproof; but the thought that I have rendered myself unworthy of the
trouble of one I esteem, to save me from the ruin I have madly prepared
for myself, sends me to that deep pit of despair, from which I have even
now struggled to get free. You saved me from death; and I was no sooner
cured than I plunged headlong again into the gulf from which my disease
was derived. I have made myself an ingrate, and a beggar; spurned your
advice, and destroyed the work from which I expected honour and reward.
I see myself as through a microscope, and you have diminished me still
farther. Heaven help me!"
"You have powers within you, sir," replied I, with affected sternness,
"through the medium of which you might have surveyed yourself as through
the telescope; and your size would not have been greater than that
potential moral magnitude to which you might long ere now have arrived,
and which is still within your own power. I exhort not--I leave you to
yourself.--_In te omne recumbit._"
"I know it, I know it," he cried, with a swelling throat. "My ruin or my
salvation lies within my own breast. For ten years I have resolved, and
re-resolved; and it is only three days since I destroyed that picture,
and rose with fiery eyes and a burning heart to survey the consequences
of my vice. O God! where is this to end? You saw what I suffered when
extended on that bed, racked with pain; my brain on fire; my intellect
overturned; my muscles twisted by spasms; my eyes and ears tortured by
imaginary sights and sounds; with conscience in the back-ground, waiting
till reason should bring to the avenging angel its victim. In that every
mortal on earth might have found a lesson, but a drunkard. I found none.
The very fire of my fever filled my soul with a thirst which
precipitated me again deeper than ever in my old sin. I have got my
senses again; and my bloodshot eyes have surveyed, and shall survey,
that sad monument of my vice and folly--that child of my dreams, with
which my pregnant fancy travailed with a delightful pain; and to which
my fond hopes of honour, wealth, and happiness were directed--now, alas!
dead--killed by my rebellious hand. From that dead body I have extracted
a virtue which, with the powers of the amulet, shall guard me more
effectually than the lesson of my bodily agony from further destruction.
Believe me, sir. Aid me once again. If I fail this time, discard me for
ever."
As he finished, he hung his head over the chair, and covered his face
with his hands, to hide from me his agonised face. I told him that it
was my intention to try what effect the destroyed picture would have
upon him.
"You have made a fair beginning," said I. "Persevere--keep to the new
picture to-morrow and to-morrow. I shall call in a week."
"You shall find me at work, and an altered man," he said; and a blush
came over his face, as he tried to open some subject to me of a delicate
nature. "I--I have for some time thought," he continued, "that the way
in which I live--a bachelor, with few domestic enjoyments--has a part of
the blame of this horrid vice that has taken possession of my soul. Had
I a wife, my sensibilities would be fed, my ennui relieved, my home made
comfortable, and my ardour for my profession keeping my mind in the
delightful bondage of fancy, I might thus satisfy all the cravings of my
feelings, and be independent of the liquid fire and the envenomed weed."
"You are a perfect AEsculapius," replied I. "Had I lectured to you for a
week from the manual of Galen, I could not have suggested a better
medicine; but, mark you, I know not if you have properly described the
manner of its operation. A wife will do all for you that you have
described; but there is a greater virtue in her; and that is, that she
_ought_ to produce in you a salutary terror of making her unhappy. This
is a part of love--and I know no greater conservative element of the
pure passion. If you fall again into your old habits, you will render an
innocent individual miserable; and that thought ought to make you fly
the poison as if it were distilled from the herbs of Medea or Circe."
"Oh, I feel it, I feel it," he replied; "and am thankful to you for the
suggestion. Like Pygmalion, I fell in love with a face that I sculptured
last year. Every line I chiselled was engraven on my heart, and I have
dreamed of her ever since. She is herself an artist, and paints
beautifully. Our sympathies are kindred; and, though I never declared my
passion, from a fear that my bad reputation for inebriety may have
reached her, I have _looked_ it, and have reason to think that I may
succeed."
"Try," said I; "and I shall then have every hope of you."
I left him, and heard some time afterwards that he had married a very
pretty young lady, the daughter of an old artist that lived in the same
town. It was not, however, (as I understood), till he had made a solemn
promise and _oath_ to the old gentleman, who was possessed of some
eccentricities, that he would renounce his habit of drinking, that the
young female artist was yielded to him. I felt still the same interest
in the man of genius, and called shortly after the marriage, to see how
his _medicine_ had wrought. I found him as happy as the day was long.
His picture was going on even during the honeymoon, and seemed to
reflect a part of the sweet luminary's glory. The young wife, who was
really pretty, and imbued with a strong love of both the artist and his
art, looked over his shoulder as he proceeded with his work. I was
delighted with the couple, and told him that the moment he had finished
the picture he was occupied with, I wished him to give me a portrait of
"the Doctor." He promised; and I left them, in the confidence--at times
interfered with by my experience of the insidious power of the
demon--that he would never again have recourse to his old habit.
"To go to see a cousin" is, as all married people know, a very pretty
and very usual mode of keeping up the flame of love in the hearts of the
young worshippers of Hymen. Mrs G---- went, accordingly (so I learned at
a future period), to see a friend who lived in the country. The artist
was left again by himself, and promised to his loving wife, who left him
with a kiss of true affection, that he would have the piece he was
engaged on finished by the time she returned, when he was to commence
with my portrait.
"Never fear, Maria," he said, as he embraced her. "You have made me a
new man. God bless you for it! I am happy now. Oh, that blessed thought,
so opportunely confirmed by Dr ----! I shall paint him like an angel for
it."
And, laughing through his tears, he again kissed her, and she left the
house with the intention of returning in a week, with an affection
increased, and the satisfaction of seeing the painting imbued with all
the glory of his high genius.
I was, in the meantime, and while these love matters were going on,
engaged in the pursuits of my profession. I knew nothing of them, but
wished them happy, and thought all was right. I was sitting, after a
day's labour, in my study. It was about eleven o'clock at night. I was
startled by the artist's old housekeeper, who burst in upon me in great
terror. Her eyes were absolutely starting from their sockets; and she
stood before me with her mouth open, but without being able, for a time,
to utter a syllable.
"What is the matter?" said I.
"Come to my master, for heaven's sake!" she cried, after some struggles
of the throat. "He is vomiting fire."
"What can the woman mean?" said I, as I took up my hat, and hastened to
the victim.
I soon found a sufficient explanation. The poor artist was lying on his
back on the floor. There were a great number of empty bottles scattered
_per aversionem_ round him. A blue, flickering flame was burning in his
mouth, which was as black as a piece of coal. His eyeballs were turned
up, and convulsive movements shook his frame. I was at no loss for the
cause. A tobacco-pipe and a candle were beside him. After he had filled
his stomach with whisky for six days, and drunk no fewer than thirteen
bottles, he had, in endeavouring to light his pipe, set fire to the
spirit that lay on his lips and in his mouth--the flame sought its way
down the pharynx till it came to the full body of liquid in his stomach,
and all was, in a moment, on fire. I need not dwell on the issue of this
case. The poor artist was dead in an hour. Where was his resolution?
This is no overcharged picture of the effects of drunkenness.
THE BRIDE.