TESTIMONIES OF PHYSICIANS AGAINST ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION.
"In abandoning the use of alcohol it should be clearly
understood that we abandon an injurious influence, and escape
from a source of disease, as we do when we get into a purer
atmosphere. _There is not the slightest occasion to do anything,
or to take anything to make up for the loss of a strengthening
or supporting agent._ No loss has been incurred save the loss of
a cause of disease and death."--DR. J. J. RIDGE, of London
Temperance Hospital.
Sir. B. W. Richardson, M. D., said of the London Temperance Hospital:--
"No alcohol is administered, and no substitute for it. Any drug
with similar action would be bad; warmth and suitable
nourishment are relied on to keep up the system. We know that
people who take alcohol often feel better; this is from the
narcotic action. The pain may be stilled, and the disease
forgotten, but it has not been removed; its symptom has been
narcotized."
Another writer says:--
"I am asked for a substitute for brandy, and frankly and gladly
I tell you there is no substitute, for I have no knowledge of
any agent equally pleasing to the palate, and yet so destructive
of life."
Dr. Norman Kerr, President of the Society for the Study of Inebriety,
England, says:--
"My own experience of thirty-four years in the practice of my
profession has taught me that in nearly all cases and kinds of
disease the medical use of alcohol is unnecessary, and in a
large number of instances is prejudicial and even dangerous.
Having given an intoxicant, in strictly definite and guarded
doses, probably on the whole only about once in 3,000 cases
(then usually when nothing else was available in an emergency),
and having had most varieties of disease to contend with, my
death-rate and duration of illness have been quite as low as my
neighbors. The experience of the London Temperance Hospital and
other similar institutions, the current reports of that hospital
being now reliable scientific records, amply support this
experience.
"The chief peril of narcotic drugs has always appeared to me to
lie in their disguising the real state of the patient from
himself as well as from his doctor and his friends. If there is
any serious ailment, such as cholera or fever, the sufferer may
seem to be and may feel better. He is not better. He is actually
worse--made worse by the alcohol, and not unseldom, after the
evanescent alcoholic disguise and deceptive improvement has
faded, it is found that the malady itself has been progressing,
unseen and unsuspected from the delusive aspect of the alcohol,
steadily toward a fatal termination, which might, in many cases,
have been averted but for the true state of the patient having
been completely masked.
"Wherever the blame really has lain, one thing is now clear,
that alcoholic intoxicants are very rarely useful as a medicine;
are at the best dangerous remedies; and that, other things being
equal, the less they are resorted to the better for the chances
of the patient's recovery, the better for body and brain, the
better for physical, intellectual and moral well-being. Alcohol
does not nourish, but pulls down; does not stimulate, but
depresses; does not strengthen, but excites and exhausts.
Alcohol is the pathological fraud of frauds, degenerating while
it claims to be reconstructing, enfeebling while it appears to
be invigorating, destroying vitality while it professes to
infuse new life."
A medical writer in the Toledo, O., _Blade_ holds up in clear light the
relation of the _materia medica_ and alcohol, and the opportunity of the
physician to become a benefactor, and active temperance worker. His
remarks follow:--
"One of the signs of the times in the temperance movement is the
steady growth among physicians of a sentiment against the
administration of liquor of any kind as a medicine. The accepted
scientific view of alcohol is that it is a poison, and its
administration should be as guarded as that of any other poison
used as a medicine. Perhaps the hardest thing a physician finds
in his effort to restore his patients to health without the use
of liquors is the common, but erroneous, belief that they are
'strengthening,' and that the convalescent, by their use,
reaches recovery more quickly. The error is in supposing that
any alcoholic liquor is nourishing, or strengthening. They are
neither. Alcohol does not nourish, but it pulls down; it does
not strengthen, but excites and exhausts, for every stimulation
is necessarily followed by a period of depression, and this is
inevitably unfavorable to the patient.
"There is a grave responsibility resting on the physician who
prescribes alcoholic liquor. It may arouse in a susceptible
patient a dormant, inherited tendency to drink. He may, by
authorizing its use during the period of convalescence, fix a
habit upon a patient of feeble will, which the latter will never
be able to shake off. No physician who realizes this great moral
responsibility will be willing to accept it habitually. He
certainly knows that the best medical authorities agree that
alcoholic intoxicants are rarely useful as a medicine; that at
best they are dangerous remedies, and that the less they are
resorted to, the better for both brain and body.
"In point of fact the physician who does his duty to his patient
teaches him the error of the prevalent belief in the virtues of
liquor in restoring the sick to health. He becomes an active
temperance worker in effect. And he can do a noble and useful
work in the rescue of those who are under the control of the
drink habit. * * * * *
"Furthermore, every physician owes it to his profession to teach
his patients the utter fallacy of the common belief that alcohol
is an article of food value. It has no such value. The use of
intoxicants in any quantity whatever, or at any time, is
entirely useless and unnecessary. The continued use of them
gradually induces structural degradations and functional
derangements of the great bodily organs, thus leading to the
gravest physical disorders."
"I have demonstrated by actual experience that no form of
alcoholic drink is necessary, or desirable, for internal use,
either in health, or any of the varied forms of disease; but
that health can be better preserved, and disease more
successfully treated, without the use of such drinks.* * * * *
Simple truth compels me to say that I have never yet seen a case
in which the use of alcoholic drinks either increased the force
of the heart's action, or strengthened the patient. But I could
detail very many cases in which the administration of alcoholics
was quieting the patient's restlessness, enfeebling the
capillary circulation, and steadily favoring increased
engorgement of the lungs and other internal viscera, and thereby
hastening a fatal result, where both attending physician and
friends thought they were the only agents that were keeping the
patient alive.
"I have found no case of disease and no emergency arising from
accident, that I could not treat more successfully without any
form of fermented or distilled liquors than with. It is easy to
see that the anaesthetic properties of alcohol can be made
available by an intelligent and skillful physician to meet a
very limited number of indications in the treatment of some
cases that will come before him. But the same intelligence and
skill will enable him to select other remedies capable of
meeting the same indications more perfectly, and, with less
tendency to secondary bad effects. I have no hesitation,
therefore, in stating that for the attainment of the highest
degree of success in the management of all forms of disease,
whether acute or chronic, we need no form of fermented, or
distilled, alcoholic drinks. And whoever will boldly make the
trial, will find that his patients, of every kind, will make
better progress, on good air and simple nourishment, without any
admixture of alcoholic liquids, than they will with such
addition. In other words he will find that the supposed benefits
of this class of agents in medicine, are as illusory as they are
in general society, and that the words of the wise man are
worthy of careful consideration when he says: 'Wine is a mocker
and strong drink is raging, and whosoever is _deceived_ thereby
is not wise.'"--DR. N. S. DAVIS, Chicago, Ill.
"Dr. Hirschfeld, a well-known physician of Magdeburg, Germany,
was recently arrested on a charge of malpractice. The specific
charge was that he had refused to give alcohol to one of his
patients who was supposed to need it. The doctor, like the more
advanced German physicians, is discarding liquor from his
practice, and made such a hot defence to the charge that the
court not only discharged the physician, but assessed the cost
of the defense against the prosecution."--_Bulletin of A. M. T. A._
Dr. Greene, of Boston, when addressing his brethren and sisters of the
medical association in that city, upon alcohol, said in closing:--
"It needs no argument to convince you that it is upon the
medical profession, to a very great extent, that the rum-seller
depends to maintain the respectability of the traffic. It
requires only your own experience, and observations, to convince
you that it is upon the medical profession, upon their
prescriptions and recommendations for its use upon many
occasions, that the habitual dram-drinker depends for the
seeming respectability of his drinking habits. It is upon the
members of the medical profession, and the exceptional laws
which it has always demanded, that the whole liquor fraternity
depends, more than upon anything else, to screen it from
opprobrium, and just punishment for the evils which the traffic
entails upon society; and it is because the rum-seller, and the
rum-drinker, hide under this cloak of seeming respectability
that they are so difficult to reach either by moral suasion, or
by law. Physicians generally have only to overcome the force of
habit, and the prevailing fashion in medicine, to find an
excellent way, when they will all look back with wonder and
surprise, that they, as individuals, and members of an honored
profession, should have been so far compromised."
"It will be asked, _Was there no evidence of any good service
rendered by the agent in the midst of so much obvious bad
service?_ I answer to that question THAT THERE WAS NO SUCH
EVIDENCE WHATEVER, AND IS NONE."--SIR B. W. RICHARDSON.
"A prominent general practitioner expressed surprise that any
one could do without alcohol in general medicine. He was
persuaded to make a trial, by abandoning the internal use of
spirits as medicine. A year afterward he wrote that his success
in the treatment of disease had been equal to that of any year
in the past, and that his cases recovered as well without
alcohol as with it. In a recent medical meeting he remarked, 'I
thought for many years that I could not do without spirits as
medicine. I was mistaken. I am constantly treating cases of all
degrees of severity without alcohol, and my success is fully
equal to the average.'"--_Quarterly of A. M. T. A._
"Happily, the belief in alcohol is passing away."--DR. C. R.
FRANCIS, late Professor of Medicine, Calcutta Medical College.
Dr. Moor, the distinguished editor of the _Pacific Record_, says:--
"While the use of alcohol is always injudicious and injurious,
it is particularly so in summer, when the system is predisposed
to disturbances of the gastro-intestinal tract.
"Alcohol flushes the capillaries of the mucous membranes just as
it does the capillaries of the skin, and where there is already
a smouldering congestion, it will take but little to light the
fire of acute inflammation, which will rage with greatly
increased intensity.
"It is wiser to habitually avoid even the medicinal use of
alcohol, as there are plenty of other stimulants which will give
the desired results without entailing any disastrous after
effects."
"All the pleasant sensations of increased mental and physical
power, which the use of alcohol produces, are deceptive and
arise from the paralysis of the judgment and the momentary
benumbing of the sense of fatigue which afterwards returns so
imperiously with perhaps even greater intensity."--PROF. ADOLF
FICK, of Wurzburg.
Dr. Frank Payne, vice-president of the London Pathological Society,
says:--
"Alcohol is a functional and tissue poison, and there is no
proper or necessary use for it as a medicine."
"When I first heard that there was going to be a total
abstinence hospital, I thought it would be a complete failure.
That was because I had been taught as a student to regard
alcohol as absolutely necessary in the treatment of disease.
Nevertheless I was an abstainer myself. When I was asked to join
as physician, I did not consent without a good deal of
consideration, and then only on the understanding that if I
thought a person needed it, I should be allowed to administer
alcohol. I remember the first case of severe typhoid fever I
had. He was hovering between life and death, and I was anxiously
watching to see whether it would be necessary to give alcohol,
but the man made a good recovery without it. After watching many
cases to whom I should have given alcohol if I had been treating
them elsewhere, I came to the conclusion that I had been
completely deluded. I gave it at one time to a woman in the
Hospital who was in a dying condition, but it did not save her.
I do not think I am likely to administer alcohol again. We have
had progress and efficiency in the Hospital. It has been like an
experiment for the profession, and our success shows that this
giving of alcohol is certainly a matter for re-consideration for
the medical profession. I believe that they are mistaken. There
is no doubt that the amount of alcohol used in other hospitals
has diminished greatly, compared with what was used in the past.
To the outside public also this Hospital is an example. I
believe that an immense number of the public have been
teetotalers some time in their lives, but a great many of them
have gone back to the drink in time of illness, because they
have been advised to do so. This Hospital is a standing witness
that disease and surgical injuries can be treated without
alcoholic liquors."--DR. J. J. RIDGE, of London Temperance
Hospital.
"I find very little use for alcohol in the practice of medicine.
Where there is one element of good in alcohol there are
thousands that are bad."--DR. ALFRED MERCER, Syracuse, N. Y.,
Professor of Medicine in Syracuse Medical School.
"Alcohol is rarely necessary. Other remedies are much more
efficacious. In my department of the University of Buffalo I
follow Cushny, who claims that alcohol is a poison, a depressant
in direct proportion to the amount ingested, and a so-called
false food."--DR. DE WITT H. SHERMAN, Adjunct Professor of
Therapeutics, University of Buffalo Medical Department.
"I believe that alcohol is the greatest foe to the human race
to-day. I feel that it would not be a serious harm if its use as
a medicine were totally discontinued."--DR. WALTER E. FERNALD,
Professor in Tufts Medical School, Boston, Mass.
"I rarely or never prescribe alcohol as a medicament or a food,
or sanction its use as a beverage. Physiologically I look upon
alcohol as a narcotic, with perhaps a primary stimulating
effect, but I believe that such desired action as it is capable
of producing can be equally well brought about by other agents.
As a beverage the use of alcohol, particularly in excess, is
attended with definite and well-known dangers."--DR. A. A.
ESHNER, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Philadelphia Polyclinic
and College for Graduates in Medicine.
"I agree with you altogether in your agitation against the use
of alcohol in any form. I believe that wine is a mocker, and
belief in wine as a benefit, mockery."--DR. MATTHEW WOODS,
Philadelphia, Pa.
"It is extremely seldom that I ever advise the use of alcohol in
any form for my patients."--ELLIOTT P. JOSLIN, M. D., Professor
in Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.
"My belief is that there is very little need of the medical use
of alcohol. I almost never use it in my practice, and think that
its use by practitioners generally is far less than it was a few
years ago."--DR. E. G. CUTLER, Professor in Harvard Medical
School, Boston, Mass.
"I believe that the trend of teaching in the Harvard Medical
School has been growing less favorable, of late years, to the
use of alcohol in the treatment of disease, and in fact it is
far less used than it was a generation ago."--DR. JAMES J.
PUTNAM, Professor in Harvard Medical School.
"My personal opinion in regard to the use of alcoholic drinks is
very decidedly averse to such use. I have long been of the
opinion that while the use of alcohol may restrain tissue
metamorphosis, it cannot legitimately be considered a
food."--DR. WILLIAM O. STILLMAN, Albany Medical College,
Albany, N. Y.
"I do not think you will meet with very many physicians who
favor alcohol and its use. I believe the trend of the teaching
in the Albany Medical College is that alcohol is not a food or
stimulant."--DR. A. VANDER VEER, Albany, N. Y., Medical School.
"I think the medical profession could get along perfectly well
without the use of alcohol, except as it is needed in the
manufacture of drugs. As a therapeutic agent, it has very little
value. I do not suppose I have used a pint of alcohol in the
last ten years. I think the tendency of the medical profession
throughout the country is to give up alcohol in the treatment of
disease."--DR. MATTHEW D. MANN, Dean of the Medical Department
of the University of Buffalo, N. Y.
