craving for liquor, and this often requires a definite hospital
procedure, before psychological measures can be of maxi-
mum benefit.

We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the
action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifesta-
tion of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited
to this class and never occurs in the average temperate
drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol
in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and
found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-
confidence, their reliance upon things human, their prob-
lems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult
to solve.

Frothy emotional appeal seldom suffices. The message
which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must
have depth and weight. In nearly all cases, their ideals
must be grounded in a power greater than themselves, if
they are to re-create their lives.

If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for
alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand
with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the
despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these
problems become a part of their daily work, and even of
their sleeping moments, and the most cynical will not
wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this move-
ment. We feel, after many years of experience, that we
have found nothing which has contributed more to the
rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement
now growing up among them.

Men and women drink essentially because they like the
effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that,
while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time
differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alco-
holic life seems the only normal one. They are restless,
irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience