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Medicine, How and Why, by Martha M. Allen
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Title: Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why
What Medical Writers Say
Author: Martha M. Allen
Release Date: October 4, 2008 [EBook #26774]
Language: English
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ALCOHOL
A DANGEROUS AND UNNECESSARY MEDICINE
HOW AND WHY
What Medical Writers Say
BY
MRS. MARTHA M. ALLEN
Superintendent of the Department of Medical Temperance
for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Published by the
DEPARTMENT OF MEDICAL TEMPERANCE OF THE
NATIONAL WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION
MARCELLUS, NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1900.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION 5
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 7
CHAPTER I.
HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF ALCOHOL.
Discovery of distillation--First American investigator of
effects of alcohol--Medical Declarations--Sir B. W.
Richardson's researches--Scientific Temperance Instruction
in American Schools--Committee of Fifty 9
CHAPTER II.
THE WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION IN
OPPOSITION TO ALCOHOL AS MEDICINE.
How the Opposition began--Memorial to International
Medical Congress--Origin of Medical Temperance
Department--Objects of the department--Public agitation
against patent medicines originated by the department--Laws
of Georgia, Alabama and Kansas on Medical
prescription of alcohol 21
CHAPTER III.
ALCOHOL AS A PRODUCER OF DISEASE.
Alcohol a poison--Sudden deaths from brandy--Changes
in liver, kidneys, heart, blood-vessels and nerves caused
by alcohol--Beer and wine as harmful as the stronger
drinks--Alcohol causes indigestion--Other diseases
caused by alcohol--Deaths from alcoholism in Switzerland 28
CHAPTER IV.
TEMPERANCE HOSPITALS.
The London Temperance Hospital--Methods of treatment--The Frances
E. Willard Temperance Hospital, Chicago--"As a beverage" in the
pledge--Address by Miss Frances E. Willard at opening of
hospital--The Red Cross Hospital--Clara Barton and non-alcoholic
medication--Reports of treatment in Red Cross Hospital--Use of
Alcohol declining in other hospitals 37
CHAPTER V.
THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE HUMAN BODY.
The body composed of cells--Effect of alcohol on cells--Alcohol
and Digestion--Effects on the blood--The heart--The liver--The
kidneys--Incipient Bright's disease recovered from by total
abstinence--Retards oxidation and elimination of waste
matters--Lengthens duration of sickness and increases mortality 58
CHAPTER VI.
ALCOHOL AS MEDICINE.
Medical use of alcohol a bulwark of the liquor traffic--Alcohol
not a Food--Alcohol reduces temperature--Food principle of grains
and fruits destroyed by fermentation--Alcohol not a
Stimulant--Experiments proving this--Alcohol not a
tonic--Professor Atwater on Alcohol as Food 96
CHAPTER VII.
ALCOHOL IN PHARMACY.
Strong tinctures rouse desire for drink in reformed
inebriates--Glycerine and acetic acid to preserve
drugs--Non-alcohol tinctures in use at London Temperance
Hospital--Sale of liquor in drug-stores condemned by pharmacists 131
CHAPTER VIII.
DISEASES, AND THEIR TREATMENT WITHOUT ALCOHOL.
Alcoholic Craving--Anæmia--Apoplexy--Boils and
Carbuncle--Catarrh--Hay-Fever--Colds--Colic--Cholera--Cholera
Infantum--Consumption--Displacements--Debility--Diarrhoea--
Dysentery--Dyspepsia--Fainting--Fits--Flatulence--Headache--
Hemorrhage--Heart Disease--Heart Failure--Insomnia--La
Grippe--Measles--Malaria--Neuralgia--Nausea--Pneumonia--Pain After
Food--Snake-bite--Rheumatism--Spasms--Shock--Sudden
Illness--Sunstroke--Typhoid Fever--Vomiting 140
CHAPTER IX.
ALCOHOL AND NURSING MOTHERS.
Beer not good for nursing mothers--Helpful diet--Opinions of
medical men--Analysis of milk of a temperate woman--Of a drinking
woman--Advice of Dr. James Edmunds, of the Lying-In Hospital,
London--How to feed the baby--Case of a young mother who used
beer--Nathan S. Davis on beer and gin 234
CHAPTER X.
COMPARATIVE DEATH-RATES WITH AND WITHOUT THE USE OF ALCOHOL.
Fewer deaths in smallpox hospitals without alcohol--200 cases of
scarlet fever without alcohol--Non-alcoholic treatment of fevers
with less than 5 per cent. death-rate--Report of cases in English
and Scotch hospitals--340 cases of typhus--London Lancet articles
on typhoid--Mercy Hospital, Chicago--Death-rates in pneumonia and
typhoid in large hospitals--Sir B. W. Richardson's report of
practice 247
CHAPTER XI.
REASONS WHY ALCOHOL IS DANGEROUS AS MEDICINE.
Researches of Abbott--Vital Resistance lowered by
alcohol--Experiments upon Urinary Toxicity--Effect of alcohol upon
the guardian-cells of the body--Dr. Sims Woodhead on
immunity--Deléarde's experiments at the Pasteur Institute--Dr. A.
Pearce Gould on alcohol and cancer--Delirium in illness caused by
alcohol 262
CHAPTER XII.
WHY DOCTORS STILL PRESCRIBE ALCOHOLICS.
Public often demand it--Lack of knowledge of true nature of
alcohol--Alcohol given undeserved credit for recoveries--Use of
alcohol results from custom--Education of the people in teachings
of non-alcoholic physicians necessary--Prescription of alcohol a
matter of routine--Two examples 291
CHAPTER XIII.
ALCOHOLIC PROPRIETARY OR "PATENT" MEDICINES.
The Pure Food Law--The guarantee--Newspaper opposition to the
law--Headache remedies--Fake testimonials--Dangers of soothing
syrups and morphine cough syrups--Fraud orders issued by
Post-Office Department--Internal Revenue Department and Patent
Medicines--Proprietary "Foods" strongly alcoholic--Alcoholic
Cod-Liver Oil preparations--Australia's Royal Commission on Patent
Medicines--Committee on Pharmacy analyses--Malt extracts--Coca
Wines--Advertising, the strength of the Nostrum business--An
effectual remedy 299
CHAPTER XIV.
DRUGGING.
Drugs do not cure disease--Nature cures--Opinions of drug
medication of prominent physicians--La grippe caused by drug
taking--Coal-tar drugs--Quinine--Sir Frederick Treves on disuse of
drugs--People demand drugs of physicians--Mothers make drug
victims of their children--Habit-producing drugs--Causes of
drug-taking--How to be well 335
CHAPTER XV.
TESTIMONIES OF PHYSICIANS AGAINST ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION.
No need for substitutes for alcohol--Alcohol hides symptoms of
disease--Responsibility of physicians--Opinions of many teachers
in medical colleges--Hot milk better than alcohol--_Journal of the
American Medical Association_ on researches of Abbott and
Laitinen--Resolution against alcohol of West Virginia Medical
Society--Dr. Knox Bond on Scarlet Fever--Metchnikoff on white
blood-cells--Kassowitz describes his treatment of fevers--Sims
Woodhead's opinions--Opinions of German Physicians--Dr. Harvey
blames medical profession for careless use of alcohol and
opium--Use of Alcohol declining rapidly in medical practice 356
CHAPTER XVI.
RECENT RESEARCHES UPON ALCOHOL.
Experiments of Laitinen--Resistance of blood-cells to disease
lowered by alcohol--International Congress on Alcoholism, London,
1909--Alcohol and Immunity--Effect of Alcohol Drinking on Human
Off-spring--Researches of Kraepelin and Aschaffenberg--Economic
losses by reduced work through beer and wine drinking--Researches
of Dr. Reid Hunt--Mice given alcohol killed by small doses of
poison--Difference in effect of alcohol and starch
foods--Chittenden on food theory of alcohol--Researches of Dr. S.
P. Beebe--Liver impaired by alcohol--Dr. Winfield S. Hall's
interpretation of the researches of Beebe and Hunt--Oxidation of
alcohol by liver a protective action--Researches show that alcohol
is a poison, not a food 392
CHAPTER XVII.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Alcohol Baths--Beverages for the Sick--Tobacco and the
Eyesight--Advertised "Cures" for Drunkenness--How to quit
drinking--Dr. T. D. Crothers' remedy for drink crave--Alcohol and
Children--Alcohol Tested--Beer-Drinking Injurious to Health--Drug
Drinks--Special Directions for Women--Total Abstinence and Life
Insurance--Opinions of Life Insurance Companies on drinkers as
risks 410
INTRODUCTION.
This book is the outcome of many years of study. With the exception of a
few quotations, none of the material has ever before appeared in any
book. The writer has been indebted for years past to many of the
physicians mentioned in the following pages for copies of pamphlets and
magazines, and for newspaper articles, bearing upon the medical study of
alcohol. Indeed, had it not been for the kindly counsels and hearty
co-operation of physicians, she could never have accomplished all that
was laid upon her to do as a state and national superintendent of
Medical Temperance for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She is
also under obligation for helps received from the secretaries of several
State Boards of Health, and from eminent chemists and pharmacists.
The object of the book is to put into the hands of the people a
statement of the views regarding the medical properties of alcohol held
by those physicians who make little, or no use of this drug. In most
cases their views are given in their own language, so that the book is,
of necessity, largely a compilation.
It is hoped that while the laity may be glad to peruse these pages
because of the very useful and interesting information to be obtained
from them, the medical profession, also, may be pleased to find, in
brief form, the teachings of some of their most distinguished brethren
upon a question now frequently up for discussion in society meetings.
The writer does not presume to set forth her own opinions upon a
question which is still a subject of dispute among the members of a
learned profession; she simply culls from the writings of those members
of that profession who, having made thorough examination of the claims
of alcohol, have decided that this drug, as ordinarily used, is more
harmful than beneficial, and that medical practice would be upon a
higher plane, were it driven entirely from the pharmacopoeia.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
When the first edition of this book was published in 1900, there were
only a few leading physicians either in Europe or America who were ready
to condemn the medical use of alcohol. Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson,
Sims Woodhead, and a few others in England; Forel, Kassowitz and one or
two more on the Continent, and Nathan S. Davis, T. D. Crothers and J. H.
Kellogg, in America, were about all that could be quoted largely as
opposed to alcoholic liquors as remedies in disease. Whisky was then
looked upon as necessary in the treatment of consumption and diphtheria.
Ten years have brought about a great change. There are many American
physicians now willing to admit that they have very little or no use for
alcoholic liquors as remedial agents, and now, instead of recommending
whisky for consumption anti-tuberculosis literature almost everywhere
warns against the use of intoxicating drinks. The use of anti-toxin in
diphtheria has driven out whisky treatment in that disease with markedly
favorable results. Under the whisky treatment death-rates ran up to
fifty-five and sixty per cent.; now the diphtheria death-rate is very
low. Ten years ago many good authorities still ranked alcohol as a
stimulant; now, almost all rank it as a depressant. In England, leading
physicians and surgeons have spoken so strongly against alcohol in the
last few years that the London _Times_, England's leading newspaper,
said: "According to recent developments of scientific opinion, it is not
impossible that a belief in the strengthening and supporting qualities
of alcohol will eventually become as obsolete as a belief in
witchcraft."
So far as the writer can learn from replies sent to her inquiries by
teachers of medicine, and by study of text-books on medicine, and
articles in good medical journals, alcohol now has only a very limited
use in medicine with the great majority of successful physicians. Some
recommend wine in _diabetes mellitus_, saying that it acts less like a
poison and more like a food in that disease than in any other. Some use
alcoholic liquors in fevers as a food "to save the burning of tissue,"
but an article on "Therapeutics" in the _Journal of the American Medical
Association_, for November 6, 1909, page 1564, says that sugar would
probably have equal value in such case. The same article says that hot
baths, with hot lemonade, and a quickly acting cathartic, will abort a
cold without any need of recourse to alcohol.
The writer wishes here to make grateful acknowledgment of courtesies
received from busy physicians who have aided materially in her work by
answering personal letters of inquiry, also letters published in the
_Journal of the American Medical Association_, by kindness of the
editor. Especially would she thank those professors of medicine and
superintendents of large hospitals, who so courteously aided her in
preparing a paper for the International Congress on Alcoholism, held in
London, July, 1909, to which she was a delegate, representing the United
States government. A few of the replies received at that time are given
in this book. There was not room for all.
She wishes also to acknowledge kindness and much help received from
pharmacists and druggists in the fight against dangerous patent
medicines and drug drinks sold at soda fountains. The _Druggists'
Circular_, of New York, deserves special mention in this connection.
It has been necessary to make many changes in this edition because of
the changing views on alcohol and the publicity on patent medicines.
Physicians will find Chapter XVI entirely new, and of great interest.
M. M. A.
* * * * *
ALCOHOL.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF ALCOHOL.
The only intoxicating drinks known to the ancients were wines and beers.
That these were used for medicinal as well as beverage purposes is
evident from sacred and secular history. About the tenth century of the
Christian era, an Arabian alchemist discovered the art of distillation,
by which the active principle of fermented liquors could be drawn off
and separated. To the spirit thus produced the name alcohol was given. A
plausible reason cited for this name is that the Arabian for evil spirit
is _Al ghole_, and the effects of the mysterious liquid upon men
suggested demoniacal possession.
Medical knowledge at this time was very limited: there was no accurate
way of determining the real nature of the new substance, nor its action
upon the human system. It could be judged only by its _seeming_ effects.
As these were pleasing, it was supposed that a great medical discovery
had been made. The alchemists had been seeking a panacea for all the
ills to which flesh is heir, indeed for something which would enable men
even to defy Death, and the subtle new spirit was eagerly proclaimed as
the long-looked-for cure-all, if not the very _aqua vitæ_ itself.
Physicians introduced it to their patients, and were lavish in their
praises of its curative powers. The following is quoted from the
writings of Theoricus, a prominent German of the sixteenth century, as
an example of medical opinion of alcohol in his day:--
"It sloweth age, it strengtheneth youth, it helpeth digestion,
it cutteth phlegme, it cureth the hydropsia, it healeth the
strangurie, it pounces the stone, it expelleth gravel, it
keepeth the head from whirling, the teeth from chattering, and
the throat from rattling; it keepeth the weasen from stiffling,
the stomach from wambling, and the heart from swelling; it
keepeth the hands from shivering, the sinews from shrinking, the
veins from crumbling, the bones from aching, and the marrow from
soaking."
Being a medicine, which very rapidly creates a craving for itself, the
demand for it became enormous, and, as time advanced, people began
prescribing it for themselves, until its use both as medicine and
beverage became almost general.
If the medical profession is responsible for the wide-spread belief that
alcoholics are of service to mankind both as food and medicine, it
should not be forgotten that it is to members of the same profession the
world is indebted for the correction of these errors. All down through
the centuries there have been physicians who doubted and opposed its
claims to merit. It remained for the medical science of the latter half
of the nineteenth century to clearly demonstrate with nicely adjusted
chemical apparatus and appliances the wisdom of these doubts.
The scientific study of the effects of alcohol upon the human body began
about sixty years ago. The first American investigator was Dr. Nathan S.
Davis, of Chicago, who was the founder of the American Medical
Association. During the months of May, June, July, September and
October, 1848, Dr. Davis published in the _Annalist_, a monthly medical
journal of New York City, a series of articles controverting the
universal opinion that alcoholic drinks are warming, strengthening and
nourishing. In 1850 he executed an extensive series of experiments to
determine the effects of a diet exclusively carbonaceous (starch), one
exclusively nitrogenous (albumen), and alcohol (brandy and wine), on the
temperature of the living body; on the quantity of carbonic acid
exhaled; and on the circulation of the blood. The results of these
investigations were embodied in a paper read before the American Medical
Association in May, 1851. They showed that alcohol, instead of
increasing animal heat, and promoting nutrition and strength, actually
produced directly opposite effects, reducing temperature, the amount of
carbonic acid exhaled, and the muscular strength. So opposed were these
conclusions to the generally accepted teachings of the day that the
Association did not refer the paper to the committee of publication. It
was published later in the _Northwestern Medical and Surgical Journal_.
In 1854 Dr. Davis published one of the most remarkable of the numerous
works which have come from his prolific pen; it was entitled, "A Lecture
on the Effects of Alcoholic Drinks on the Human System, and the Duty of
Medical Men in Relation Thereto." This lecture was delivered in Rush
Medical College, Chicago, on Christmas, 1854. An appendix to the work
contained a full account of the series of original experiments which the
author had been conducting in relation to the effect of alcohol upon
respiration and animal heat, and gave the same conclusions as those
presented before the A. M. A. several years previously. These
experiments laid the foundation for the scientific study of the
physiological effects of alcohol; and their bearing upon the study of
the temperance question can even yet scarcely be appreciated. They were
the first experiments which showed conclusively that the effect of
alcohol is not that of a stimulant, but the opposite.
In 1855 Prof. R. D. Mussey, of Vermont, read an able paper before the
American Medical Association upon "The Effects of Alcohol in Health and
Disease," in which he said, "So long as alcohol retains its place among
sick patients, so long will there be drunkards."
In England as early as 1802, Dr. Beddoes pointed out the dangers
attendant upon the social and medical use of intoxicating drinks, laying
stress upon "The enfeebling power of small portions of wine regularly
drunk." In 1829 Dr. John Cheyne, Physician General to the forces in
Ireland said:--
"The benefits which have been supposed from their liberal use in
medicine, and especially in those diseases which are vulgarly
supposed to depend upon mere weakness, have invested these
agents with attributes to which they have no claim, and hence,
as we physicians no longer employ them as we were wont to do, we
ought not to rest satisfied with the mere acknowledgment of
error, but we ought also to make every retribution in our power
for having so long upheld one of the most fatal delusions that
ever took possession of the human mind."
Dr. Higginbotham, F. R. S., of Nottingham, a keen and able clinical
practitioner, abandoned the prescription of alcohol in 1832, saying:--
"I have amply tried both ways. I gave alcohol in my practice for
twenty years, and have now practiced without it for the last
thirty years or more. My experience is, that acute disease is
more readily cured without it, and chronic diseases much more
manageable. I have not found a single patient injured by the
disuse of alcohol, or a constitution requiring it; indeed, to
find either, although I am in my seventy-seventh year, I would
walk fifty miles to see such an unnatural phenomenon. If I
ordered or allowed alcohol in any form, either as food or as
medicine, to a patient, I should certainly do it with a
felonious intent."--_Ipswich Tracts. No. 346._
In 1839 Dr. Julius Jeffreys drew up a medical declaration which was
signed by seventy-eight leaders of medicine and surgery. This document
declared the opinion to be erroneous that wine, beer or spirit was
beneficial to health; that even in the most moderate doses, alcoholic
drinks did no good. This, of course, dealt only with the beverage use of
alcoholics. In 1847 a second declaration was originated, signed by over
two thousand of the most eminent physicians and surgeons. This also
referred only to liquor as a beverage. In 1871 a third declaration,
signed by two hundred and sixty-nine of the leading members of the
medical profession was published in the London _Times_.
This declaration was in part as follows:--
"As it is believed that the inconsiderate prescription of large
quantities of alcoholic liquids by medical men for their
patients has given rise, in many instances, to the formation of
intemperate habits, the undersigned, while unable to abandon the
use of alcohol in the treatment of certain cases of disease, are
yet of opinion that no medical practitioner should prescribe it
without a sense of grave responsibility.
"They are also of opinion that many people immensely exaggerate
the value of alcohol as an article of diet, and they hold that
every medical practitioner is bound to exert his utmost
influence to inculcate habits of great moderation in the use of
alcoholic liquids."
In the same year the American Medical Association passed a resolution
that "alcohol should be classed with other powerful drugs, and when
prescribed medically, it should be done with conscientious caution, and
a sense of great responsibility."
The physicians of New York, Brooklyn and vicinity not long afterward
published a declaration practically the same as that of the A. M. A.,
adding: "We are of opinion that the use of alcoholic liquor as a
beverage is productive of a large amount of physical disease."
The publication of these later declarations was the beginning of a
marked change in the medical use of alcohol.
In England the scientific temperance movement began with Dr. B. W.
Richardson, afterwards knighted by Queen Victoria for his great services
to humanity as a medical philanthropist. Dr. Richardson's success in
bringing before physicians the remarkable medicinal agent known as
nitrite of amyl, led to a request from the British Association for the
Advancement of Science that he investigate other chemical substances.
The result was that several years of study, beginning with 1863, were
given to the physiological effects of various alcohols, ethylic alcohol,
which is the active principle in wines, beers and other intoxicating
drinks, receiving special attention.
The following is taken from his "Results of Researches on Alcohol":--
"In my hands ethylic alcohol and other bodies of the same group;
viz. methylic, propylic, butylic, and amylic alcohols were
tested purely from the physiological point of view. They were
tested exclusively as chemical substances apart from any
question as to their general use and employment, and free from
all bias for or against their influence on mankind for good or
for evil.
"The method of research that was pursued was the same that had
been followed in respect to nitrite of amyl, chloroform, ether,
and other chemical substances, and it was in the following
order: First, the mode in which living bodies would take up or
absorb the substance was considered. This settled, the quantity
necessary to produce a decided physiological change was
ascertained, and was estimated in relation to the weight of the
living body on which the observation was made. After these facts
were ascertained the special action of the agent was
investigated on the blood, on the motion of the heart, on the
respiration, on the minute circulation of the blood, on the
digestive organs, on the secreting and excreting organs, on the
nervous system and brain, on the animal temperature and on the
muscular activity. By these processes of inquiry, each specially
carried out, I was enabled to test fairly the action of the
different chemical agents that came before me. * * * * *
"The results of these researches were that I learned purely by
experimental observation that, in its action on the living body,
alcohol deranges the constitution of the blood; unduly excites
the heart and respiration; paralyzes the minute blood-vessels;
disturbs the regularity of nervous action; lowers the animal
temperature, and lessens the muscular power.
"Such, independent of any prejudice of party or influence of
sentiment, are the unanswerable teachings of the sternest of all
evidences, the evidences of experiment, of natural fact revealed
to man by testing of natural phenomena."
When Dr. Richardson reported to the Association for the Advancement of
Science the results of his researches so at variance with commonly
accepted ideas, the Association was as incredulous as the American
Medical Association had been in 1851 when Dr. Davis gave a similar
report, and Dr. Richardson's paper was returned to him for correction.
It should be stated here that Dr. Richardson was not a total abstainer
when he began his study of the effects of alcohol, but became an ardent
and enthusiastic advocate of total abstinence, and later of
non-alcoholic medication, because of what he learned by his experiments
with this drug. He was the first to suggest that scientific temperance
be taught in the public schools, and he prepared the first text-book
ever published for this purpose. In 1874 he delivered his famous "Cantor
Lectures on Alcohol," by request of the Society of Arts. This series of
lectures created a sensation, being attended by crowds of people, as it
was the first time that any physician of eminence had spoken from
experimental evidence in favor of total abstinence.
The agitation begotten in medical circles by the discussion of Dr.
Richardson's researches upon alcohol led to extensive experimenting upon
the same line by scientists of England, Continental Europe and America.
The efforts of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the
United States, led by that intrepid woman, Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, to
introduce scientific temperance instruction into public schools gave
impetus to the study in this country. The call for text-books caused
publishers to request professors in medical colleges to make minute
research into the nature and effects of alcohol, that the demands of the
new educational law might be met. The bitter opposition to these
temperance education laws was a great stimulant to the scientific study
of alcohol, for it was hoped by many that the teachings regarding the
deleterious effects of alcohol might be proved incorrect. Unfortunately
for the lovers of the bibulous, the proof was all the other way; great
medical men could not be _bought_ by distillers or brewers to tell
anything but the truth, and the truth of experimental research was all
against alcohol. The text-books endorsed by Mrs. Hunt and her advisory
committee being assailed again and again as containing erroneous
teaching, were finally, in 1897, submitted to an examining committee of
medical experts, nearly all of whom were connected with medical
colleges. This committee consisted of Dr. N. S. Davis, Sr., of Chicago,
Ill.; Dr. Leartus Connor, of Detroit, Michigan; Dr. Henry Q. Marcy, of
Boston, Mass.; Dr. E. E. Montgomery, of Philadelphia, Pa.; Dr. Henry D.
Holton, of Brattleboro, Vt.; and Dr. George F. Shrady, of New York City.
From their reports upon the books the following is culled:--
"I find no errors in the teaching of any of them on this
subject."
"No statement was found at variance with the most reliable
studies of especially competent investigators."
"I was asked to point out any errors in these books which need
correcting. I find no such errors."
"I find their teaching completely in accordance with the facts
determined through scientific experimentation and
investigation."
"I find them to be in substantial accord with the results of the
latest scientific investigations."
Dr. Baer, of Berlin, Germany, the foremost European specialist on the
subject treated in these text-books, has recently subjected the books to
rigid examination. He says in his report upon them:--
"On the basis of the examination I have made I can assert that
the above mentioned school text-books, (the endorsed
physiologies), in respect to their statements regarding
alcoholic drinks contain no teachings which are not in harmony
with the attitude of strict science."
Still the opposers of the text-books were not satisfied, and a self
constituted Committee of Fifty undertook an investigation. Men of
unquestioned ability were chosen to make researches, but the result of
their investigations was so different from what was looked for, that,
with the exception of Professor Atwater's contention for the food value
of alcohol, the report of the Committee of Fifty did not stir up much
controversy.
