Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1889 — Treatment or Drunkards in Norway. [ARTICLE]

Treatment or Drunkards in Norway.

An habitual drunkard in Sweden and Norway is treated as a criminal in this sense, that his inordinate love of strong drink renders him liable to imprisonment, and while in confinement it appears he is cured of his bad propensities on a plau which, though simple enough, is said to produce marvelous effects. From the day the confirmed drunkard is incarcerated, no nourishment is served to him or her but bread and wine. The broad, however, it should be said, can not be eaten apart from the wine, but is steeped in a bowl of it, and left to soak thus an hour or more before the meal is served to the delinquent. The first day the habitual toper takes his food in this shape without the slightest repugnance: the second day he finds it less agreeable to his palate, and very quickly he evinces a positive aversion to it. Generally, eight or ten days of this regimen is more than sufficient to make a man loathe the very sight of wine, and even refuse the prison dish set before him. This manner of curing drunken habits is said to succeed almost without exception, and men or women who have undergone the treatment not only rarely return to their evil ways but from sheer disgust they frequently become total abstainers afterward.