English to Chinese Social Sciences History

1804
Thomas Trotter, an Edinburgh physician, publishes An Essay, Medical, Philosophical, and Chemical on Drunkenness and Its Effects on the Human Body: "In medical language, I consider drunkenness, strictly speaking, to be a disease, produced by a remote cause, and giving birth to actions and movements in the living body that disorder the functions of health. . . The habit of drunkenness is a disease of the mind."
查词典，解释“远因”。有没有比较通俗的译法？“间接原因”好象也不妥。