the saving power of the pledge alone. If other help came not,
the effort would be, except in rare cases, too surely, all in vain.

The need of something more reliable than a simple pledge has led to
other means of reform and cure, each taking character and shape from the
peculiar views of those who have adopted them. Inebriate Asylums and
Reformatory Homes have been established in various parts of the country,
and through their agency many who were once enslaved by drink are being
restored to society and good citizenship. In what is popularly known as
the "Gospel Temperance" movement, the weakness of the pledge, in itself,
is recognized, and, "God being my helper," is declared to be the
ultimate and only sure dependence.

It is through this abandonment of all trust in the pledge, beyond a few
exceptional cases, that reformatory work rises to its true sphere and
level of success. And we shall now endeavor to show what is being done
in the work of curing drunkards, as well in asylums and Reformatory
Homes, as by the so-called "Gospel" methods. In this we shall, as far as
possible, let each of these important agencies speak for itself,
explaining its own methods and giving its own results. All are
accomplishing good in their special line of action; all are saving men
from the curse of drink, and the public needs to be more generally
advised of what they are doing.

CHAPTER VIII.

INEBRIATE ASYLUMS.

The careful observation and study of inebriety by medical men, during
the past twenty-five or thirty years, as well in private practice as in
hospitals and prisons, has led them to regard it as, in many of its
phases, a disease needing wise and careful treatment. To secure such
treatment was seen to be almost impossible unless the subject of
intemperance could be removed from old associations and influences, and
placed under new conditions, in which there would be no enticement to
drink, and where the means of moral and physical recovery could be
judiciously applied. It was felt that, as a disease, the treatment of
drunkenness, while its subject remained in the old atmosphere of
temptation, was as difficult, if not impossible, as the treatment of a
malarious fever in a miasmatic district. The result of this view was the
establishment of Inebriate Asylums for voluntary or enforced seclusion,
first in the United States, and afterwards in England and some of her
dependencies.

In the beginning, these institutions d