The blood-vessels of the eye are
charged with bilious particles, and these intruding specks give rise to
fearful, exaggerated images of things that never yet were seen on sea or
land. Grim faces leer at the dreamer and make mock of him; frightful
animals pass in procession before him; and hosts of incoherent words are
jabbered in his ear by unholy voices. He wakes, limp, exhausted,
trembling, nauseated, and he feels as if he must choose between suicide
and--more drink. If he drinks at this stage, he is lost; and then is the
time to fix upon him and draw him by main force from the slough.
Now some practitioners say, "Let him drop it gradually;" and they
proceed to stir every molecule of alcohol in the system into vile
activity by adding small doses of wine or spirit to the deadly
accumulation. The man's brain is impoverished, and the mistaken doctors
proceed to impoverish it more, so that a patient who should be cured in
forty-eight hours is kept in dragging misery for a month or more. The
proper mode of treatment is widely different. You want to nourish the
brain speedily, and at any cost, ere the ghastly depression drives the
agonized wretch to the arms of Circe once more. First, then, give him
milk.
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