ns, obscures the mental and moral faculties, and destroys all
sense of decency, causing men to commit offences in a state of
automatism or a species of somnambulism. Sometimes drunkenness produces
kleptomania. A slight excess in drinking will cause men of absolute
honesty to appropriate any objects they can lay their hands upon. When
the effects of drink have worn off, they feel shame and remorse and
hasten to restore the stolen goods. Alcohol, however, more often causes
violence. An officer known to my father, when drunk, twice attempted to
run his sword through his friends and his own attendant.

Among Oriental sects of murderers, as is well known, homicidal fury was
excited and maintained by a drink brewed for the purpose from hemp-seed.

Buechner shows that dishonest instincts can be developed in bees by a
special food consisting of honey mixed with brandy. The insects acquire
a taste for this drink in the same way as human beings do, and under its
influence cease to work. Ants show similar symptoms after narcosis by
means of chloroform. Their bodies remain motionless, with the exception
of their heads, with which they snap at all who approach them.

The above cited cases show that there exists a species of alcoholic
psychic epilepsy, similar to congenital epilepsy, in which after
alcoholic poisoning, the individual is incited to raise his hand against
himself or others without any due cause. But besides the crimes of
violence committed during a drunken fit, the prolonged abuse of alcohol,
opium, morphia, coca, and other nervines may give rise to chronic
perturbation of the mind, and without other causes, congenital or
educative, will transform an honest, well-bred, and industrious man into
an idle, violent, and apathetic fellow,--into an ignoble being, capable
of any depraved action, even when he is not directly under the influence
of the drug.

When we were children, a frequent visitor at our house was a certain
Belm... (see Fig. 16, Chap. III.), a very intelligent man and an
accomplished linguist. He was a military officer, but later took to
journalism, and his writings were distinguished by vivacious style and
elevation of thought. He married and had several children, but at the
age of thirty some trouble caused him to take to drink. His character
soon underwent a complete change. Although formerly a proud man, he was
not ashamed to pester all his friends for money and to let his family
sink into the direst p