The school text-books deal exclusively with the effects of alcohol used
as a beverage; for obvious reasons this is all they can do. But as
intoxicating drinks have been generally supposed to contain great virtue
as remedial agents, this phase of their nature and effects has not been
overlooked by those pursuing inquiries concerning them. While full
agreement has not yet been reached by experts as to the value of
alcoholic liquids as medicines, it is noteworthy that some of the most
eminent investigators were led to drop alcohol from their
pharmaceutical outfit, and the remainder to admit that its sphere of
usefulness is extremely limited.
There are now medical colleges of high standing where students are
advised against the use of alcohol as a remedy; hospitals are gradually
using it less and less, some entirely discarding it; and many
progressive physicians, while saying nothing as to their position upon
the alcohol question, yet show their lack of faith in this drug by
ignoring it unless patients or their friends desire it.
CHAPTER II.
THE WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION
IN OPPOSITION TO ALCOHOL AS MEDICINE.
When the W. C. T. U. was first organized there was no thought among its
members of antagonizing the use of alcohol in medicine. One almost
immediate result of the organization, however, was that the women began
to study the causes of inebriety, and prominent among the prevailing
influences leading to drunkenness they found the medical use of
alcoholics. The early efforts of these women were chiefly in rescue work
through Gospel temperance meetings, and visitations of jails and
poor-houses. By reason of this contact with the effects of inebriety
they learned many sad tales of ruined lives, blighted homes and lost
souls, through the appetite for strong drink created, or aroused, by
alcoholic prescription. They saw, as time passed, that some of the
drunkards reclaimed through their influence lapsed again into their evil
habits because a little beer, or wine, "for the stomach's sake," or some
other sake, had been advised them. Some of the workers had this trouble
in their own homes, husband, son or other relative enslaved to alcohol
through prescription in disease. Is it any wonder that women of the
spirit of the Crusaders, having once had their attention thoroughly
aroused to the danger of alcohol in medicine, should begin to examine
this stronghold of the enemy to discover, if possible, whether or not,
his fortress, the medicine-chest, was impregnable? Greatly to their joy
they found that the medical profession was not a unit in commending
alcoholics as remedial agencies, that all along since alcohol came into
common use there have been physicians who distrusted, and opposed it.
They learned, too, that some of the most distinguished physicians of
America and of England were using little or no alcohol in their
practice, and that a hospital had been established in London, England,
which was clearly demonstrating the superiority of non-alcoholic
medication by its small death-rate in comparison with hospitals using
alcohol.
This knowledge encouraged those possessing it so that they began to
refuse alcoholics as remedies in their own households, and rarely did
they find physicians unwilling or unable to supply another agent when
asked to do so, and thousands of women can now testify to the fact of
having recovered from ill health without the wine, beer or brandy they
were advised to take. So the W. C. T. U. discovered several good reasons
for opposing alcohol in medicine.
1. Its liability to create or revive an uncontrollable appetite.
2. A considerable number of the leading physicians of America
and of Great Britain discard it from their list of remedies,
considering it harmful rather than helpful.
3. The lessened mortality consequent upon its entire disuse
demonstrated by the London Temperance Hospital.
4. By their own experience they knew that alcohol is not
necessary to the restoration of health, nor to the upbuilding of
strength.
The first active work touching the medical use of alcohol was a memorial
from the National W. C. T. U. to the International Medical Congress of
1876, which met in Washington, D. C. This memorial was suggested by Miss
Frances E. Willard, and co-operated in by the National Temperance
Society. It asked for a deliverance from the Congress upon alcohol as a
food and as a medicine.
The Congress was divided into sections for the more thorough discussion
of the various topics. Upon the program was a paper on "The Therapeutic
Value of Alcohol as Food, and as a Medicine," by Ezra M. Hunt, M. D.,
delegate from the New Jersey Medical Society. This paper was read before
the "Section on Medicine," and, after earnest discussion, the
conclusions of the author were adopted "quite unanimously" as the
sentiments of the Section on Medicine. As such they were reported for
acceptance to the General Congress, and by it ordered to be transmitted
as a reply to the memorialists.
The report was published in full by the National Temperance Society, and
may be obtained from it in paper binding for twenty-five cents. As it
makes a book of 137 pages the conclusions only will be quoted here. They
are as follows:--
1. "Alcohol is not shown to have a definite food value by any of
the usual methods of chemical analysis or physiological
investigation.
2. "Its use as a medicine is chiefly that of a cardiac
stimulant, and often admits of substitution.
3. "As a medicine it is not well fitted for self-prescription by
the laity, and the medical profession is not accountable for
such administration, or for the enormous evil arising therefrom.
4. "The purity of alcoholic liquors is in general not as well
assured as that of articles used for medicine should be. The
various mixtures when used as medicine should have definite and
known composition, and should not be interchanged
promiscuously."
It is matter for sincere regret that this deliverance was not, in some
way, brought prominently before every physician in the land. There are,
doubtless, thousands of physicians who never heard of it, and,
consequently have never been influenced by it to doubt the utility of
the popular brandy bottle.
In 1883 Mrs. Mary Towne Burt, President of New York State W. C. T. U.,
in her annual address, suggested that a department of work be created to
endeavor to induce physicians to not prescribe alcohol, unless in such
cases as allowed of the use of no other agent. Mrs. (Rev.) J. Butler, of
Fairport, was the first superintendent of this department, which was
named, "Influencing Physicians to not Prescribe Alcoholics as
Medicines." The National W. C. T. U. adopted the department in 1883,
but soon dropped it. In 1895 it was reinstated and Mrs. Martha M. Allen,
New York's superintendent, was made national superintendent. In 1905 the
name of the department was changed from Non-Alcoholic Medication, which
it had borne for fifteen years, to Medical Temperance.
The objects of this department of work are:
1. To inform the public of the objections to the medical use of
alcoholic drinks now held by many successful physicians.
2. To show the dangers in the home-prescription of alcohol and other
powerful drugs.
3. To expose fraudulent and dangerous proprietary and "patent" medicines
and liquid "foods," the main ingredients of which are alcohol and
morphine.
4. To use persuasion with publishers of newspapers and magazines against
fraudulent medical advertising. Also to seek legislation which shall
hinder such advertising.
5. To endeavor to win the attention of physicians who prescribe
alcoholic liquors to the teachings of great leaders in their profession
who have abandoned such practice.
6. To bring to the attention of nurses the same teachings, and to seek
their co-operation in education against the self-prescription of
alcohol.
7. To work for legislation which shall correct the evils of the whisky
drug-store, the whisky-prescribing doctor, and the dangerous "patent"
medicine.
8. To gather the opinions upon alcohol of well-known physicians who do
not use it, and publish them.
This department originated the public agitation against injurious and
fraudulent "patent" medicines which later was so ably carried on by
_Collier's Weekly_, and the _Ladies' Home Journal_. That its early work
in this direction was not better known to the general public was due to
the fact that religious as well as secular papers were reaping large
revenues from the advertising of these nostrums, and consequently
refused to publish anything which might injure the trade. Indeed, in
accepting some of this advertising, newspaper managers had to sign a
contract that they would not publish any reading matter opposed to the
nostrum business.
The _Christian Advocate_ of New York city deserves special mention for
having published in 1898 two articles written by Mrs. Allen under the
caption, "The Danger and Harmfulness of Patent Medicines." These were in
the fall of that year published in pamphlet form, and a copy sent to
every local W. C. T. U. in the United States for study. Tens of
thousands of copies of this and other leaflets on that theme were
distributed within a few years, some local unions placing them in every
home in their community. Medical journals took note of this work and
commended it highly. When Mr. Bok began his campaign of education in the
_Ladies' Home Journal_, for which he deserves lasting gratitude, the
_American Druggist_ said he was "bowing to the clamor of the W. C. T.
U."
This department which began in weakness, and was for years regarded as
fanatical even by many members of the W. C. T. U. has entered upon an
era of victories. The National Pure Food Law requires the percentage of
alcohol in patent medicines, and the presence of different dangerous
drugs, to be stated upon the label. The prohibition law of Georgia
forbids physicians to prescribe alcoholic beverages, absolute alcohol
only being permitted. Kansas has amended her law so that whisky
drug-stores are eliminated. If physicians prescribe alcohol the law
forbids charge for it. Alabama forbids the sale of liquor for everything
but the communion. The Internal Revenue Department has examined a large
number of "patent" medicines and has listed them as intoxicating
beverages. Two state medical societies and some county societies in 1908
passed resolutions to discourage the medical use of alcoholic liquors.
Two national societies of druggists and pharmacists in 1908 passed
resolutions against whiskey drug-stores.
These are some of the results of Medical Temperance agitation. Much more
may be expected in the next decade if the work is as faithfully and
fearlessly carried on as in the past.
This book contains much of the teachings of the department of Medical
Temperance. When these views are generally accepted the liquor-problem
will be well-nigh solved.
CHAPTER III.
ALCOHOL AS A PRODUCER OF DISEASE.
That alcohol is a poison is attested by all chemists and other
scientific men; taken undiluted it destroys the vitality of the tissues
of the body with which it comes in contact as readily as creosote, or
pure carbolic acid. The term _intoxicating_ applied to beverages
containing it refers to its poisonous nature, the word being derived
from the Greek _toxicon_, which signifies a _bow_ or an _arrow_; the
barbarians poisoned their arrows, hence, _toxicum_ in Latin was used to
signify poison; from this comes the English term _toxicology_, which is
the science treating of _poisons_. Druggists in selling proof spirits
usually label the bottle, "Poison." Apart from the testimony of science
in regard to its poisonous nature, it is commonly known that large doses
of brandy or whisky will speedily cause death, particularly in those
unaccustomed to their use. The newspapers frequently contain items
regarding the death of children who have had access to whisky, and drunk
freely of it. Cases are reported, too, of men, habituated to drink, who
after tossing off several glasses of brandy at the bar of a saloon have
suddenly dropped dead.
Dr. Mussey says:--
"A poison is that substance, in whatever form it may be, which,
when applied to a living surface, disconcerts and disturbs
life's healthy movements. It is altogether distinct from
substances which are in their nature nutritious. It is not
capable of being converted into food, and becoming a part of the
living organs. We all know that proper food is wrought into our
bodies; the action of animal life occasions a constant waste,
and new matter has to be taken in, which, after digestion, is
carried into the blood, and then changed; but poison is
incapable of this. It may indeed be mixed with nutritious
substances, but if it goes into the blood, it is thrown off as
soon as the system can accomplish its deliverance, if it has not
been too far enfeebled by the influence of the poison. Such a
poison is alcohol--such in all its forms mix it with what you
may."
Dr. Nathan S. Davis said in an address given in 1891:--
"When largely diluted with water, as it is in all the varieties
of fermented and distilled liquids, and taken into the stomach,
it is rapidly imbibed, or taken up by the capillary vessels and
carried into the venous blood, without having undergone any
digestion or change in the stomach. With the blood it is carried
to every part, and made to penetrate every tissue of the living
body, where it has been detected by proper chemical tests as
unchanged alcohol, until it has been removed through the natural
process of elimination, or lost its identity by molecular
combination with the albuminous elements of the blood and
tissues, for which it has a strong affinity.
"The most varied and painstaking experiments of chemists and
physiologists, both in this country and Europe, have shown
conclusively that the presence of alcohol in the blood
diminishes the amount of oxygen taken up through the air-cells
of the lungs; retards the molecular and metabolic changes of
both nutrition and waste throughout the system and diminishes
the sensibility and action of the nervous structures in direct
proportion to the quantity of alcohol present. By its stronger
affinity for water and albumen, with which it readily unites in
all proportions, it so alters the hemaglobin of the blood as to
lessen its power to take the oxygen from the air-cells of the
lungs and carry it as oxyhemaglobia to all the tissues of the
body; and by the same affinity it retards all atomic or
molecular changes in the muscular, secretory and nervous
structures; and in the same ratio it diminishes the elimination
of carbon-dioxide, phosphates, heat and nerve force. In other
words, its presence diminishes all the physical phenomena of
life.
"I say, then, that from the facts hitherto adduced, whether from
accurate experimental investigations in different countries,
from the pathological results developed in the most scientific
societies, from the most reliable statistics of sickness and
mortality, as influenced by occupations and social habits, or
from the life insurance records kept on a uniform basis through
periods of ten, twenty, thirty or even forty years, it is
clearly shown that alcohol when taken into the human system not
only acts upon the nervous system, perverting its sensibility,
and, if increased in quantity, causing intoxication or
insensibility, but it also, _even in small quantities_, lessens
the oxygenation and decarbonization of the blood and retards the
molecular changes in the structures of the body. When these
effects are continued through months and years, as in the most
temperate class of drinkers, _they lead to permanent structural
changes, most prominently in the liver, kidneys, stomach, heart,
blood-vessels and nerve structures, and lessen the natural
duration of life in the aggregate from ten to fifteen years_.
Consequently there is no greater, nor more destructive error
existing in the public mind than the belief that the use of
fermented and distilled drinks does no harm so long as they do
not intoxicate.