"I very seldom prescribe alcohol as a medicine, and think its
effects are positively harmful in the vast majority of medical
cases."--DR. ALLEN A. JONES, Adjunct Professor of Medicine,
Buffalo, N. Y.
"At the Baptist Hospital I have not ordered alcohol for a
patient in several years. At the Massachusetts General Hospital,
in the out-patient department, I never prescribe it."--DR.
RICHARD BADGER, of Harvard Medical School, Boston.
"Alcohol is used much too freely in the treatment of the sick,
especially in such conditions as mild typhoid fever,
neurasthenia and early tuberculosis. It should be prescribed
only when there is definite indication for it, and then in
definite dose for a limited period in the same manner as any
other powerful and potentially harmful drug."--DR. S. S. COHEN,
Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia.
"It is seldom necessary to prescribe alcohol as a
medicine."--DR. JAMES B. HERRICK, Professor of Medicine in Rush
Medical College, Chicago.
"As I have said but little about the use of medicine in the
treatment of typhoid fever, save for one symptom, I may add, for
the purpose of definiteness, that I use none except for special
symptoms. The rare exceptions are stimulants such as strychnia,
in less marked indications coffee. Alcohol as a routine drug I
have entirely abandoned, having found that the doses formerly
given before or after the bath are altogether unnecessary. Hot
milk internally, or hot water bags externally, more than replace
spirits according to my experience."--DR. GEORGE DOCK, New
Orleans.
"I have no use for alcohol, either personally, or in my
practice. Yet I cannot say that I have entirely abolished it.
Alcohol is used in compounding most of our tinctures, but in
remedies proper my experience has been that other stimulants,
such as ammonia, strychnine, caffeine, kolafra, etc., answer the
same purpose without alcohol's dangerous effects. In my
practice, which is confined to surgery, I find very, very little
use for it. During the past year, in extreme cases, I used it in
hypodermic injections, and afterwards felt that ether, or
ammonia would have answered the same purpose. I think, in
general practice, physicians are dispensing with alcohol more
and more, but perhaps unconsciously."--D. W. B. DE GARMO,
Professor of surgery in Post-Graduate Hospital, New York City.
"Medicine, to-day, would be in a more satisfactory condition if
the use of alcohol as a medicine had been interdicted a hundred
years ago, and the interdict had remained to the present day.
The benefits derived from its use are so small (even when they
can be proved, which is much more rarely the case than most
people imagine), and the advantages gained are so slight, that
they are completely outweighed when we set against them the evil
that has been wrought by the abuse of alcohol, and that has
arisen out of the loose methods of prescription that have
obtained, and even still obtain, in regard to this drug."--DR.
G. SIMS WOODHEAD, F. R. C. P., F. R. S., Director of the
Research Laboratories of the Royal College of Physicians and
Surgeons, London.
"The effect of continually dosing with this drug is too apparent
wherever it is used, benumbing the senses, and rendering more
difficult every natural function. Alcohol never sustains the
powers of life. It sometimes changes the symptoms of disease,
but at the expense of the vitality of the body. What is called
its supporting action, is a fever induced by the poison, which
finally prostrates the patient. The secret of its action is
found in the laws of vitality. The man who takes alcohol to
help digest his food, must first throw off the alcohol, before
his stomach can act healthfully.
"There is one encouraging fact to be noted in this connection,
that the use of alcohol in medicine has very much diminished
during the past twenty-five years, and the present tendency is
constantly in that direction. Right here is an important point
which I wish to make: When the physician ceases to prescribe
alcohol as a medicine, the drink problem will have reached the
final stage of its solution. Mankind will eventually learn that
safety lies not so much in skillful doctors, or in some
wonderful 'new remedy,' as in daily obedience to the laws of
health. A small amount of prevention is of more worth than all
the power of cure."--DR. C. H. SHEPARD, Brooklyn, N. Y.
"My observation has been that there is a decided tendency among
educated physicians to give less alcohol than formerly in the
treatment of disease. Of late years I have given but very little
alcohol in my own practice. The tendency is due, in my opinion,
to the study of the physiological action of drugs, and to the
better understanding of the causation of disease and
pathological processes. Modern investigators now know that we
have therapeutic agents that meet the requirements of disease
processes with more scientific accuracy than is obtained by the
exhibition of alcohol."--DR. DONNELLY, Secretary of Minnesota
State Medical Society, St. Paul, Minn.
"Dr. Pearce Gould recently made a speech to the National
Temperance League on alcohol and the advantage of doing without
it, both in health and in the treatment of disease. It takes a
strong man to say the strong things which Mr. Gould said on the
subject, especially if he happens to be a medical man. No doubt,
as Dr. Gould says, the use of alcohol in medical practice is
nothing now compared to what it was twenty years ago, much more
forty years ago, when Dr. Todd's influence, and the reaction
from the so-called antiphlogistic treatment were at their
height. Public opinion has been enlightened by the evidence of
leaders in medicine, such as Dr. Parkes, Sir William Gull, Dr.
Gairdner, Dr. Sanderson, and others, and medical men have dared
to treat disease without alcohol, or with only small quantities
of it. There are physicians and surgeons of reputation and
success, who are so strong in their convictions that alcohol is
of little use in the treatment of disease, that it destroys
tissues, lessens the resistance to microbes, deranges functions,
spoils temper, and shortens life, that they are ready to testify
to this effect in public, in company with redoubtable champions
of the temperance cause like the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sir
William White (chief constructor of the navy), and the Bishop of
Derry, who have as much prejudice to contend against in their
spheres as the medical man has in his. We recognize with
pleasure the good done by such testimony as Dr. Gould's. Men
whose record and authority in the profession are such as his
have the courage of their opinions, and their honest testimony
will be respected even by those who do not go quite so far in
discarding alcohol as an element of diet, or as a
medicine."--_The Lancet_, London, May 14, 1898.
"The light of exact investigation has shown that the therapeutic
value of alcohol rests on an insecure basis, and it is
constantly being made clearer that after all alcohol is a sort
of poison to be handled with the same care and circumspection as
other agents capable of producing noxious and deadly effect upon
the organism. It has been shown by Abbott and others that
alcoholic animals are more susceptible to infections than normal
animals. And Laitinen, after having studied the influence of
alcohol upon infections with anthrax, tubercle and diphtheria
bacilli in dogs, rabbits, guinea-pigs and pigeons, reaches the
same general results with certainty and directness. Under all
circumstances alcohol causes a marked increase in susceptibility
no matter whether given before or after infections, no matter
whether the doses were few and massive or numerous and small,
and no matter whether the infection was acute or chronic. The
alcoholic animals either die while the controls remain alive, or
in case both die, death is earlier in the alcoholic. The facts
brought out by the researches of Abbott and Laitinen and others
do not furnish the slightest support for the use of alcohol in
the treatment of infectious diseases in man."--_Journal American
Medical Association, Editorial, September 8, 1900._
"Step by step the progress of science has nullified every theory
on which the physician administers alcohol. Every position taken
has been disapproved. Alcohol is not a food and does not
nourish, but impairs nutrition. It is not a stimulant in the
proper acceptation of the term; on the contrary it is a
depressant. Hence its former universal use in cases of shock
was, to say the least, a grave mistake. It has been proved by
recent experiments that alcohol retards, perverts, and is
destructive either in large or small doses to normal cell growth
and development."--NATHAN S. DAVIS, SR., M.D., former Dean of
Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Illinois.
(Deceased.)
