After drinking only a single small measure of alcohol, a man suddenly becomes violently aggressive toward those around him for about an hour, showing none of the usual unsteadiness or slurred speech of ordinary intoxication, and afterward has no memory of the episode at all. Before revealing the answer: is this best described simply as excitement, or does it fit a more specific named pattern?

This fits the more specific named pattern of pathological drunkenness rather than needing to stop at the broader category of excitement. The disproportion between the small quantity of alcohol consumed and the severity of the resulting violence, the absence of the usual signs of drunkenness, the roughly hour-long duration, and the subsequent amnesia together are precisely the defining features of pathological drunkenness, a specific, named form of organic excitement with a distinct clinical picture of its own.