"Another popular error is the opinion that the substitution of
the different varieties of beer and wine in the place of
distilled liquors promotes temperance, and lessens the evil
effects of alcohol on the health and morals of those who use
them. Accurate investigations show that beer and wine drinkers
generally consume more alcohol per man than the spirit drinkers;
and while they are not as often intoxicated, they suffer fully
as much from diseases and premature death as do those who use
distilled spirits. Again, the beer drinker drinks more nearly
every day, and thereby keeps some alcohol in his blood more
constantly; while a large percentage of spirit drinkers drink
only periodically, leaving considerable intervals of abstinence,
during which the tissues regain nearly their natural condition.
The more constant and persistent is the presence of alcohol in
the blood and the tissues, even in moderate quantity, the more
certainly does it lead to perverted and degenerative changes in
the tissues, _ending in renal _(kidney)_ and hepatic _(liver)_
dropsies, cardiac _(heart)_ failures, gout, apoplexy and
paralysis_."
Sir B. W. Richardson says:--
"Alcohol produces many diseases; and it constantly happens that
persons die of diseases which have their origin solely in the
drinking of alcohol, while the cause itself is never for a
moment suspected. A man may say quite truthfully that he never
was tipsy in the whole course of his life; and yet it is quite
possible that such a man may die of disease caused by the
alcohol he has taken, and by no other cause whatever. This is
one of the most dreadful evils of alcohol, that it kills
insidiously, as if it were doing no harm, or as if it were doing
good, while it is destroying life. Another great evil of it is
that it assails so many different parts of the body. It hardly
seems credible at first sight that the same agent can give rise
to the many different kinds of diseases it does give rise to. In
fact, the universality of its action has blinded even learned
men as to its potency for destruction.
"Step by step, however, we have now discovered that its modes of
action are all very simple, and are all the same in character;
and that the differences that have been and are seen in
different persons under its influence are due mainly to the
organs, or organ, which first give way under it. Thus, if the
stomach gives way first, we say that the person has indigestion
or dyspepsia, or failure of the stomach; if the brain gives way
first, we say the person has paralysis, or apoplexy, or brain
disease; if the liver gives way first, we say the man has liver
disease, and so on.
"All persons who indulge much in any form of alcoholic drink are
troubled with indigestion. When they wake in the morning they
find their mouth dry, their tongue coated, and their appetite
bad. In course of time they become confirmed 'dyspeptics,' and
as many of them find a temporary relief from the distress at the
stomach, and the deficient appetite from which they suffer by
taking more liquor, they increase the quantity taken, and so
make matters much worse. * * * * *
"There are a great number of diseases caused by alcohol, some of
which are known by terms that do not convey to the mind what
really has been the cause of the diseases." They are:
(a) Diseases of the brain and nervous system: indicated by such names
as apoplexy, epilepsy, paralysis, vertigo, softening of the brain,
delirium tremens, loss of memory and that general failure of the mental
power called dementia. (b) Diseases of the lungs: one form of
consumption, congestion and subsequent bronchitis. (c) Diseases of the
heart: irregular beat, feebleness of the muscular walls, dilation,
disease of the valves. (d) Diseases of the blood: scurvy, dropsy,
separation of fibrine. (e) Diseases of the stomach: feebleness of the
stomach and indigestion, flatulency, irritation and sometimes
inflammation. (f) Diseases of the bowels: relaxation or purging,
irritation. (g) Diseases of the liver: congestion, hardening and
shrinking cirrhosis. (h) Diseases of the kidneys: change of structure
into fatty or waxy-like condition and other changes leading to dropsy.
(i) Diseases of the muscles: fatty changes in the muscles, by which
they lose their power for proper active contraction. (j) Diseases of
the membranes of the body: thickening and loss of elasticity, by which
the parts wrapped up in the membrane are impaired for use, and premature
decay is induced.
But it constantly happens that when deaths from these diseases are
recorded and alcohol has been the primary cause, some other cause is
believed to have been at work.
While drinking parents by virtue of a strong constitution sometimes
escape the penalty of their bibulous habit, it is not uncommon to see
their children suffering from some disease or nervous weakness such as
is caused by alcohol, "the sins of the father being visited upon the
children."
Erasmus Darwin says upon this point:--
"It is remarkable that all the diseases from drinking spirituous
or fermented liquors are liable to become hereditary, even to
the third generation, gradually increasing, if the cause be
continued, till the family become extinct."
Prof. Christison, of Edinburgh, in answer to inquiries from the
Massachusetts State Board of Health, says of general diseases due to
alcohol:--
"I recognize certain diseases which originate in the vice of
drunkenness alone, which are _delirium tremens_, cirrhosis of
the liver, many cases of Bright's disease of the kidneys, and
dipsomania, or insane drunkenness.
"Then I recognize many other diseases in regard to which excess
in alcoholics acts as a powerful predisposing cause, such as
gout, gravel, aneurism, paralysis, apoplexy, epilepsy, cystitis,
premature incontinence of urine, erysipelas, spreading cellular
inflammation, tendency of wounds and sores to gangrene,
inability of the constitution to resist the attacks of
epidemics. I have had a fearful amount of experience of
continued fever in our infirmary during many epidemics, and in
all my experience I have only once known an intemperate man of
forty and upwards to recover."
Professor Christison also claims that three-fourths, or even
four-fifths, of Bright's disease in Scotland is produced by alcohol.
Dr. C. Murchison, in speaking of alcohol as a preventive of disease,
says:--
"There is no greater error than to imagine that a liberal
allowance of alcoholic liquids fortifies the system against
contagious diseases."
In a paper read before the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, Oct.
22, 1872, Dr. W. Dickinson gave the following conclusions:--
"Alcohol causes fatty infiltration and fibrous encroachments; it
engenders tubercles; encourages suppuration, and retards
healing; it produces untimely atheroma (a form of fatty
degeneration of the inner coats of the arteries), invites
hemorrhage, and anticipates old age. The most constant fatty
changes, replacement by oil of the material of epithelial cells
and muscular fibres, though probably nearly universal, is most
noticeable in the liver, the heart and the kidneys. _Drink
causes tuberculosis_, which is evident not only in the lungs,
but in every amenable organ."
Dr. William Hargreaves says:--
"Brandy is not a prophylactic. To the temperate it is an active,
exciting cause. It is well known that a single act of
intemperance during the prevalence of cholera, will often
produce a fatal attack. The sense of warmth and irritation
(called stimulation) produced by alcoholic liquors, has led to
the erroneous notion that they may prevent cholera. But the
contrary we have seen is the truth, for the effects of
alcoholics are to reduce the temperature of the body, and
instead of stimulating, they narcotize, and reduce the
life-forces, and predispose the system to all kinds of disease."
The following testimonies are culled from the writings of eminent
physicians:--
Sir Andrew Clark, M. D., F. R. C. P., London, Physician in
Ordinary to the Queen, Senior Physician at the London Hospital:
"As I looked at the hospital wards to-day, and saw that seven
out of ten owed their diseases to alcohol, I could but lament
that the teaching about this question is not more direct, more
decisive and more home-thrusting. * * * * * Can I say to you any
words stronger than these of the terrible effects of alcohol?
When I think of this I am disposed to give up my profession, and
go forth upon a holy crusade, preaching to all men--_Beware of
this enemy of the race._"
Sir William Gull, F. R. S. (late Physician to her Majesty): "I
should say, from my experience, that alcohol is the most
destructive agent that we are aware of in this country. I would
like to say that a very large number of people in society are
dying day by day, poisoned by alcohol, but not supposed to be
poisoned by it."
Dr. Abernethy: "If people will leave off drinking alcohol, live
plainly, and take very little medicine they will find that many
disorders will be relieved by this treatment alone."
Dr. Forel, of the University of Zurich, Switzerland: "Life is
considerably shortened by the use of alcohol in large
quantities. But a moderate consumption of the same also shortens
life by an average of five to six years. This is consistently
and unequivocally seen in the statistics kept for thirty years
by English insurance companies, with special sections for
abstainers. They give a large discount, and still make more
profit, as not nearly so many deaths occur as might be expected
under the usual calculations. According to federal statistics in
the fifteen largest towns of Switzerland, over ten per cent. of
the men over twenty years of age die solely, or partly of
alcoholism."
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Battle Creek, Mich.: "Every organ feels the
effect of the abuse through indulgence in alcohol, and no
function is left undisturbed. By degrees, disordered function,
through long continuance of the disturbance, induces tissue
change. The most common form of organic or structural disease
due to alcohol is fatty degeneration, which may effect almost
every organ in the body. * * * * * No class of persons are so
subject to nervous diseases due to degeneration of nerves and
nerve-centres as drinkers. Partial or general paralysis,
locomotor ataxia, epilepsy and a host of other nervous
disorders, are directly traceable to the use of alcohol."
One of the visiting physicians of Bellevue Hospital, New York, states
that at least two-thirds of all the diseases treated there originated in
drink.
Dr. W. A. Hammond: "It is of all causes most prolific in
exciting derangements of the brain, the spinal cord, and the
nerves."
CHAPTER IV.
TEMPERANCE HOSPITALS.
THE LONDON TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL.
In 1865 Dr. S. Nicholls, medical officer of the Longford Poor-law Union,
published a report of the results of non-alcoholic treatment of disease
as practiced by him for sixteen years in the institutions under his
control. The figures for 1865 were:--
ADMITTED. RECOVERED. DIED.
Fever, 142 135 7
Scarlatina, 33 30 3
Small-pox, 48 47 1
Measles, 8 8 0
--- --- ---
231 220 11
_The treatment was altogether without wines, spirits or alcohol in any
form._
The death-rate reported by Dr. Nicholls was so small that some of the
more observing and progressive physicians were led by it to begin
similar experiments in the disuse of alcohol in other hospitals. Among
these was Dr. James Edmunds, senior physician at the Lying-In Hospital,
London. The experiments continued a year with a reduced death-rate
among both mothers and children. But the great brewers of London, who
contributed largely to the support of this hospital raised such a storm
of opposition to the discontinuance of alcoholic liquors that the
experiments had to be abandoned.
The establishment of a temperance hospital was now suggested, and in
October, 1873, a temporary institution was opened in Gower Street,
accommodating only seventeen in-patients at one time. Later a fine site
was secured on Hampstead Road, and in 1881 the east wing and centre were
opened by the Lord Mayor of London. In 1885 the west wing was finished,
and the opening ceremonies conducted by the Bishop of London.
At the time of the launching of this enterprise, wine and spirits were
literally "poured into" sick persons, with frightful results.
Death-rates were enormous. The success of the Temperance Hospital has no
doubt had much to do in modifying this abuse. Its death-rate, on an
average, has been only 6 per cent. throughout the years since its
beginning. This is lower than that of any other general hospital in
London, and certainly proves conclusively that alcohol is not necessary
in the treatment of disease. The physicians connected with it have been
men of eminence in the profession, such as Dr. James Edmunds, Dr. J. J.
Ridge and Sir B. W. Richardson.
The visiting staff is not compelled to pledge disuse of alcohol, but is
required to report if it is used. During all these years it has been
given only seventeen times, then almost entirely in surgical cases, and
in nearly all of these a fatal result proved it to be useless. The
patients who are restored to health leave without having had aroused or
implanted in them a desire for alcoholic liquors, neither have they been
taught to regard them as valuable aids to the recovery of health and
strength. On the contrary, there have been many who have come in,
suffering from this delusion, who have had it thoroughly dispelled, both
by their own experience and the experience of their fellow patients.
Sir B. W. Richardson took charge of this hospital from 1892 until his
death in 1897. In his report in 1893 he said:--
"I remember quite well when according to custom, I should have
prescribed alcohol in all those cases that were not actually
inflammatory (speaking of diseases of the alimentary system);
but I never remember having seen such quick and sound recoveries
as those which have followed the non-alcoholic method."
The following selection showing points of practice in this hospital is
taken from the same report:
"For medicinal purposes, we are as free as possible from all
complexity. We use glycerine for making what may be called our
tinctures, and in my clinique I am introducing a series of
'waters'--aqua ferri, aqua chloroformi, aqua opii, aqua quinæ,
and so on--to form the menstruums of other active drugs when
they are called for. I also follow the plan of having the
medicines administered with a free quantity of water, and with
as accurate a dosage as can be obtained, for I agree with Mr.
Spender's original proposition that the administration of
medicines in comparatively small and frequent doses is more
effective and useful than the more common plan of large doses
given at long intervals.