"It seems to me that the field of usefulness of alcohol in
therapeutics is extremely limited and possibly does not exist at
all. Probably every supposed indication for its use can be met
better and more safely by other drugs. The recent work on the
so-called food value of alcohol is the subject of much
misunderstanding. While it is true that under some
circumstances, for example, after a person has acquired a
certain degree of tolerance to its poisonous effects, alcohol
seems to act as a food in the sense that fats and carbohydrates
do, I believe this to be at present a matter of little more than
theoretical importance."--DR. REID HUNT, Chief of the Department
of Pharmacology, Public Health and Marine Hospital Service,
Washington, D.C.
"The physician should have blazoned before him, 'If you can do
no good, do no harm.' If this rule is adhered to, in ninety-nine
cases out of one hundred the physician will give no alcohol. In
the medical wards of the Pennsylvania Hospital I have found that
in acute as well as chronic disease we can do without alcohol.
It does harm rather than good. Alcohol masks the symptoms of
disease, so that we cannot know the patient's real
condition."--J. H. MUSSER, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa.,
Ex-President American Medical Association.
"It is time alcohol was banished from the medical armamentarium;
whisky has killed thousands where it cured one."--J. H.
MCCORMACK, M. D., Secretary Kentucky Board of Health, and
Organizer for the American Medical Association.
"I very rarely use alcohol in my practice. I think that its use
is never essential. Physicians are using it less and less in the
treatment of disease owing to the recognition that it is a
narcotic, not a stimulant, and that other narcotics are usually
better when a narcotic is required."--RICHARD C. CABOT, M. D.,
Professor of Clinical Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston,
Mass.
"My position has been that alcohol should be prescribed with as
much care as to indications and circumspection as to dose and
method as in the use of any other drug that in health would
prove harmful, as morphine, belladonna, aconite, quinine, etc. I
believe strongly that in pneumonia, typhoid fever, and
tuberculosis especially, the indiscriminate use of alcohol in
the past has caused an incalculable amount of distress and
needless disaster to suffering humanity."--HOWARD S. ANDERS, M.
D., Professor of Physical Diagnosis, Medico-Chirurgical College,
Philadelphia, Pa.
"I do not think alcohol of any value in the treatment of
disease; formerly it was used a great deal in the hospital
wards, and 'liquor slips' were daily signed. Now, I never order
liquor in any quantity, and at times for weeks I have not signed
a single slip ordering liquor."--HENRY JACKSON, M. D., Professor
in Harvard Medical School.
"In the overwhelming majority of cases I am in entire sympathy
with the movement to abolish the routine use of alcoholics from
medicine, and I rarely advise such in my practice."--EDWARD R.
BALDWIN, M. D., Saranac Lake Sanitarium, New York.
"I seldom prescribe alcohol."--GEORGE BLUMER, M. D., Yale
Medical School, New Haven, Conn.
"WHEREAS, The study of alcohol from a scientific standpoint has
demonstrated that its action is deceptive, and that it does not
have the medical properties that we once claimed for it; now,
therefore, be it
"_Resolved_, By the West Virginia State Medical Association,
That we deplore the fact that our profession has been quoted so
long as claiming for it virtues which it does not possess, and
that we earnestly pledge ourselves to discourage the use of it,
both in and out of the sick room."--_Resolution passed at annual
meeting May, 1908._
"I have been actively engaged in the practice of medicine for
nearly twenty-five years, in the early portion of which I
prescribed alcoholics moderately but yet with considerable
frequency. For the past ten years I have been finding
professionally less place for alcoholics of any sort in my
practise, and for perhaps three years I have scarcely ever
prescribed them. I am satisfied that my cases of pneumonia and
typhoid come through in better condition without anything
alcoholic, even wines, and I no longer prescribe these at all in
cases of tuberculosis. I have noted also that among my
professional associates of the thinking rather than of the
automatic type, the medicinal use of alcohol is rapidly
lessening."--C. G. HICKEY, M. D., Lecturer on Medicine, Denver
and Gross College of Medicine, Denver, Colorado.
"In the thirteen years I have taught in Michigan I have not used
alcohol in the treatment of disease in a routine way. Even
alcoholic preparations, such as tinctures, have been used in
very rare instances. I have occasion to speak on this subject
every year to about two hundred students. My reasons for taking
this stand are chiefly medical, though I am heartily in sympathy
with the ethical and moral phases of the temperance
movement."--DR. GEORGE DOCK, formerly Professor of Medicine,
University of Michigan Medical College, now of Tulane
University, New Orleans.
"Alcohol is distinctly a poison, and the limitation of its use
should be as strict as that of any other kind of poison. It is
not an appetizer, and even in small quantities it hinders
digestion. The use of alcohol is emphatically diminishing in
hospital practise."--SIR FREDERICK TREVES, Surgeon to King
Edward.
"If during the last quarter of a century I have prescribed
almost no alcohol in the treatment of disease, it is because I
have found very little reason for its use, and it seemed to me
that my patients got on better without it."--SIR JAMES BARR,
Dean of the Medical School of Liverpool University.
"With the increase of medical knowledge and with the increase of
medical observation, it is shown every year that the value of
alcohol as a drug has been enormously overestimated. It is a
very poor agent, and only in common use because it is so easily
obtained. The medical profession is using it less and less,
because they appreciate it now at its true value. Personally I
never order it, because I believe patients recover better
without it."--SIR VICTOR HORSLEY, Surgeon to London Hospital.
"The same care and discrimination should be given to the
prescribing of alcohol as to the most deadly drug with which we
have to deal. In looking at the report of Radcliffe Infirmary
for the past month I see that in dealing with twenty-five cases
I ordered alcohol costing exactly 1-3/4 pence."--DR. WILLIAM
COLLIER, President British Medical Association, 1904.
"In England at present the use of large doses of alcohol seems
to have greatly gone out of hospital practise, and opinion is
certainly growing that not even small doses are required.
Diseases of the stomach, liver, heart, and kidneys have appeared
to me, in my practise, to be much more satisfactorily treated
without beer, wines, or spirits."--DR. C. R. DRYSDALE,
Consulting Physician to the Metropolitan Hospital, London.
"Alcohol is a functional and tissue poison, and there is no
proper or necessary use for it as medicine."--DR. FRANK PAYNE,
Vice-President London Pathological Society.
"Of scarlet fever I have treated some 2,000 cases. I have never
seen a case in which, in my opinion, alcohol was necessary; no
case in which its administration was beneficial; but I have seen
more than one case in which its action was directly injurious. *
* * Alcohol in no case averts a fatal issue where such is
impending. * * * The facts are dead against alcohol. In
hospitals there has been an increase of 300 per cent. in the use
of milk, and a decline of 47 per cent. in the use of alcohol.
Progress in treatment of disease has gone hand in hand with
disuse of alcohol. The use of alcohol formerly was the outcome
of ignorance, a confession of weakness and defeat; to-day it is
the expression of inability to discard the fetters of an outworn
routine."--DR. C. KNOX BOND, in Medical Times.
"For many years I have dispensed almost entirely with alcohol as
an aid in surgical treatment. As a student I saw it used, almost
as a matter of routine, for every kind of surgical malady except
head injuries, and in my early years I naturally followed the
practise of my teachers; but as soon as I made trial for myself
of the effect of withholding alcohol, I found how entirely
overrated its value was, and how gravely mistaken had been the
teaching. It is commonly held, I believe, that alcoholic
stimulants are of especial value in all forms of septic
inflammation, such as erysipelas, pyaemia, septicaemia, and hectic
fever. I believe that this belief is founded solely upon
tradition unsupported by any trustworthy evidence, and untested
by experiment or experience."--DR. A. PEARCE GOULD, F. R. C. S.,
Surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, London.
