Intemperate

If the rule or habit is to drink to intoxication when occasion offers, and sobriety or abstinence is the exception, then the charge of "intemperate habits" is established. It is not necessary that the custom be an every-day rule.^ " Sober and temperate " does not imply total abstinence from intoxicating liquor. The moderate, temperate use of intoxicating liquors is consistent with sobriety.* While in a very clear case a court may assume that certain facts disclose a case of habitual intemperance, or that they warrant the opposite conclusion, in the main these are questions to be submitted to the jury.' A life policy provided that it should be void if the insured "became so far intemperate as to impair health, or induce delirium tremens." The trial court charged that the " impairment of health " was not the indisposition arising from a drunken debauch, but that arising from such frequency of use as indicated an injurious addiction to the practice. Held, that it was for the jury to decide whether death was caused by an excessive use of stimulants.^ See Drunkenness; Habit; Intoxicate.