In 1849, a Swedish physician, Magnus Huss, introduced the term
alcoholism ["alcoholismus"] to designate not only the disorder of excessive use but an entire syndrome, including the multiple somatic consequences of excessive use.
Late-nineteenth-century physicians, although not the first to see habitual use of other drugs (such as OPIATES, TOBACCO, COFFEE) as disorders, are credited with stressing the idea that each was but a subtype of a more generic disorder of inebriety. However, they also minimized Trotter's and Rush's notions of learned behavior as a central feature of a generic disorder of inebriety and emphasized instead the idea of a disorder rooted in acquired or inherited biological malfunction or VULNERABIL-ITY. This more biologically based view of inebriety was used in Britain and the United States by advocates of publicly funded treatment facilities—inebriate asylums. Many temperance leaders also supported the establishment of treatment facilities. However, while physicians advocated treatment, temperance leaders, still convinced that alcohol itself was the root of the problem, pushed for its control and, eventually, for its prohibition.
In the United States, the ratification in 1920 of the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the production, sale, and distribution of alcohol, temporarily dampened scientific inquiry into the nature of alcoholism.
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