"I have not prescribed alcohol to my patients for more than ten
years, and can affirm positively that they have fared well under
this change of treatment. Since I formerly followed the
universal practice, I am competent to make comparisons, and
these speak unconditionally in favor of treatment without
alcohol. As a preventive of waste I use among fever patients
nothing but real foods; in addition to milk, particularly
sugar, which can be administered to any fever patient in ample
quantity in the form of fruit juices, stewed fruit, sweet
lemonade, fruit ices, sugared tea, etc., concerning which
hundreds of investigations have demonstrated positively that it
prevents the waste of both albumen and fat. As a stimulant I
employ, besides hydriatic methods, which at the same time
abstract heat, almost nothing but camphor, and I can affirm that
it is unconditionally preferable to alcohol for its prompt
results and the absence of disagreeable after-effects
(intoxication, benumbing). Pneumonia, especially, subsides
without alcohol to perfect satisfaction, and I rejoice to agree
in this respect with Aufrecht, one of the best authorities on
this disease, who in his monograph in Nothnagle's manual,
acknowledges himself hostile to the use of alcohol in the
treatment of pneumonia, and hopes that its use may be speedily
abolished. For the reasons previously specified, I should like
to see that extended to all use of alcohol in therapeutics.
However, that can come to pass only when all thinking physicians
clearly appreciate the fact that no substance is able to
undertake the double role of a food and a poison, and, also,
that for alcohol no nutritive, but only toxic properties can be
claimed."--MAX KASSOWITZ, M. D., Professor in the University of
Vienna, Austria.
"Besides its deleterious influence on the nervous system and
other important parts of our body, alcohol has a harmful action
on the phagocytes, the agents of natural defense against
infective microbes."--PROF. METCHNIKOFF, Pasteur Institute,
Paris, France.
"Alcoholic liquors are, to my mind, not only not valuable, but
distinctly disadvantageous, in the treatment of disease, except
in rare instances, as for example in the initial chill of some
acute infectious disease. However, I have almost given up the
use of alcohol in the treatment of disease."--DR. D. L. EDSALL,
Professor of Therapeutics in the University of Pennsylvania
Medical School.
"As a rule which might well be regarded as universal in the
practice of medicine, alcohol in the treatment of disease is an
evil. In ordinary doses and in continuous use the sum of its
reactions increases exhaustion, which may terminate
fatally."--DR. JOHN VAN DUYN, Professor of Medicine in Syracuse,
N. Y., University Medical School.
"In sixteen years of active practice I have not used alcoholics
at all. I am medical director of the Scranton Sanitarium, and I
have considerable trouble in trying to cure those who use
alcohol, and to undo some of the work my fellow practitioners
have unwittingly made."--D. WEBSTER EVANS, M. D., Scranton, Pa.
"I am opposed to the use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage, and
with rare exceptions, to their use in the treatment of
diseases."--DR. EUGENE KERR, Physician to Phipps Dispensary,
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md.
"In my professional work I do not advise or permit the use of
alcohol as a beverage or medicine in any form whatever. No
alcohol is used medicinally in my hospital wards. Beer or wine
is not permitted to convalescents. Children are never given
tinctures. Cases of delirium tremens receive no alcohol. The
hypodermic use of alcohol is not permitted in cases of shock.
There are other much more effective and less depressing
diffusable stimulants.
"Among my colleagues the employment of alcohol as a medicine has
diminished at least seventy-five per cent. in the past fifteen
years.
"I have cast it out entirely."--J. P. WARBASSE, M. D., Chief
Surgeon German Hospital, Brooklyn, N. Y.
"The habitual use of alcohol in any disease is worse than
harmful."--ROBERT B. PREBLE, M. D., Chicago, Ill.
"The last few years I find I have used less and less alcohol in
prescribing for my patients until at the present time I use very
little. I think my typhoid cases do better without alcohol than
with it."--H. H. HEALY, M. D., former Sec'y North Dakota Board
of Health.
"Alcohol is a poison. It is claimed by some that alcohol is a
food. If so, it is a poisoned food."--FREDERICK PETERSON, M. D.,
Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University, N. Y.
"Few physicians now credit alcohol as a food (that is, as a
tissue builder) or as having any valuable medicinal qualities.
In fact, it is considered by many to have a destructive rather
than a constructive quality. I believe it should never be put
into the human body."--EUGENE HUBBELL, M. D., St. Paul, Minn.
"The medical profession is learning that alcohol has been much
abused in the treatment of the sick, and is largely discarding
it. I hardly find occasion to prescribe it once a year."--W. A.
PLECKER, M. D., Sec'y State Board of Health, Hampton, Va.
"The use of alcohol as a beverage or therapeutically, is in
either case a habit of the user. The stimulation is but
temporary, the reaction leaving the nerve cells of the
individual with less resisting power than before the ingestion
of alcohol. * * * Never permit a verbal or written prescription
of yours to give rise to the use of a habit forming
drug."--_From a lecture to students in Omaha Medical College by
J. M. Aiken, M. D., Clinical Instructor and Lecturer upon
Nervous and Mental Diseases._
"The use of spirits as a stimulant in diseases, except in a very
limited circle, is a mere empiricism for which no good reasons
can be given. The teachings of medical men are no more to be
followed blindly and without question. The tests of alcohol as a
tonic, as a food, as a stimulant, as a retarder of waste, are
all negative. There is no reliable evidence to support these
claims, but a constant accumulation of facts to indicate the
danger from the use of spirits. To give alcohol or any other
drug without some rational theory in accord with the scientific
researches of to-day is unpardonable."--DR. T. D. CROTHERS,
Hartford, Conn., Editor of the Journal of Inebriety.
"Many physicians prescribe alcohol only because it is the desire
of the patient, and because patients refuse medicine which the
physicians would rather use."--EVERETT HOOPER, M. D. Boston,
Mass.
"You are right in indicting alcohol for its insidious wrongs to
humanity. It is an old and sly offender and very much the
'mocker' in medical practise that it has been pronounced in holy
writ. It exhausts the latent energy of the organism often when
that power is most needed to conserve the failing strength of
the body in the battle with disease."--DR. C. H. HUGHES, St.
Louis, Missouri.
"The best class of thinkers, men of the best intellectual gauge,
are those who are doing away with this miserable, unscientific
practise of giving liquor."--DR. BOYNTON, Clifton Springs, N. Y.
"I believe that in the scientific light of the present era
alcohol should be classed among the anaesthetics and poisons, and
that the human family would be benefited by its entire exclusion
from the field of remedial agents."--DR. J. S. CAIN, Dean of the
Faculty, Medical Department, University of the South, Sewanee,
Tenn.
"Let me cite my experience in surgery for the last three years
in proof of the uselessness of alcohol, and the benefit of
abstinence from its administration. During that time I have
performed more than one thousand operations, a large portion
upon cases of railroad injuries, one hundred for appendicitis,
and in none of these was alcohol administered in any form,
either before, during, or after operations. I defy any one who
still adheres to alcohol to show as good results. Equally
gratifying results have been obtained with my medical cases, and
I fail to understand how any observing and thinking physician
can still cling to so prejudicial a drug as alcohol, when he has
within his reach a multitude of valuable, exact, and reliable
methods for combating, governing, and controlling disease."--DR.
