Alcoholism: A Chapter in Social Pathologv

Abstract

Dr. Sullivan's work throws a new light upon alcoholism. It is marked by a breadth of view and a freedom from all intolerance which carry the reader through an intelligent and intelligible discussion of this difficult subject with never a wish to skip a page or to elude the issues so clearly set forth. The book is more particularly designed to elucidate the connection of alcoholism with industrial conditions, which hitherto have been inadequately recognised. We thus escape the dreary details which writers on this subject have repeated so uniformly, and at such intolerable length. We are brought to a consideration of a social problem by an array of facts which show how widely Dr. Sullivan has cast his net, and by an orderly process of argument which reveals his well-balanced mind. He introduces the subject with a brief historical sketch which indicates the beginnings of the modern industrial system and the change in the legal attitude towards intemperance, by the Licensing Law of 1551. His new view of the question leads him to remark on the enormous increase of alcoholism by the national policy in favour of free distillation in the end of the seventeenth century, and to indicate the effects of the development of the factory system in bringing about a rapid extension of industrial drinking.