"I treat many cases by inhalation, and for this end I use oxygen
in a new and, I hope, efficient manner. I make oxygen gas a
medium for carrying other volatile substances that admit of
being inhaled with it. The mode is very simple. * * * * * In the
pneumonic and bronchial cases the treatment has been of the
simple and sustaining kind. The medicines that have been given
during the acute febrile stages have been chiefly liquor ammoniæ
acetatis and carbonate of ammonia in small and frequently
repeated doses. The patients have all been well and carefully
fed on the milk and middle diet until convalescence was
declared. In some of the more extreme instances, where there was
fear of collapse from separation of fibrine in the heart or
pulmonary artery, ammonia has been given freely according to the
method I have for so many years inculcated. I have also in cases
of depression under which fibrinous separation is so easily
developed, lighted on a mode of administering ammonia which
combines feeding with the medicine. I direct that a three or
five-grain tabloid of bicarbonate of ammonia shall be dissolved
in a cup of coffee or of coffee with milk, and be taken by the
patient in that manner. The coffee can be sweetened with sugar
if that is desired by the patient, and the ammonia can be so
administered without any objectionable taste to the beverage.
After what is called the crisis in acute pneumonia, I administer
very little medicine of any kind; I trust rather to careful
feeding with an occasional alterative or expectorant, as may be
required. * * * * * I am satisfied that no aid I could have
derived from alcoholic stimulants, as they are called, could
have bettered my results. I feel sure any candid medical brother
who will have the steady courage to put aside many old and
unproven, though much-practiced, methods, based only on
unquestioning and unquestioned experience, and to move into
these new fields of observation and experience, will, in the
end, find no fault with me for leaving a track which, though it
be beaten very firmly and be very wide and smooth to traverse,
may not, after all, be the surest and soundest path to the
golden gate of cure."
THE FRANCES E. WILLARD NATIONAL TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL.
This hospital is situated at 343-349 South Lincoln Street, Chicago, in a
handsome and well-equipped building. It is connected with a medical
school. The history of its origin is best told in the words of the woman
to whom the conception of such an institution first came, Dr. Mary Weeks
Burnett, for several years the physician in charge:--
"In the fall of 1883 there came to a few of us the thought that
there was a point of weakness in the temperance pledge. It
reads, 'We promise to abstain from all liquors--_as a
beverage_.' We had found in many instances in reform work that
pledging to abstain from liquor 'as a beverage,' and leaving the
victim to the unlimited use of it in physicians' prescriptions,
was simply a skirmish with the devil's outposts, that the
conflict, based upon these grounds, was short, and defeat almost
sure; and the great fact remained that the innermost recesses of
evil force and power were by this pledge still left unassailed.
We found that this power of evil had largely entered the homes
of our land through the family physicians, and that willingly or
not, the physicians were being used to bring in even our
innocent children as recruits to this unrighteous warfare.
"Now, how could we hope to eliminate those three little words
'as a beverage' from our pledge?
"In some way we must bring about an arrest of thought in the
minds of 100,000 men and women physicians whose medical
education warranted them in supposing that they knew that of
alcohol which justified them in its full and free use in medical
practice. Nothing short of a great national object lesson could
ever convict and convert this broad constituency through which
the power of darkness is doing his deadliest work.
"In January, 1884, four of us met and organized under the name
of the National Temperance Hospital. To have our sick properly
cared for in our hospital we found that we should be obliged to
train our own nurses. The nurse who has always been accustomed
to administering alcohol under the physician's prescription at
all times and under all circumstances, and to administering it
herself at her own discretion if the physician is not at hand,
is a terror to the temperance physician. So we included in our
charter a Training School for Nurses. It is now open, and we
expect, as the years go by, to send out armed with our training
school diplomas, grand, noble women and men thoroughly trained
in true temperance methods for relieving the sick.
"Our organization lived on paper, and was sustained in purpose
by prayer and planning for two years. In September, 1885, Mr. R.
G. Peters, of Manistee, Michigan, signified to us his intention
to give $50,000 toward our buildings whenever we had
satisfactorily materialized. About the same time a good old
gentleman in Michigan placed in his will for us $2,500. The dear
man is still living, and we hope will live many years. Even the
money when it comes can never be of greater service to us than
was the knowledge at that time that the Lord was our leader and
was raising up helpers in the work.
"In January, 1886, we found, according to the law under which
our charter was obtained, that we must commence active
operations at once, or obtain a new charter. After a blessed
season of prayer and counseling together in the board meeting
held January 29, there being present only the members of the
board at that time, Mrs. Plumb offered to advance $3,500, if
necessary, toward the expenses for the first year. We accepted
it with great thankfulness, rented a building the 15th of
March, 1886, and formally opened the National Temperance
Hospital on the 4th of May, 1886.
"In April, 1886, we took a firm stand upon the alcohol question,
and decided to eliminate it entirely from our list of
therapeutics, as we had become convinced that there were better
and more reliable remedies as stimulants and tonics.
"In September, 1886, at our annual meeting, we reaffirmed this
decision, and we now have the following as one of the articles
of our constitution: 'All medicines used in the hospital must be
prepared without alcohol, and all physicians accepting positions
on the medical staff of the hospital or dispensary must pledge
themselves not to administer alcohol in any form to any patient
in hospital or dispensary, nor to call in counsel for such
patients any physician who will advise the use of alcohol.
"Any physician of pure character, and in good standing, who is a
total abstainer from liquor and tobacco can, by subscribing to
this pledge, become a member of our physicians' association, and
if so desired, be placed upon the visiting and consulting staff
of the hospital.
"The cases treated in the hospital include many of the serious
medical and surgical maladies. In no case has any particle of
alcohol been used, and the usual inflammatory secondary symptoms
resulting when alcohol is used have been entirely avoided.
"Our course of building-up treatment is, we believe, unique in
hospital practice. It consists of treatment by massage, heat,
rest, passive exercise, etc., together with proper medication
and a thoroughly nutritious diet adapted to the individual needs
of the patient.
"To alleviate, and, if possible, cure disease, is the design of
all hospital treatment. In our hospital we seek to gain this
result by means which the highest science of the day approves,
and in addition to this we have especially at heart the
advancement of the temperance reform. There are, we believe,
thousands of temperance adherents, who do not yet fully
apprehend the importance of this hospital to the permanent
extension and progress of temperance principles. Although
prohibition as a _principle_ has been accepted by many, yet in
its _practical application_ in the home in serious illness, it
is still feared by the immense majority of even our strongest
prohibitionists. We are organized upon the basis _no alcohol in
medicine_, and we are preparing to demonstrate fully and
scientifically, so he who runs may read, that as in health, so
in disease and accident, alcohol in any form works to the
hindrance and injury of the vital forces, and prevents the
establishment and advancement of health processes in the
system."
At the opening of the hospital, May 4, 1886, Miss Frances E. Willard,
the president of the National W. C. T. U., gave the following address:
"Nothing is changeless except change. The conservatives of one
epoch are the madmen of the next, even as the radicals of to-day
would have been the lunatics of yesterday. To prove this, just
imagine the founders of this hospital declaring to my
great-grandfather that because he had taken a cold was no reason
why he should take a toddy; and _per contra_, imagine my
great-grandfather's doctor marching into our presence here and
now, with saddle-bags on arm, and after treating us each to a
glass of grog for our stomach's sake, giving us a scientific
disquisition on the sovereign virtues of the blue pill, and
informing us that bleeding, cupping and starvation were the
surest methods of cure!
"That the story of Evolution is true I am by no means certain,
but that 'We, Us, and Company,' are 'evoluting' with electric
speed ourselves it is useless to deny. This very hospital is the
latest mile-stone on the highway of progress in the American
temperance reform. The conditions that have made its existence
possible have developed in this country within about twelve
years.
"Public opinion, that mightiest of magicians, has within that
time been educated up to this level and has said in its
omnipotence: 'Hospital, be!' and, behold, the hospital _is_.
"When I joined the ranks of temperance workers in 1874, a
thought so adventurous as that alcoholics in relation to
medicine were a curse and not a blessing had never lodged within
my cranium. But, as in duty bound, I studied the subject from
the practical, which is the nineteenth century standpoint.
"I investigated the cause of inebriety, and found the medical
use of alcoholic stimulants a prominent factor in this horrible
result; I sought for expert testimony, and found Dr. N. S.
Davis, ex-President American Medical Association, saying 'that
in his ample clinical practice he had for over thirty years
tested the medical uses of alcoholics, and had _found no case of
disease and no emergency arising from accident that he could not
treat more successfully without any form of fermented or
distilled liquors than with_'; found Dr. James R. Nichols, of
Boston, so long editor of _The Journal of Chemistry_, declaring
as his deliberate scientific opinion that the entire banishment
of these liquors 'would not deprive us of a single one of the
indispensable agents which modern civilization demands'; found
Dr. Green, of Boston, saying before the physicians of that city
that 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 it entails,
and that after thirty years of professional experience he felt
assured that alcoholic stimulants are not required as medicines,
and that many, if not a majority of the best physicians, now
believe them _to be worse than useless_. Meanwhile I learned
that across the sea such great physicians as Dr. Benjamin Ward
Richardson, Sir Andrew Clark, Sir Henry Thompson and Sir William
Gull held views which for their latitude were almost equally
radical; and Dr. James Edmunds, founder of the London Temperance
Hospital had demonstrated publicly and on a grand scale the more
excellent way, his hospital having 4-1/2 per cent. fewer deaths
than any other in London, taking the same run of cases, and that
the Royal Infirmary at Manchester reported the medicinal use of
alcohol fallen off 87 per cent. in recent years, with a decrease
in its death-rate of over one-third. Besides all this, and
independent of any such investigation, the 'intuitions' of our
most earnest women were leading them out of the wilderness. As
is their custom, they determined to put this matter to the test
of that 'experience which one experiences when he experiences
his own experience,' and a whole body of divinity upon the
advantages of non-alcoholic treatment could be furnished from
their evidence. I was not able personally to pursue this method,
my own condition of good health having become chronic. Away back
in 1875, in executive committee, one of our leading officers was
stricken with _angina pectoris_. A physician was promptly
summoned. 'Give her brandy,' he said, and insisted so stoutly
upon it as vital to her recovery that we should probably have
sent for it, but the dear woman gasped out faintly, 'I can die,
but I can't touch brandy.' She is alive and flourishing to-day.
Another national officer absolutely refused whisky for a violent
attack of a very different character, the physician telling her
that she could not live through the night without it; but she is
still an active worker--a living witness that doctors are not
infallible. Instances like these have multiplied by hundreds and
thousands in our Woman's Christian Unions and Bands of Hope.
'No, mamma I can't touch liquor; I've signed the pledge,' is a
protest 'familiar as household words.' Meanwhile, I beg you to
contemplate something else that has happened. Behold, our own
beloved beverage itself,
'Sparkling and bright,
In its liquid light,'
has come grandly to our rescue in this crusade against alcohol
in the sick room. Water has become a favorite--nay, even a
fashionable--medicine! The most conservative physicians freely
prescribe it in the very cases where some form of alcohol was
the specific so long. To be sure, they give it hot, but we do
not object to that, since 'water hot ne'er made a sot,' and it
cures dyspepsia and all forms of indigestion as whisky never
did, but only made believe to; while its external use as a
fomentation is banishing alcohol even for old folks' 'rheumatiz'
where, as a remedy, it would be likely to make its final stand.
"Farewell, thou cloven-foot, Alcohol! Thou canst no longer hide
away in the home-like old camphor bottle, paregoric bottle,
peppermint bottle or Jamaica-ginger bottle; and a tender
good-by, Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, for be it known to you
that the wonderful discovery stumbled over for six thousand
years has in our day been made, namely, that hot water will
soothe the baby's stomach-aches and the grown people's pains,
and drive out a cold when all else fails. _Jubilate!_ Clear out
the cupboard and top shelf of the closet now that the sideboard
has gone. Let great Nature have a glance to 'mother up' humanity
with the medicine, as well as the beverage, brewed in Heaven."
THE RED CROSS HOSPITAL.
A philanthropic young woman, Miss Bettina A. Hofker, entered Mount Sinai
Training School for Nurses in 1891. Her desire was to fit herself as a
nurse for the poor. After her graduation in 1893, she met Mrs. Charles
A. Raymond, a benevolent lady, who offered her pecuniary assistance in
her work. Miss Hofker suggested that she would like to institute a Red
Cross Hospital and Training School for Nurses. Mrs. Raymond succeeded in
interesting others in the proposition. The name of Red Cross however
could not be used without permission of the officers of the society
bearing that name, but after consultation with Miss Barton, permission
was granted. Several years previous to this, Dr. A. Monæ Lesser, Dr.
Thomas McNicholl and Dr. Gottlieb Steger had opened a small hospital
under the name of St. John's Institute. This was now amalgamated with
the Red Cross, and Dr. George F. Shrady and Dr. T. Gaillard Thomas, two
of New York's leading physicians, were requested to act as consulting
physicians.
The hospital does not confine itself to service in its building alone,
but sends its workers wherever called, to mansion or tenement. The
"Sisters" are trained for field service or for any national calamity
such as floods, earthquakes, forest fires, epidemics, etc. When neither
war nor calamities require their presence, they devote themselves to the
service of the needy poor, or wait upon the rich, if called. The heroic
service rendered by the surgeons and nurses from this hospital in the
Cuban War, brought their work into great prominence.
At the suggestion of Miss Barton, the medical department of the hospital
was commissioned to treat diseases without the use of alcoholic liquids.