EVAN C. KANE, Surgeon Pennsylvania Railroad, Kane, Pa.
"In my neurological practice I emphatically forbid my patients
the use of alcohol. This poison has a special predilection for
the nervous system which it influences sometimes to an alarming
extent."--ALFRED GORDON, M. D., Jefferson Medical College,
Philadelphia, Pa.
"Alcohol finds no place in my remedial list. It has been
banished, not from sentiment, but from knowledge secured by
scientific investigation."--T. ALEXANDER MACNICHOLL, M. D., New
York City, one of the founders of the Red Cross Hospital, New
York.
"No sound, scientific argument can be offered for the medical
use of alcohol, either internally or externally. It is a toxic
substance which ought to be retired from the _materia medica_,
and placed in the catalog of obsolete drugs along with tobacco,
lobelia, and like useless but highly toxic drug
substances."--DR. J. H. KELLOGG, Superintendent Battle Creek
Sanitarium, Battle Creek, Michigan.
"The majority of medical men, without making any searching
investigation into the abundant recent literature upon the
subject of alcohol, are disposed to regard it with less and less
favor as the years go by, while those who have closely followed
the thorough investigations into the physiological action of
alcohol recently made by scientists, have repudiated it
altogether. * * * It is a lack of information upon this
subject--together with the fact that alcohol has been used as a
therapeutic agent for hundreds of years, during which it has
formed the basis of all tonic or stimulating treatment--that
gives alcohol its present hold upon a part of the medical
profession."--JOHN MADDEN, M. D., Portland, Oregon, formerly
professor in Milwaukee Medical College.
"Alcohol may fill an emergency when better means are not at
hand, but, apart from this, I know of no use in the practise of
medicine and surgery for which we have not better weapons at our
command. There is but one reason for the continued use of
alcohol--men use it because they love it." DR. W. F. WAUGH,
Chicago, Editor Journal of Clinical Medicine.
"If alcohol had become a candidate for recognition years ago
instead of centuries ago it is safe to say that its application
in medicine would have been very much more limited than we find
it at the present time. Its wide therapeutic use is to be
attributed in part to fallacies and misconception regarding its
pharmacology, and in part to a disinclination on the part of the
average practitioner of medicine to depart from old and
well-beaten lines."--WINFIELD S. HALL, M. D., Professor of
Physiology, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago.
"In its relation to the human system, alcohol is never
constructive and always destructive."--PROF. FRANK WOODBURY, M.
D., Philadelphia, Pa.
"The clinicians who decide for the deleterious action of alcohol
in infectious conditions have what evidence of an experimental
nature we possess at the present time to support their
impressions. The advocates of the continuous use of the drug
have this evidence against them."--HENRY F. HEWES, M. D.,
Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.
"I am very glad that you are undertaking so important a work as
this in connection with the terrible problem of alcoholism.
Physicians need awakening in this matter; they need reform. The
evil results of alcohol are unfortunately brought to my notice
each day of my life as I pursue my vocation and my public duties
as Health Officer, and a reform in prescribing so as to
eliminate alcohol would undoubtedly have far-reaching beneficent
effects."--EDWARD VON ADELUNG, M. D., Health Officer, Oakland, Cal.
"I am forwarding you a report of 303 cases of typhoid fever
treated without alcohol, and my reasons for not using it. I
believe the results will not suffer by comparison with those
obtained in other hospitals where alcohol is used. Wishing you
lasting success in your war upon the greatest evil of the
times."--J. H. LANDIS, M. D., Cincinnati, O.
"Only precise evidence that it (alcohol) is able to protect
albumen from destruction can warrant its employment and
establish its value as a food in the sick diet. And this
evidence which is of determinative importance must be looked
upon as having failed, according to the recent investigations of
Stammreich and Miura (who both worked under von Noorden's
direction), as well as by Schmidt, Schoeneseiffen and Roseman.
The uniform result of all these experiments, arrived at by
altogether different methods, is that _alcohol does not possess
albumen sparing power_; that it even brings about an undoubted
breaking down of albumen, and consequently it is entirely
unequal to carbohydrates and fat."--DR. JULIAN MARCUSE, a
contributing editor of _Die Heilkunde_, a German medical
magazine. See issue of July, 1900.
"Thirty years ago the general principle of practice was
stimulation. Alcohol was supposed to rouse up and support vital
forces in disease. Twenty-three years ago the first practical
denial was put into a permanent position in a public hospital in
London, where alcohol was seldom or never used. * * * Doctor
Richardson's researches showing the anaesthetic nature of alcohol
have had a great influence in changing medical practice in
England. * * * On the Continent a number of scientific workers
have published researches confirming Doctor Richardson's
conclusions, and bringing out other facts as to the action of
alcohol on the brain and nervous system. These papers and the
discussions which followed have been slowly working their way
into the laboratory and hospital, and have been tested and found
correct, materially changing current opinions, and creating
great doubts of the value of alcohol.
"In 1896, the prosecution of Doctor Hirschfeld, a Magdeburg
physician, in the German courts, for not using alcohol in a case
of septicemia, seemed to be the central point for a new
demonstration of the danger of the use of alcohol in medicine.
Doctor Hirschfeld was acquitted on the testimony of a large
number of leading physicians from the large hospitals and
universities of Europe. It was proved that alcohol was not a
remedy which was specifically required in any disease; also that
its value was most seriously questioned as a general remedy by
many able men, and its substitution was practical and literal in
most cases. Statistics were presented proving that alcohol was
dangerous, and never a safe remedy, and laboratory
investigations confirming and explaining its action were given.
Since then a sharp reaction has been going on in Europe, and
alcohol is rapidly declining and passing away as a common
remedy.
"Doctor Frick, an eminent teacher of medicine in Zurich,
Switzerland, and Doctor von Speyer, of the University of Berne,
have made statistical studies of cases treated with and without
alcohol, and have analyzed the effects of spirits as medicinal
agents to check and antagonize disease, and assert very
positively, that alcohol is a dangerous and exceedingly doubtful
remedy. Doctor Meyer, of the University of Gottenburg, Doctor
Moebius, of Leipsic, and Doctor Wehberg, of Dusseldorf, are
equally prominent physicians who have taken the same position,
and are equally emphatic in their denunciations of the current
beliefs concerning alcohol in medicine."--_Journal A. M. A._,
January 6, 1900.
Dr. H. D. Didama, Dean of the Medical College of Syracuse University,
Syracuse, N. Y., said in January, 1898, in the _Voice_:--
"For many years after my graduation at Albany, in 1846, I
prescribed alcohol, and for twenty years, while occupying the
chair of professor of the science and art of medicine in the
College of Medicine of Syracuse University. I followed in my
lectures--often reluctantly and usually afar off, but still I
followed--the almost unanimous teaching of authors, ancient and
modern, and the professors in the medical schools.
"Convinced that a great number of the diseases I was called to
treat owed their existence or aggravation to the use, in alleged
moderation, of alcoholic beverages, and that not in a few
instances this use was commenced and even continued by the
advice of the medical attendants; convinced also by the
published experiments of many acute observers at home and
abroad, and by my own observations, that almost all diseases
could be managed as well if not better by the non-use of
alcohol, and satisfied from the communications of some brother
practitioners that the fatality in certain specified diseases
was not delayed, to say the least, by the employment of
increasing and enormous doses of wine, whisky and brandy, and
influenced also, I must admit--overwhelmed, indeed--by what I
know and what I read daily of the pauperism, domestic
wretchedness, crime, insanity and incurable maladies transmitted
to innocent offspring, I abandoned entirely, more than three
years ago, the use of alcoholic remedies.
