Quoted after Humphrey, “Old Age,” Cambridge, 1889. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XLIII. SOME REMARKS ON THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF THE ALCOHOL HABIT. IT is a strange fact, but one in which all observers agree, that women who have never been accustomed to take alcohol, can stand considerable, and sometimes very large, quantities of it during convalescence after infectious diseases, such as pneumonia, etc. It is equally strange that in severe cases of diabetes, where previously opium had never been taken, very large doses of this drug may be used without any inconvenience. We have also observed that women suffering from severe diabetes, though unaccustomed to alcohol, could take large quantities of it—for instance, one or two tablespoonfuls of whiskey three times a day—without displaying any symptom of mental excitation or other signs of having taken liquor in a quantity which might provoke a state of excitation in persons not used to alcohol; in fact, the alcohol has been well tolerated and taken with pleasure. In both these conditions—diabetes (Lorand) and infectious diseases—the thyroid gland plays an etiological rôle, as we have frequently indicated in this work. It is, therefore, justifiable now to discuss the point whether the thyroid has something to do with the apparent paradox that alcohol can be taken, without the display of any signs of intoxication, by women who are otherwise never in the habit of taking spirits. That this is really so cannot be denied, _a priori_, for the reason that between the activity of the thyroid and the influence of alcohol a certain relationship exists. This is evidenced from the observation, mentioned previously, that alcohol acts upon the thyroid gland, at first causing hyperactivity, and later on exhaustion of it. As we have already mentioned, there is a certain analogy between the action of chloroform and that of alcohol on the thyroid gland. In fact, we think that it is permissible to assume that drunkenness is a consequence of the hyperactivity of the thyroid, for in such a condition there are observable a series of symptoms of thyroid hyperactivity; and it has been shown by Moebius[317] that in women suffering from Graves’s disease (hyperactivity of the thyroid) we may find a condition of intoxication similar to that seen in alcoholic intoxication, although such women had not taken even a drop of alcohol. This condition is provoked by the over-abundance of thyroid secretion in the blood. In other words, women suffering from this disease can be drunk without having taken any alcohol at all, simply because of the entering into their blood of the secretion of the thyroid in large, i.e., in toxic, quantity, this having produced such a condition. Footnote 317: “Die Basedow’sche Krankheit,” Nothnagel’s Handbuch, second edition.