Dr. Lesser, the executive surgeon, is a German, and of German education,
having received his medical education in the Universities of Berlin and
Leipsic. In a conversation with a press representative, Dr. Lesser said
some time ago:--
"We have been convinced that the use of alcohol can be entirely
eliminated from our medical practice, and this has been
practically accomplished at the Red Cross Hospital. We find that
where stimulants are required, such remedies as caffeine,
nitro-glycerine and kolafra take the place of alcohol, and are
even more satisfactory. The main use of alcohol is to stimulate
the action of the heart in various ailments. The blood is thus
forced to the remote parts of the system, and poisonous
substances carried away. But, besides serving this good purpose,
the drug tears down and ultimately destroys the cellular tissues
of the body. A relapse is certain to follow the application. The
drugs that I have mentioned serve exactly the same purpose
without the disastrous results. We are proving this every day at
the Red Cross Hospital.
"Only a few days ago a boy was brought in, apparently at the
point of death. He was put into bed and watched by the nurse.
After a little ammonia had been given to him as a stimulant, he
unconsciously expressed himself to the effect that it was not
the same as they gave him in another place, and gradually when
it dawned upon him that no alcohol was administered by the Red
Cross, he said, 'Gin has allers made me better.' The doctor in
charge, who already suspected that the boy was pretending
illness for the sake of the drink, was not surprised an hour or
two afterwards to learn that he had demanded his clothes,
dressed himself, and left the hospital most ungratefully, but
apparently quite well."
Dr. George F. Shrady, one of the consulting physicians, is famous as
having been in attendance upon both President Garfield and President
Grant. He is the editor of the _Medical Record_, one of the most
important medical journals published in America. While not a
non-alcoholic physician, he says of the medical use of intoxicants:--
"There is altogether too much looseness among physicians in
prescribing alcohol. It is a dangerous drug. There is much more
alcohol used by physicians than is necessary, and it does great
harm. Whisky is not a preventive; it prevents no disease
whatever, contrary to a current notion. Another thing, we
physicians get blamed wrongfully in many cases. People who want
to drink, and do drink, often lay it on to the physician who
prescribed it. * * * * * I think that in most cases where
alcohol is now used, other drugs with which we are familiar
could be used with far better effect, and with no harmful
results."
Dr. Steger, another physician of the staff, says:--
"I don't use alcohol at all in my practice. I used to use it,
but my observation has been that other drugs do the same work
without the harmful results. Alcohol over-stimulates the heart,
and tears down the cellular tissues of the system, besides
causing other deleterious effects. The use of alcohol is simply
a superstition among physicians. They have used it so long that
they think they always must. I am not a total abstainer, but
that only shows that I take better care of my patients than I do
of myself. It is not good for a healthy man to drink, but
sometimes folks like myself do things which had better be left
undone. I have seen patients in hospitals made absolutely drunk
by their physicians."
The following interesting items in regard to practice in this hospital
are culled from the report of 1897:--
"Temperature was never reduced by active drugs known as
antipyretics.
"Water was allowed freely after all kinds of surgical operations
and in fevers.
"Alcohol was never used as an internal medicine.
"The free use of water in saline solutions directly injected
into the tissues was found of great service. Quarts have been
injected that way with most satisfactory results.
"Antipyretics were altogether discarded as it is well known that
their action diminishes the tone of the heart. Artificial
reduction of temperature only deludes one into the belief that
the drug has improved the condition of the patient, while in
reality, it has no beneficial influence on the disease, and has
reduced the vital resistance of the patient. In no case has high
temperature harmed a patient and there was every evidence that
in some instances a high temperature was preferable to a low
one.
"Special attention has been given to the use of alcohol in
disease, not with any desire to approve or disapprove it, but
solely for the purpose of discovering the truth, for nothing
seems of greater public interest from a medical standpoint than
the truth regarding a subject for which so many virtues are
claimed on the one hand, and so many destructive elements proven
on the other. * * * * *
"We criticise the treatment of no institution, antagonize no
school of medicine, claim no unusual or peculiar scientific
virtue, but what we do maintain and insist upon is this: that
the human body may be ever so afflicted, ever so reduced, the
heart ever so feeble, and the spark of life ever so dim, the
conscientious student of medicine can secure as good results
without as with administration of antipyretics, sparkling wines,
beers or liquors.
"Experience teaches that true science does not antagonize
nature. In surgical cases, in septicæmia, in pneumonia, or in
any of the fevers, water freely administered has proven to be a
real source of comfort, and an aid to recovery. It is amazing
how favorably diseases terminate under this beneficent beverage.
The withholding of food does not retard, but rather hastens
convalescence.
"In the conduct of our Red Cross patients, irrespective of their
condition when admitted, it can be truly said that after
treatment began, delirium has not been witnessed in a single
instance, and as our hospital reports indicate, our mortality
has been unusually small.
"Alcohol has not figured as a life-saver in our institution.
Cases of extreme collapse following major operations, cases of
pneumonia, where the pulse ranged from 160 to 220, patients
suffering from pernicious anæmia, septicæmia, pyæmia, cholera
infantum and typhoid fever, some of whom when first seen were in
the worst stages of delirium and collapse have without alcohol
regained consciousness, overcome delirium and made excellent
recoveries.
"The following cases very forcibly illustrate the results of
non-alcoholic treatment:--
"Case No. 1. A child, aged nine months, under treatment for six
days for pneumonia, came under our notice on the seventh day.
The temperature was 106 5-10; pulse was 220; respirations 90.
Whisky, which had been given previously to the extent of two
ounces daily, was stopped. Carbonate of ammonia, caffeine
salicylate, nitro-glycerine and 1-10 of a drop of aconite were
given internally; camphorated lard applied externally; with the
result that on the ninth day temperature stood 99; pulse 100;
respiration 20. The child made a complete recovery.
"Case No. 2. L. was a child aged eight months, suffering from a
very violent attack of entero-colitis. For three weeks previous
to coming under our notice the patient received brandy,
stimulating foods and alkaline mixtures. Fearfully emaciated,
temperature 106, feeble pulse 182, frequent bloody discharges
from the bowels, numbering as much as thirty in a day and
constant vomiting, the child was considered beyond hope. Under
these circumstances, and at this time we first saw her. Brandy
and all foods were stopped; bowel flushings were given, 1-12 of
a drop of tincture of aconite was administered every half hour
and salicylate of caffeine every two hours. In twenty-four hours
the temperature was 105 and the pulse 160. In two days,
temperature was 102 and the pulse 140. In one week, temperature
was 99 5-10, pulse 110. In three weeks, the patient was
discharged cured.
"Case No. 3. Mrs. C., aged forty-three, who had been under
treatment for seven weeks for metrorrhagia, nietortes and
peritonitis came under our notice. Brandy which had been
previously given in large quantities had proved of no avail and
the patient was considered beyond recovery. We found her
completely prostrated, temperature 102, pulse 170, and
unconscious. The heart very weak and irregular. The brandy was
discontinued, salicylate of caffeine and nitrate of strychnia
were given with the result that in a short time the patient was
convalescent and finally recovered.
"Each case in our hospital is an additional proof that whether
found in wines, spirits or beers, alcohol can claim no right as
an indispensable medicine."
Dr. Lesser, who was Surgeon-General of the American Red Cross in the
Cuban War said after his return from his first visit to Cuba that four
out of six of his patients, to whom he allowed liquor to be given as a
concession to the popular idea that it was necessary, died; while
subsequently in treating absolutely without alcohol sixty-three similar
cases, only one died, and he upon the day on which he was received at
the hospital.
ALCOHOL IN OTHER HOSPITALS.
In the spring of 1909 a circular letter was sent to some of the best
known hospitals throughout the country asking if the use of alcoholic
liquors had decreased in those institutions during the past ten years.
From the replies received the following statements are taken:
Cook County Hospital, Chicago, sent figures for two years only, 1907,
and 1908. With 28,932 patients treated in 1907, the bill for wines and
liquors amounted to only $719.40. In 1908 with 31,202 patients the bill
for liquors amounted to $970.65. This makes a _per capita_ expenditure
for liquors for 1907 of .024 cents, and for 1908 a _per capita_
expenditure of .031 cents. The _per capita_ expenditure for liquors
during the same years in Bellevue and Allied Hospitals of New York city,
with from 30,000 to 40,000 patients treated was .0246 and .029. Two or
three cents as the yearly _per capita_ expenditure for alcoholic liquors
in the two largest hospitals in America is striking evidence that the
physicians practicing there have not large faith in whisky, or other
alcoholic liquors as remedial agents.
Long Island, N. Y., State Hospital:--"We are not using more than half
the amount of alcohol we used ten years ago."
Manhattan State Hospital, Ward's Island, New York City:--"Our patient
population has averaged nearly 4,500 the last four years, and we have
had about 750 employees, many of whom are prescribed for by institution
physicians. The _per capita_ cost of distilled liquors for the last
fiscal year was .0273 at this hospital."
Milwaukee City Hospital:--"No alcoholic liquors are used to any extent
in this hospital, or prescribed by the staff. I know of no move against
such use of liquors, but venture the assertion that the physicians
believe they have more reliable agents at their command for most cases."
Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia:--"We are now using about one-third
the amount of liquor that was used in the Pennsylvania Hospital ten
years ago."
The Presbyterian Hospital of Philadelphia sent figures for the years
from 1900 to 1908. Those for 1900 show the cost of liquors to be $774.20
and for 1908 only $331.48. The number of patients was not given.
Grady Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia:--"That less liquor is now used than
formerly is a fact well known to all connected with the institution."
Garfield Memorial, Washington, D. C., sent figures for ten years. For
1899 the cost of liquors was $490.08, with a steady decrease to 1908
when the cost was $274.58. Number of patients in 1899 was 1,171; in
1908, 1,898 patients. The _per capita_ for 1908 was .144 cents.
University Hospital, Ann Arbor, Michigan:--"Very little alcohol is
prescribed in this hospital."
Maine General Hospital, Portland:--"Comparatively speaking, we use but
little alcohol for the reason that we now have many remedies which,
especially for continued use, are superior to alcohol, which twenty
years ago we did not have. For the conditions or emergencies in which we
think alcohol has a value it is used when required or deemed best."
Buffalo, New York, State Hospital sent figures for six years which
include cost of alcohol used in the manufacture of pharmaceutical
preparations, which, of course, makes a very decided difference. _Per
capita_ for 1903 was 22 cents; for 1908 it was 18 cents.
Buffalo, New York, General Hospital:--"The use of alcohol as a drug in
this hospital has diminished about one-third in the past ten years, but
I wish to add in this connection that the use of all drugs has
diminished in this hospital, and to the best of my knowledge in other
institutions of a like character. The use of the microscope, and other
studies have advanced the science of medicine the same as all other
branches of learning, and other methods are coming to be used beside the
use of drugs."
Mount Sinai, New York City:--"The use of alcoholic beverages here for
medical purposes is the exception rather than the rule. The majority of
our cases are surgical cases, and in these alcoholic liquors are rarely
prescribed for any purpose whatsoever."
Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital, Boston, sent figures for five years.
For 1904 the cost of alcoholic liquors was $197.69 with 3,720 patients;
for 1908, the cost was $69.82 with 4,543 patients. The _per capita_ cost
for the five years is as follows: 1904, cost .0531 cents; 1905, cost
.0474; 1906, cost .034; 1907, cost .0171; 1908, cost .0153.
In the _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_ of April 15, 1909, Dr.
Richard C. Cabot gave a table showing the decrease in the use of
alcoholic liquors, and of other drugs in Massachusetts General Hospital,
Boston.
The following is his table:
1898 1899 1900 1901
Ale and Beer $759.00 $793.90 $1,062.00 $723.00
Wines and liquors, 1,563.00 2,209.00 1,348.00 1,063.00
--------- --------- --------- ---------
Total for alcoholic drinks, $2,321.00 $3,002.00 $2,410.00 $1,786.00
Total for other medicines, $8,424.00 $10,013.00 $10,132.00 $9,168.00
Number of patients, 5,005 5,203 5,012 5,495
Cost of alcohol per patient, $0.46 $0.57 $0.48 $0.32
Cost of medicine per patient, 1.68 1.92 2.02 1.66
1902 1903 1904 1905
Ale and beer, $605.00 $338.00 $431.00 $301.00
Wines and liquors, 799.00 688.00 904.00 144.00
--------- --------- --------- -------
Total for alcoholic drinks, $1,404.00 $1,026.00 $1,335.00 $445.00
Total for other medicines, $9,772.00 $7,815.00 $9,162.00 $7,018.00
Number of patients, 5,342 5,429 5,709 5,531
Cost of alcohol per patient, $0.26 $0.19 $0.23 $0.09
Cost of medicine per patient, 1.88 1.43 1.60 1.26
1906 1907
Ale and beer, $192.00 $203.00
Wines and liquors, 546.00 610.00
--------- ---------
Total for alcoholic drinks, $738.00 $813.00
Total for other medicines, $5,981.00 $5,492.00
Number of patients, 5,513 5,966
Cost of alcohol per patient, $0.13 $0.13
Cost of medicine per patient, 1.00 0.92
Dr. Cabot says:--
"Since there has been no fall in the price of stimulants or
medicine, the diminished expenditure corresponds to a diminution
in the number of doses of medicine and stimulants, and indicates
a rapid and striking change of view among the members of the
staff of the hospital, especially in the past five years, when
it has become generally known that alcohol is not a stimulant
but a narcotic and that drugs can cure only about half a dozen
of the diseases against which we are contending.