"I have endeavored by personal example and earnest council to
dissuade my patients from the use of intoxicating beverages and
medicines.
"The outcome of this practice, medically and morally, has been
satisfactory to myself, and, I have reason to believe, to my
patients also.
"Whatever regrets I may feel for my former teaching and
practice, I have no apology to offer for my inconsistency except
that once given by Gerrit Smith:--'I know more to-day than I did
yesterday; the only persons who never change their minds are God
and a fool.'
"Permit me to add that while there may be an honest difference
of opinion regarding the efficacy of legislative enactments in
overcoming or restraining the drink habit, there should be
little doubt that a whole-hearted, persistent,
precept-and-example effort of the medical profession exerted as
individuals on their patients and the families of their
patients, and as associations on the community at large, would
do immeasurable good.
"And the newspapers might aid materially in this beneficent work
if, while they continue to spread before our households every
day the details of the brawls and fights of drunken men and the
horrible murders which they commit, they would discontinue
advertising, without warning or dissent, side by side with the
atrocities, the 'innocuous beers,' the pure malt whiskies, the
genuine brandies, guaranteed to prevent and cure all manner of
diseases."
The following testimony from an English physician is significant:--
"Although I know beforehand that their united testimony must be
in favor of the practice of total abstinence from all
intoxicating drinks, being most conducive to health and
longevity of their patients, but very inimical to the pocket
interests of themselves, my own experience is, that my teetotal
patients are seldom ill, and that they get well very soon again,
if they are attacked by disease. A higher principle than that of
gain must influence a medical man's mind, or he will never
advocate the doctrine of total abstinence."--J. J. RITCHIE, M.
R. C. S., Leek.
"One of the most dangerous phases of the use of alcohol is the
production of a feeling of well being in weakly, dyspeptic,
irritable, nervous or anaemic patients. In consequence of the
temporary relief so obtained, the patient develops a craving for
alcohol, which in many cases can end only in one way, and, as I
felt compelled to tell an assembly of ladies a short time ago,
the very symptoms for the alleviation of which alcohol is
usually taken are those, the presence of which renders it
exceedingly desirable that alcohol should not be taken."--DR. G.
SIMS WOODHEAD, of London.
In an address upon the London Temperance Hospital delivered shortly
before his death, Sir B. W. Richardson gave a brief review of the
influences which led him to abandon the medical use of alcohol. The
following is taken from that address as reported in the _Medical
Pioneer_:--
"I was a member of the Vestry of St. Marylebone, and we had in
our parish a very serious outbreak of small-pox, attended with a
considerable mortality. In his report to us Dr. Whitmore stated
that in his treatment of earlier cases of the confluent and
hemorrhagic, and malignant forms of disease, stimulants of wine
and brandy were freely administered without any apparent
benefit; and, that after consultation with Mr. Cross, the
resident surgeon, they resolved to substitute simple
nutriments, such as milk, eggs and beef-tea, at frequent
intervals, with discontinuance of stimulants altogether. The
result of the change was most satisfactory, and many bad cases
did well, which under the stimulant plan they believed would
have terminated fatally. Again I was struck very much by a
report made by Mr. Cadbury, in which that gentleman showed the
course that was going on in various hospitals. The amount of
alcohol in twelve hospitals in London, taken by the inpatients,
varied in ounces from 37,531 in one establishment to 300,094 in
another during the year 1878. I also found, from the same
author, that the whole cost in St. George's Union Infirmary for
the year 1878 was L8. 3s. 6d., amongst 2,496 patients, while the
cost of the same number at the average of the twelve hospitals
was L124. About this same time I also remarked that in many of
the public institutions of England there was a reduction
something similar in kind, if not to the same extent, and that
the number of persons who suffered seemed to make better
recoveries than those who were taking the free amount of
stimulant. The effect of these observations chimed in very
remarkably with the physiological experiments it had been my
duty to carry out, and which tended to show in a most striking
manner that the action of alcohol in the body very much differed
from the ordinary opinion that had been held upon it, and
thereupon, in my own practice, I abandoned the use of alcohol,
and began to give instead small quantities of simple,
nourishing, dietic food, a course I pursued up to the present
time with the most satisfactory results, results I have never
felt any occasion to regret. By these steps, learned in the
first place from the study of alcohol in its action on man, I
was led to become a believer that alcohol is of no more service
in disease than it is in health, and a lengthened experience in
this matter has really confirmed the correctness of the idea."
In his last report as physician to the Temperance Hospital Dr.
Richardson made some remarkable statements upon the fallacy of the
general ideas of stimulation. So interesting are his views that they are
incorporated here:--
"Sir B. W. Richardson, M. D., who was unable to be present,
communicated (through the secretary) his annual report as
physician to the hospital. After twelve months further trial of
the treatment of all kinds of disease in this institution
without the assistance of alcohol, either as a diet or a
medicine, he (Sir B. W. Richardson) was fully sustained in the
belief that the plan pursued had been attended with every
possible advantage. About 500 cases had come under his
observation and treatment as in previous years, and these cases
had been of the most varied kind, including all patients who
were not directly suffering from contagious disease. In not one
instance had alcohol been administered, nor had anything like it
been used in the way of a substitute, and there had not been a
single case in which he could conceive that it was ever called
for, while the success which had attended the treatment
generally had been superior to anything he had ever seen
following upon the administration of alcoholic stimulants. One
great truth which had forced itself upon him had reference to
the doctrine of stimulation generally. It had been one of the
grand ideas in medicine that there came times when sick people
were benefited by being stimulated. It was argued that they were
low, and in order that they might be raised and brought nearer
to the natural life they required something like alcohol to
quicken the circulation, quicken the secretion, and help to
preserve the vitality. But the experience which was learned here
tended to show in the most distinct manner that that very old
and apparently rational idea was fallacious. Such stimulation
only tended ultimately to wear out the powers of the body, as
well as change the physical conditions under which the body
worked. True lowness meant practical over-fatigue, and when the
body was spurred on, or stimulated, over-fatigue was simply
intensified and increased. What, therefore, was wanted was not
stimulation, but repose. The sufferer was placed in the best
position to gain entire rest, and all the surroundings or
environments were employed which tended to prevent waste. The
air was kept at the proper temperature, the body of the patient
kept warm, and the simplest and most easily digested foods were
used; the patient's condition then swung round to a natural
state, and he began to get well. In other cases where the sick
were brought under observation suffering already from excitable
condition of the senses, with congestions here and there of the
circulatory or nervous systems, with imperfect condition of the
brain, and with the elements of what was usually denominated
inflammatory or febrile state--the stimulant was already present
(was, indeed the cause of the symptoms) and did not want in any
degree to be enforced further by the acts of treatment. Here,
therefore, they were on the safest grounds as regarded methods
of administration, for they calmed as well as they possibly
could both mind and body and left nature to do the rest, which
she did with the best and most tranquilizing effect. On both
sides, therefore, in the treatment of disease, they did good,
and that was the reason, he believed, why their returns were so
satisfactory. It often happened in an institution where some
particular plan was carried out that the old ideas in which they
had been bred were without intention refined or suppressed. For
example, he had been taught, and believed for a number of years,
that some medicament of a particular kind was needful for some
particular train of symptoms, be the surrounding conditions what
they might. There was no doubt that this same feeling had given
rise to the persistent use of alcohol; but, greatly to his own
surprise, he discovered that when the surroundings were all
good, the rule that applied to alcohol constantly applied to
other substances that were called remedies, with the result that
recovery was often just as good without the particular remedies
as with them, so that a revision came quite simply with regard
to stimulating agents and their properties, and also with
regard to every medicine that might at earlier times have been
employed. He had seen many cases in this hospital recover
without any other aid than that of the environments, which cases
he would have said could not possibly have gone on well, or
towards complete recovery, unless some special recipe had been
followed. He believed the day would come when others, learning
this same truth as he had been obliged to learn it, would act on
such simple principles that the books of remedies would have to
be vastly curtailed. It would be seen that there was such a
tendency of disease to get well of itself, or by virtue of
natural processes, of which people had at present but a very
poor idea, that the art of physic would pass into directions how
to live rather than into dogmatic assertions that particular
means must be employed in addition to the common details of life
for the process of cure. If therefore they learned in this
hospital by their reduced death-rates the true lesson, the
institution would have performed a double duty, and become one
of the test objects in medicine, and in the field of disease.
