United States v. Hemani · ¶30

Around the time of the founding and for decades following it, a habitual drunkard was, as one court put it, someone who “for any considerable part of his time [was] intoxicated to such a degree as to deprive him of his ordinary reasoning faculties.” In re Tracy, 1 Paige Ch. 580, 582–583 (N. Y. Ch. 1829). A regular or even frequent drinker did not usually ft the bill. A “man who [was] intoxicated or drunk one-half his time” was more like it. See Ludwick v. Commonwealth, 18 Pa. 172, 175 (1851). In an early American medical treatise, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, offered this description from a habitual drunkard about the depths of his condition: “ `Were a keg of rum in one corner of a room, and were a cannon constantly discharging balls between me and it, I could not refrain from passing before that cannon, in order to get at the rum.' ” Medical Inquiries…

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