"There has been during this period no increase in the proportion
of surgical cases among the whole number treated, so that the
decreased use of medicines and alcoholic beverages has not
resulted from an increased resort to surgical remedies. On the
other hand, there has been a great increase in the utilization
of baths (hydrotherapeutics), of massage, of mechanical
treatment and of psychical treatment, all of which accounts no
doubt for part of the falling off in the use of alcohol and
drugs."
CHAPTER V.
THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE HUMAN BODY.
The body is made up mainly of cells, fibres and fluids. The cell is the
most important structure in the living body. Life resides in the cell,
and every animal may be considered a mass of cells, each of which is
alive, and each of which has its own work to accomplish in the building
up of the body.
The matter which forms the mass of a cell is called protoplasm, or
bioplasm. It resembles somewhat the white of a raw egg, which is almost
pure albumen. Cells make up the body, and do its work. Some are employed
to construct the skeleton, others are used to form the organs which move
the body; liver-cells secrete bile, and the cells in the kidneys
separate poisonous matters from the blood in order that they may be
expelled from the system.
These cells, composing the mass of the body, being very delicate, are
easily acted upon by substances coming into contact with them. If
substances other than natural foods or drinks are introduced into the
body, the cells are injuriously affected. Alcohol is especially
injurious to cells, "retarding the changes in their interior, hindering
their appropriation of food, and elimination of waste matters, and
therefore preventing their proper development and growth."
"Bioplasm is living matter; it is structureless, semi-fluid,
transparent and colorless. It is the only matter that can grow,
move, divide itself and multiply, the only matter that can take
up pabulum (food) and convert it into its own substance; and is
the only matter that can be nourished. The bioplasm in the cell
gets its nourishment by drawing in of the pabulum through the
cell wall, and in that way building up the formed material while
it is being disintegrated on the outer surface. This process is
continually being carried on, and is what is meant by nutrition.
Disintegration of the formed material is as essential as the
building up of it. All organic structure is the result of change
taking place in bioplasm. These small cell-like bioplasts are
the workmen of the organism. All wounds are repaired by them,
all fractures are united, and all diseased tissues brought back
to their normal and healthy condition, unless there is not
vitality enough to overcome disease, or they have been injured
or killed by poisonous material. The body is kept in repair by
this living matter, and all the functions of the body are but
the result of its action. We may examine, watch and study
bioplasm under the microscope; we see it take up pabulum and
convert that which is adapted to itself into its own substance,
while all other substances are rejected. We take a solution of
what we call a stimulant and immerse the bioplasm in it, and we
find that it increases its activity, moves faster, takes up more
pabulum, and divides more rapidly than in the unstimulated
condition. We next add an astringent, and it begins to move more
slowly, and soon contracts into a spherical shape and remains
contracted, or may move slowly to a limited extent, depending on
the strength of the solution. We next take a relaxant, and
gradually the living matter begins to spread in all directions,
in a laxy-like manner, and becomes so thin as to be almost
undiscernible, and takes up very little, if any, pabulum. If
sufficiently relaxed or astringed, the movements may entirely
cease so as to appear lifeless, but when a stimulant is again
added the same result is obtained as before--it begins to move,
and acts as vigorous as ever, which shows that it was not
injured in the least by the agents used. Alcohol is called a
stimulant. We take a weak solution of alcohol and try it in the
same way; but we find that almost instantly the living matter
contracts into a ball-like mass. Now, we may through ignorance
suppose that alcohol acts as an astringent, and so we try to
stimulate it with the same harmless agent before used, but no
impression is made on it; it does not move; it is dead matter.
These are demonstrable facts, and lie at the foundation of
physiology, pathology and the practice of medicine. Alcohol
destroys the very life force that alone keeps the body in
repair. For a more simple experiment as to the action of
alcohol, take the white of an egg (which consists of albumen,
and is very similar to bioplasm), put it into alcohol, and
notice it turn white, coagulate and harden. The same experiment
can be made with blood with the same result--killing the blood
bioplasts. Raw meat will turn white and harden in alcohol.
Alcohol acts the same on food in the stomach as it does on the
same substances before introduced into the stomach, and acts
just the same on blood and all the living tissues in the system
as out of it; and this alone is enough to condemn its use as a
medicine." From _Alcohol, Is It a Medicine?_ by W. F. Pechuman,
M. D., of Detroit, Michigan.
ALCOHOL AND STOMACH DIGESTION.
The nitrogenous portions of the food are the only ones digested in the
stomach. The oily and fatty, as well as the starchy portions, are
digested in the small intestines.
Very little was known about digestion until 1833, when Dr. Beaumont
published the results of his investigations upon the stomach of Alexis
St. Martin. St. Martin received a severe wound in the left side from a
shot-gun. The wound in healing left an opening into the stomach about
4/5 of an inch in diameter, closed on the inside by a flap of mucous
membrane. Through this opening the interior of the stomach could be
thoroughly examined. Dr. Beaumont made hundreds of observations upon
this young man, who was in his home several years. He says:--
"In a feverish condition, from whatever cause, obstructed
perspiration, _excitement by alcoholic liquors_, overloading the
stomach with food, fear, anger or whatever depresses or disturbs
the nervous system, the lining of the stomach becomes somewhat
red and dry, at other times pale and moist, and loses its smooth
and healthy appearance, the secretions become vitiated, greatly
diminished or entirely suppressed."
One day after giving St. Martin a good wholesome dinner, digestion of
which was going on in regular order, Dr. Beaumont gave him a glass of
gin. The digestive process was at once arrested, and did not begin again
until after the absorption of the spirit, after which it was slowly
renewed, and tardily finished.
Gluzinski made some conclusive experiments with a syphon. He drew off
the contents of the stomach at various times with and without liquor. He
concluded that alcohol entirely suspends the transformation of food
while it remains in the stomach.
Dr. Figg, of Edinburgh, fed two dogs with roast mutton; to one of them
he gave 1-1/2 ounces of spirit. Three hours later he killed both dogs.
The dog without liquor had digested the mutton; the other had not
digested his at all. Similar experiments have been made repeatedly with
like result.
The elements of our food which the stomach can digest depend upon the
pepsin of the gastric juice for their transformation. Alcohol diminishes
the secretions of the gastric juice, unless given in very minute
quantities, and kills and precipitates its pepsin. It also coagulates
both albumen and fibrine, converting them into a solid substance, thus
rendering them unfit for the action of the solvent principles of the
gastric juice. Hence, any considerable quantity of alcohol taken into
the stomach must for the time retard the function of digestion.
Many experiments have been made with gastric juice in vials, one, having
alcohol added, the other, not having alcohol. The meat in the vials
without alcohol, in time dissolved till it bore the appearance of soup;
in the vials to which alcohol was added the meat remained practically
unchanged. In the latter a deposit of pepsin was found at the bottom,
the alcohol having precipitated it. Dr. Henry Munroe, of England, one of
the experimenters in this line of research, says:--
"Alcohol, even in a diluted form, has the peculiar power of
interfering with the ordinary process of digestion.
"As long as alcohol remains in the stomach in any degree of
concentration, the process of digestion is arrested, and is not
continued until enough gastric juice is thrown out to overcome
its effects."--_Tracy's Physiology_, page 90.
In _The Human Body_, Dr. Newell Martin says:--
"A vast number of persons suffer from alcoholic dyspepsia
without knowing its cause; people who were never drunk in their
lives and consider themselves very temperate. Abstinence from
alcohol, the cause of the trouble, is the true remedy."
Sir B. W. Richardson:--
"The common idea that alcohol acts as an aid to digestion is
without foundation. Experiments on the artificial digestion of
food, in which the natural process is closely imitated, show
that the presence of alcohol in the solvents employed interferes
with and weakens the efficacy of the solvents. It is also one of
the most definite of facts that persons who indulge even in what
is called the moderate use of alcohol suffer often from
dyspepsia from this cause alone. In fact, it leads to the
symptoms which, under the varied names of biliousness,
nervousness, lassitude and indigestion, are so well and
extensively known.
"From the paralysis of the minute blood-vessels which is induced
by alcohol, there occurs, when alcohol is introduced into the
stomach, injection of the vessels and redness of the mucous
lining of the stomach. This is attended by the subjective
feeling of a warmth or glow within the body, and according to
some, with an increased secretion of the gastric fluids. It is
urged by the advocates of alcohol that this action of alcohol on
the stomach is a reason for its employment as an aid to
digestion, especially when the digestive powers are feeble. At
best this argument suggests only an artificial aid, which it
cannot be sound practice to make permanent in place of the
natural process of digestion. In truth, the artificial
stimulation, if it be resorted to even moderately, is in time
deleterious. It excites a morbid habitual craving, and in the
end leads to weakened contractile power of the vessels of the
stomach, to consequent deficiency of control of those vessels
over the current of blood, to organic impairment of function,
and to confirmed indigestion. Lastly, it is a matter of
experience with me, that in nine cases out of ten, the sense of
the necessity, on which so much is urged, is removed in the
readiest manner, by the simple plan of total abstinence, without
any other remedy or method."
In _Medicinal Drinking_, by John Kirk, M. D., this passage occurs:--
"Especially in the matter of support, it is essential to our
inquiry to examine fully into alcoholic influence on the change
by which food introduced into the stomach becomes capable of
passing into the circulation and constituent elements of the
living frame. It may be best to suppose a case for illustration.
Here, then, is a child of, say, six or seven years of age. This
child is of the slenderer sex and has been brought into a state
of extreme weakness as the consequence of fever. The fury of the
disease is expended, but it has, as nearly as may be,
extinguished life. The medical man's one hope for saving this
child is now concentrated in what he fancies to be 'support.'
Beef-tea, arrowroot and _port wine_ are prescribed. Let it be
kept in mind that the pure wine of the grape is discarded in
favor of alcoholic wine. Our question is, What effect will the
alcohol in this wine have on that process by which the food is
to prove really nourishing, and so to be that support which is
the only hope for this child? Will it help her? or will it so
hinder the necessary change in the food as to kill her, unless
she has sufficient strength left to get above its influence?
These are surely important questions. Neither of them can be set
at rest by the fact that she recovers; for she _may_ have
strength enough, as many have had, to survive even a serious
error in her treatment.
"What light, then, does true science throw on these important
questions? All who know anything on the subject are aware that
alcohol, instead of dissolving _food_, or aiding in its
dissolution, is one of the most powerful agents in preventing
that dissolution. On what principle, then, is it possible that
its being mixed with the materials of food, in this case, can
aid in their dissolution, so that they may more easily be
changed into the fresh blood required to sustain and recover
life in this child?"
He then refers to the experiments with gastric juice in vials, and
proceeds:--
"Here, then, is indisputable evidence that alcohol effectually
_prevents_ that process which is known as digestion, and which
is essential to food's being of any use to support life in man.
On what principle can the physician explain his introduction of
it into the stomach of a child whose thread of life is
attenuated to the slenderest hair?
"We urge the chemical truth that the alcohol, given to promote
support, is of such a nature as to prevent that which would
nourish, from effecting the end so much to be desired, and for
which true food is adapted."
The pure, unfermented juice of the grape, free from chemical
preservatives, is now used by many physicians where the miserable
concoction of drugs and alcohol, known as port wine, was once considered
essential. Unfermented grape juice contains all the nutriment of the
grape, without any of the poison, alcohol. After being opened it should
be kept in a cool place, or it will ferment and produce alcohol. Fruit
juices are very grateful to a fever patient, and should not be withheld
as they are in so many cases. Dr. J. H. Kellogg, and other
non-alcoholic physicians, recommend them highly. They are better than
milk, as milk frequently produces "feverishness," while fruit juices
allay it.
For those who think beer or ale an incentive to appetite, Dr. N. S.
Davis, and others, recommend an infusion of hops, made fresh each day.
It is the bitter which promotes appetite, not the alcohol. For the sake
of the little bitter in beer, it is not wise to vitiate the tone of the
stomach with the alcohol it contains, and which is its active principle.
Many mothers have become drunkards, secret drunkards, possibly, through
the use of beer as a fancied aid to digestion. Multitudes of men suffer
untold horrors from dyspepsia, caused by the beer which they mistakenly
suppose to be a friend to their stomach.
EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE BLOOD.