They made no attempt by selection, or by any side action, to
exaggerate their results. The cases were taken indiscriminately,
except that they gave admission to the worst cases first; that
was to say, they never caused patients to come under their
treatment if they saw they were only slightly affected, and were
bound to get well."--_Medical Pioneer._
Dr. Landmann, of Boppard-on-the-Rhine, Germany, says:--
"The members of the Association of Abstaining Physicians, reject
the use of spirituous liquors in every form, and particularly
declare the use of alcohol at the sick-bed a scientific error of
the saddest kind. In order to war against this abuse, they
earnestly appeal to the officers having charge of funds for the
sick, henceforth, under no circumstances, any longer to permit
the prescription of wine, whisky and brandy for sick members;
but to resist to the utmost, according to the right given them
by the laws insuring the sick, the taking of spirituous
liquors, under the false pretext that they have a curative and
strengthening effect."
Dr. Bleuler, Rheineau, Switzerland, says:--
"The treatment of chronic diseases with alcohol is contrary to
our knowledge of the physiological effects of alcohol. There is
no probability that its use will be beneficial, certainly its
benefits have not been established. Often an injurious result is
proved.
"It is not implied that there may not be some benefit in the use
of alcohol in cases of sudden weakness with or without fever.
But even in such cases the benefit is not demonstrated. At any
rate, other remedies can with advantage be substituted for
alcohol.
"The essential thing in the treatment of all alcoholic diseases,
delirium tremens included, is total abstinence.
"The physiological effect of alcohol is that of a poison, whose
use is to be limited to the utmost. Even the moderate use as now
practiced is injurious.
"The customary beneficial results unquestionably depend chiefly
on suggestion, and by making the patient believe falsely that
the momentary subjective better feeling means actual
improvement.
"Physicians share the blame of the present flood of alcoholism.
They are, therefore, morally bound to remedy the evil. Only by
means of personal abstinence can this be done."
Dr. A. Frick, professor in Zurich, is a careful student and an
influential writer on alcohol. His statements are weighty. This is his
testimony:--
"In larger doses, alcohol is absolutely injurious in the
treatment of acute fevers, especially in case of pneumonia,
typhus and erysipelas. They first of all injure the general
state of the patient, they cause delirium, or increase it if
already existing, and, secondly, they injure most seriously the
organs of digestion and interfere with proper nourishment; thus
they have a weakening effect, instead of preventing weakness,
which they are usually supposed to do. In case no alcohol is
used, the convalescence is much more rapid. In no case has the
benefit of treatment with alcohol been established. According to
the view of the most eminent pharmacologists, the stimulating
effect of alcohol consists simply in a local irritation of the
mucous membrane of the stomach, similar to that produced by a
mustard plaster."
The following selection from the excellent address of Dr. Harvey,
president of the Virginia State Medical Society, at a recent meeting, is
a most timely caution:--
"Our prisons, asylums and homes are filled with the victims of
the careless and indiscriminate use by the medical profession of
those twin demons, alcohol and opium, which, save tuberculosis,
are doing more to debase and destroy the human race than all the
other diseases together. I most earnestly beseech you, young
men, who are just starting out in life, to stay your hand in the
use of these agents in your own persons, and in your daily work,
and to beware of the seductive needle, and the cup that
inebriates. Make it an invariable rule, never to prescribe
alcohol, nor one of the solinaceus or narcotic drugs, if you can
possibly avoid it. The use of alcohol and opium debases the
minds and morals of habitues, predisposes especially to Bright's
disease and insanity, and lays the foundation in the offspring
for the majority of the neuroses and degenerations of modern
civilized life. The physical fatigue of long working hours, loss
of sleep, mental strain, worry and hunger, invite the tired
physician, especially, to their seductive use. To totally
abstain from them is always business, and very often character,
and even life itself. I feel free to speak to you on this
subject very earnestly, my younger brothers, for, having
prescribed alcohol for over thirty years, I am familiar with its
tendencies and its dangers."
Dr. T. D. Crothers of Hartford, Conn., in an article upon "The Decline
of Alcohol as a Medicine," says:--
"Thoughtful observers recognize that alcohol as a medicine is
rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Ten years ago leading
medical men and text-books spoke of stimulants as essentials of
many diseases, and defended their use with warmth and
positiveness. To-day this is changed. Medical men seldom refer
to spirits as remedies, and when they do, express great
conservatism and caution. The text-books show the same changes,
although some dogmatic authors refuse to recognize the change of
practice, and still cling to the idea of the food value of
spirits.
"Druggists who supply spirits to the profession recognize a
tremendous dropping off in the demand. A distiller who, ten
years ago, sold many thousand gallons of choice whiskies, almost
exclusively to medical men, has lost his trade altogether, and
gone out of business. Wine men, too, recognize this change, and
are making every effort to have wine used in the place of
spirits in the sick-room. Proprietary medicine dealers are
putting all sorts of compounds of wine with iron, bark, etc., on
the market with the same idea. It is doubtful if any of these
will be able to secure any permanent place in therapeutics.
"The fact is, alcohol is passing out of practical therapeutics
because its real action is becoming known. Facts are
accumulating in the laboratory, in the autopsy room, at the
bedside, and in the work of experimental psychologists, which
show that alcohol is a depressant and a narcotic; that it cannot
build up tissue, but always acts as a degenerative power; and
that its apparent effects of raising the heart's action and
quickening functional activities are misleading and erroneous.
"French and German specialists have denounced spirits both as a
beverage and a medicine, and shown by actual demonstration that
alcohol is a poison and a depressant, and that any therapeutic
action it is assumed to have is open to question.
"All this is not the result of agitation and wild condemnation
by persons who feel deeply the sad consequences of the abuse of
spirits. It is simply the outcome of the gradual accumulation of
facts that have been proven within the observation of every
thoughtful person. The exact or approximate facts relating to
alcohol can now be tested by instruments of precision. We can
weigh and measure the effects, and it is not essential to
theorize or speculate; we can test and prove with reasonable
certainty what was before a matter of doubt.
"Medical men who doubt the value of spirits are no more
considered fanatics or extremists, but as leaders along new and
wider lines of research. Alcohol in medicine, except as a
narcotic and anaesthetic, is rapidly falling into disfavor, and
will soon be put aside and forgotten."