In other words,
that social position gave the wife of an inebriate no immunity from
personal violence when alone with her drunken husband."
Dr. Angier did not reply, but his face became thoughtful.
"Have you given much attention to the pathology of drunkenness?"
asked one of the gentlemen.
"Some; not a great deal. The subject is one of the most perplexing
and difficult we have to deal with."
"You class intemperance with diseases, do you not?"
"Yes; certain forms of it. It may be hereditary or acquired like any
other disease. One man may have a pulmonary, another a bilious and
another a dypso-maniac diathesis, and an exposure to exciting causes
in one case is as fatal to health as in the other. If there exist a
predisposition to consumption, the disease will be developed under
peculiar morbific influences which would have no deleterious effect
upon a subject not so predisposed. The same law operates as
unerringly in the inherited predisposition to intemperance. Let the
man with a dypso-maniac diathesis indulge in the use of intoxicating
liquors, and he will surely become a drunkard. There is no more
immunity for him than for the man who with tubercles in his lungs
exposes himself to cold, bad air and enervating bodily conditions."
"A more serious view of the case, doctor, than is usually taken."
"I know, but a moment's consideration--to say nothing of observed
facts--will satisfy any reasonable man of its truth.
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