"2. Men who have passed the age of 25, the strictly temperate, on an average, live at least ten years longer than those who become decidedly intemperate. We have not, in these returns, the means of coming to any conclusion as to the rela tive duration of life of total abstainers and habitually temperate drinkers of alcoholic liquors.
"3. In the production of cirrhosis and gout alcoholic excess plays the very marked part which it has long been recognized as doing; and that there is no other disease anything like so dis tinctly traceable to the effects of alco holic liquors.
"4. Apart from cirrhosis and gout, the effect of alcoholic liquors is rather to predispose the body toward attacks of disease generally than to induce any special pathological lesion.
"5. In the etiology of chronic renal dis ease alcoholic excess, or the gout which it induces, probably plays a special part.
"6. There is no ground for the belief that alcoholic excess leads in any special manner to the development of malignant disease, and some reason to think that it may delay its production.
"7. In the young alcoholic liquors seem rather to check than to induce the for mation of tubercle, while in the old there is some reason to believe that the effects are reversed.
"S. The tendency to apoplexy is not in any special manner induced by alcohol.
"9. The tendency to bronchitis, unless, perhaps, in the young, is not affected in any special manner by alcoholic excess.
"10. The mortality from pneumonia, and probably that from typhoid fever also, is not especially affected by alco holic habits.
"11. Prostatic enlargement and the tendency to cystitis are not especially induced by alcoholic excess.
"12. Total abstinence and habitual temperance augment considerably the chance of death from old age or natural decay, without special pathological le sion." Isamberd Owen (British Med. Jour.„June 23, '89).
Evidence.—Evidence of an intoxicated witness is not receivable.
Confession. of an intoxicated person is valid, if no inducement has been held out (England).
Contracts executed while intoxicated are voidable.
Wills made while intoxicated have been voided. Intoxication and incapac ity, it was held, must be complete, till 1892 (Tyler v. Maxwell, Court of Session, Edinburgh, Nov. 1, 1892), when Lord Wellwood ruled that the defensive plea of intoxication having to be total, though true in a sense, did not mean total dis ablement by drink. And (Morgan and
another v. Kitchen, Probate and Divorce, High Court, London, 1S91), though a first will was held good, one executed a year later was pronounced bad, on the ground that the testator had (though not intoxicated when he made the second disposition) become, after the earlier date, mentally incapacitated after fre quent (not intoxication but) "taking his drops," and after delirium tremens. At testation is invalid if done by an intoxi cated attestator, but presumption is in favor of validity.
Criminal Jurisprudence .—Under Greek law crime committed in intoxication was liable to double punishment. Roman law remitted capital punishment to intoxi cated soldiers. Mohammedan law does not admit a plea of intoxication. New York Penal Code holds no act less crim inal by having been committed while intoxicated, but intoxication considered to determine purpose, motive, and intent. Voluntary intoxication is not a defense in homicide without provocation. De lirium tremens, as a disease secondary to voluntary intoxication, has been accepted in many trials in England and the United States as a valid plea for irresponsibility (Justice Stephen, Newcastle, 1881; Jus tice Hawkins, Shrewsbury. 1895), though this ruling has not been followed by some other judges. In other trials the accused has been acquitted as having been unable, from intoxication. to have been capable of any intent, or as having been the subject of a well-defined mental disease, as having (through inherited or acquired mental weakness) been unable to drink intoxicants without insane se quela like the average man. English law also takes drunkenness into account (Lord James) "if it produces a sudden outbreak of passion causing the commis sion of crime under circumstances which, in a sober person, would reduce a charge of murder to manslaughter." Altogether there has generally been a growing tend ency of judges and juries to take alco holism (with mental disturbance) into account, during the past thirty years. German and Swiss law prescribes a dif ference in the punishment of offenses committed in culpable and inculpable intoxication.