physicians, after a personal examination, made within one week before the time of said application or said commitment, which certificate shall contain the opinion of said physicians that such person has become, as the case may be, a dypsomaniac, an habitual drunkard, or has, by reason of the intemperate use of narcotics or stimulants, lost the power of self-control, and requires the treatment, care and custody of some inebriate asylum, and shall be subscribed and sworn to by said physicians before an authority empowered to administer oaths." LOSS TO THE STATE IN NOT ESTABLISHING ASYLUMS In a brief article in the _Quarterly Journal of Inebriety_, for 1877, Dr. Dodge thus emphasizes his views of the importance to the State of establishing asylums to which drunkards may be sent for treatment: "Every insane man who is sent to an asylum, is simply removed from doing harm, and well cared for, and rarely comes back to be a producer again. But inebriates (the hopeful class) promise immeasurably more in their recovery. They are, as inebriates, non-producers and centres of disease, bad sanitary and worse moral surroundings. All their career leads down to crime and poverty. The more drunkards, the more courts of law, and almshouses, and insane asylums, and greater the taxes. Statistics show that from fifty to sixty per cent. of crime is due to drunkenness; and we all know how large poverty is due to this cause. Drunkenness is alone responsible for from twenty to twenty-five per cent. of all our insane. "We assert, and believe it can be proved, that reclaiming the drunkard is a greater gain to the State, practical and immediate, than any other charity. "It is a low estimate to say it costs every county in the State three hundred dollars yearly to support a drunkard; that is, this amount, and more, is diverted from healthy channels of commerce, and is, practically, lost to the State. At an inebriate asylum, but little over that amount would, in a large majority of cases, restore them as active producers again. "Figures cannot represent the actual loss to society, nor can we compute the gain from a single case cured and returned to normal life and usefulness. Inebriety is sapping the foundation of our Government, both State and National, and unless we can provide means adequate to check it, we shall leave a legacy of physical, moral and political disease to our descendants, that will ultimately wreck this country. Inebriate asylums will do much to check and relieve this evil." We conclude this chapter, which is but an imperfect presentation of the work of our inebriate asylums, by a quotation from the _Quarterly Journal of Inebriety_, for September, 1877. This periodical is published under the auspices of "The American Association for the Cure of Inebriates." The editor, Dr. Crothers, says: "We publish in this number, reports of a large number of asylums from all parts of the country,