"The blood is a thick, opaque fluid, varying in color in different parts
of the body from a bright scarlet to a dark purple, or even almost
black." If a drop of blood be placed under a microscope, immense numbers
of small bodies will be seen. These are called blood-globules, or
corpuscles, or discs. There are both red, and white or colorless,
corpuscles. Each red corpuscle is soft and jelly-like. Its chief
constituent, besides water, is a substance called hemoglobin, which has
the power of combining with oxygen when in a place where that gas is
plentiful, and of giving it off again in a region where oxygen is
absent, or present only in small quantity. Hence, as the blood flows
through the lungs, which are constantly supplied with fresh air, its
corpuscles take up oxygen, which, as it flows on, is carried by them to
distant parts of the body where oxygen is deficient, and there given up
to the tissues. This oxygen-carrying is the function of the red
corpuscles.
Hemoglobin, as the coloring-matter of the blood is called, is dark
purplish-red in color; combined with oxygen it is bright "scarlet red."
Accordingly, the blood which flows to the lungs after giving up its
oxygen is dark red in color, its dark color being due to the impurities
it contains; and that which, having received a fresh supply of oxygen,
flows away from the lungs is bright scarlet--having been cleansed of its
impurities. The bright red blood is called _arterial_, and the dark red
_venous_.
The work assigned to the blood in the economy of the human system is:
first, to pick up nutriment in its course through the walls of the
alimentary canal, and oxygen, as it flows through the lungs, and convey
these to all other parts of the body. Second, to act as a sort of sewage
stream that drains off waste matter, and to carry this to the organs of
excretion by which waste is expelled from the body.
"The blood is the great circulating market of the body, in which
all the things that are wanted by all parts, by the muscles, the
brain, the skin, the lungs, liver and kidneys, are bought and
sold. What the muscles want they buy from the blood; what they
have done with, they sell back to the blood; and so with every
other organ and part. As long as life lasts this buying and
selling is forever going on, and this is why the blood is
forever on the move, sweeping restlessly from place to place,
bringing to each part the thing it wants, and carrying away
those with which it has done. When the blood ceases to move, the
market is blocked, the buying and selling cease, and all the
organs die, starved for lack of the things they want, choked by
the abundance of things for which they have no longer any
need."--FOSTER.
This is one way of saying that the processes of repair and waste are
constantly going on in the body. Every action of the body, every impulse
of the mind uses up some cell-matter, which must then be passed from the
body as waste. This is called tissue disintegration. New cells to repair
tissue waste are built up from the nutriment which the blood carries
from the alimentary canal after the process of food digestion is
accomplished. This is called tissue construction, or the process of
assimilation. Technically, these are the metabolic, or destructive and
constructive processes. Both are essential to health and life. Any
substance taken into the body, which will interfere with these processes
of nutrition and waste is inimical to health, and in time of disease,
dangerous to life.
_Alcohol is such a substance._
The cells and tissues of the body which are touched by alcohol are more
or less hardened and injured by it, hence are less perfectly nourished
than they are when alcohol is not present in the blood. Even a
teaspoonful of alcohol to a 1/2 gallon of water hinders natural growth.
If liquor is given to puppies it keeps them small. Young growing-cells
are most affected by it, because they are most tender. There are
growing-cells in adults as well as in children, for people are growing
and changing all through their lives.
Hence, when alcohol is administered in sickness the cells are hindered
in the full performance of their function of taking up food for the
building up of tissue, and as a consequence, the patient's body is
really robbed of nutriment by the agent which is supposed to be "keeping
up his strength." Truly, "Wine is a _mocker_, strong drink is raging,
and whosoever is _deceived_ thereby is not wise."
That alcohol interferes with the passage of waste matter from the body
is generally conceded. Indeed this is claimed by the advocates of its
medicinal use as one of its virtues: the fact that less waste passes
from the body being urged as evidence that there is less waste, that in
some way alcohol preserves tissue from being used up in the natural way.
Those who speak thus seem to think that they know better than the
Creator how the body should be treated. He made the body so that in
health, work, waste and repair should be equal to one another.
Dr. Ezra M. Hunt says in _Alcohol as a Food and as a Medicine_:--
"We believe that any one who will candidly review the claims put
forth for alcohol, in that it delays in any of these
hypothetical ways, tissue-change, will conclude that it has no
such power _in a salutary sense_, and that it is unwarrantably
assumed that to retard tissue metamorphosis (change) is
equivalent to tissue nutrition."
Dr. N. S. Davis says:--
"It seems hardly possible that men of eminent attainments in the
profession should so far forget one of the most fundamental and
universally recognized laws of organic life as to promulgate the
fallacy here stated. The fundamental law to which we refer is,
that all vital phenomena are accompanied by, and dependent upon,
molecular or atomic changes; and whatever retards these retards
the phenomena of life; whatever suspends these suspends life.
Hence, to say that an agent which retards tissue metamorphosis
is in any sense a food, is simply to pervert and misapply
terms."
Non-alcoholic physicians unite in declaring that the retention of waste
matter in the system, caused by alcohol, invites disease, and tends to
inflammatory action; and in illness retards, and frequently prevents,
recovery, for the germs of disease remain longer in the body than they
would were it not for the delay in the passage of effete matter.
_Alcohol not only hinders the blood in its work of tissue nutrition; it
also prevents the full oxidation of the blood in the lungs._
"In order that a steam engine may work and keep warm it is not
merely necessary that it have plenty of coal, but it must also
have a draft of air through its furnace. Chemistry teaches us
that the burning in this case consists in the combination of a
gas called oxygen, taken from the air, with other things in the
coals; when this combination takes place a great deal of heat
is given off. The same thing is true of our bodies; in order
that food matters may be burnt in them and enable us to work and
keep warm, they must be supplied with oxygen; this they get from
the air by breathing. We all know that if his supply of air be
cut off a man will die in a few minutes. His food is no use to
him unless he gets oxygen from the air to combine with it; while
he usually has stored up in his body an excess of food matters
which will keep him alive for some time if he gets a supply of
oxygen, he has not stored up in him any reserve, or, if any, but
a very small one, of oxygen, and so he dies very rapidly if his
breathing be prevented. In ordinary language we do not call
oxygen a food, but restrict that name to the solids and liquids
which we swallow; but inasmuch as it is a material which we must
take from the external universe into our bodies in order to keep
us alive, oxygen is really a food as much as any of the other
substances which we take into our bodies from outside, in order
to keep them alive and at work. _Suffocation_, as death from
deficient air supply is named, is really death from
oxygen-starvation."--Martin's _Human Body_.
Much of the food taken into the body is burned to supply energy and
heat. This burning is called oxidation. When food is burned, or
oxidized, either in the body, or out of it, three things are produced,
carbon dioxide (_carbonic acid gas_), water and ashes. These are waste
matters, and must be expelled from the body, or they will clog up the
various organs, as the ashes and smoke of an engine would soon put its
fire out if they were allowed to accumulate in the furnace. It is the
duty of the lungs to pass the carbon dioxide out to the air. With every
breath exhaled, this poison gas, generated in the body through the
oxidation of food, passes from the system. With every breath inhaled
the life-giving oxygen is taken into the body; providing that the person
is not in a close room from which the fresh air is excluded.
Any substance taken into the body which interferes with the reception of
oxygen into the blood, and with the giving off of carbon dioxide from
the same is a dangerous substance.
_Alcohol is such a substance._
It has already been stated that it is the duty of the little red
corpuscles in the blood to take up oxygen in the lungs, and carry it to
every part of the body, and upon the return passage to the lungs to
convey the _débris_, or used-up material, from the tissues, called
carbon dioxide gas. A little vapor and ammonia accompany this gas. The
action of alcohol upon these little corpuscles, or carriers of the
blood, is to somewhat harden and shrivel them, so that they are unable
to take up and carry as much oxygen as they can when no injurious
substance is present in the blood. In consequence of this, the blood can
never be so pure when alcohol is present, as it may be in the absence of
this agent.
The following is taken from _The Temperance Lesson Book_, by B. W.
Richardson, M. D.:--
"When the blood in the veins is floating toward the right side
of the heart, which communicates with the lungs, it carries with
it the carbonic acid (_carbon dioxide_), and, as I have found by
experiment, a great part of this gas is condensed in these
little bodies, the corpuscles. Arrived at the lungs, the blood
comes into such contact with the air we breathe, that the
oxygen gas in the air is freely absorbed by the little
corpuscles, while the carbonic acid is given up into the
air-passages of the lungs, and is thrown off with every breath
we throw out. In this process the blood changes in color. It
comes into the lungs of a dark color; it goes out of them a
bright red. * * * * * The parts of the blood on which alcohol
acts injuriously are the corpuscles and the fibrine. The red
corpuscles are most distinctly affected. They undergo a peculiar
process of shrinking from extraction of water from them. They
also lose some of their power to absorb oxygen from the air. In
confirmed spirit-drinkers the face and hands are often seen of
dark mottled color, and in very bad specimens of the kind, the
face is sometimes seen to be quite dark. This is because the
blood cannot take up the vital air in the natural degree. * * * * *
"If anything whatever interferes with the proper reception of
oxygen by the blood, the blood is not properly oxidized, the
animal warmth is not sufficiently maintained, and life is
reduced in activity. If for a brief interval of time the process
of breathing is stopped in a living person, we see quickly
developed the signs of difficulty, and we say the person is
being suffocated. We observe that the face becomes dark, the
lips blue, the surface cold. Should the process of arrest or
stoppage of the breathing be long continued the person will
become unconscious, will stagger and fall, and should relief not
be at hand, he will in a very few minutes die.
"I found by experiment that in presence of alcohol in blood the
process of absorption of oxygen was directly checked, and that
even so minute a quantity as one part of alcohol in five hundred
of blood proved an obstacle to the perfect reception of oxygen
by the blood. The corpuscles are reduced in size, when large
quantities of alcohol are taken, and become irregular in shape."
Dr. J. J. Ridge says in _Addresses on the Physiological Action of
Alcohol_:--
"It has been found by experiment that, when alcohol is taken,
less carbonic acid comes away in the breath than when it is not.
This is partly because the blood-corpuscles cannot carry so
much, and partly because so much is not produced, because there
is less oxygen to join with the food and produce it. Just as
burning paper smokes when it does not get enough oxygen, so
other things are formed and get into the blood when there is not
enough oxygen to make carbonic acid. These things make the blood
impure, and cause extra work and trouble to get rid of them.
This is why persons who drink alcohol are more liable to have
gout and other diseases, than total abstainers."
Dr. Alfred Carpenter, formerly president of the Council of the British
Medical Association, says in _Alcoholic Drinks_:--
"A blood corpuscle cannot come into direct contact with an atom
of alcohol, without the function of the former being spoiled,
and not only is it spoiled, but the effete matter which it has
within its capsule cannot be exchanged for the necessary oxygen.
The breath of the drunken man does not give out the quantity of
carbonic acid which that of the healthy man does, and the
ammoniacal compounds are in a great measure absent. Some of the
carbon and effete nitrogenous matter is kept back. The retention
of these poisonous matters within the body is highly injurious.
Let the drinker suffer from any wound or injury and this effete
matter in his blood is ready at a moment's notice to prepare and
set up actions called inflammatory or erysipelatous, or some
other kind; by means of which too often the drinker is hurried
into eternity, although, perhaps, he may have been regarded as a
perfectly sober man, and have never been drunk in his life."
In the light of these scientific facts, what can appear more utterly
foolish than the swallowing of alcoholic patent medicines which are
widely advertised as "Blood Purifiers"? That they will render the blood
impure is only too evident in the light of scientific truth.
Dr. Nathan S. Davis has written much in disapproval of the use of
alcohol in fevers, pneumonia and diphtheria, putting stress upon the
fact that these diseases, of themselves, interfere with the reception of
oxygen into the blood, and hence the use of all remedies that notably
diminish the internal distribution of oxygen, or impair the corpuscles
of the blood, should be avoided. Not only is alcohol of such a nature,
but all the coal-tar series of antipyretics also. Since the internal
distribution of oxygen, and the processes of tissue change are essential
to the repair of the body, and alcohol hinders the blood in the full
performance of its duties in these respects, it certainly seems clear
that those physicians, who are extremely cautious in the use of this
drug, or who do not use it at all, are more likely to be successful in
saving their patients than are those who use it freely. Death-rates,
with and without alcohol, show conclusively the superiority of the
latter treatment.
ALCOHOL AND THE HEART.
The organs of circulation are the heart and the blood-vessels. The
blood-vessels are of three kinds, arteries, capillaries and veins. The
arteries carry blood from the heart to the capillaries; the veins
collect it from the capillaries and return it to the heart. There are
two distinct sets of blood-vessels in the body, both connected with the
heart; one set carries blood to, through and from the lungs, the other
guides its flow through all the remaining organs; the former are known
as the _pulmonary_, the latter as the _systemic_ blood-vessels.
The smallest arteries pass into the _capillaries_, which have very thin
walls, and form very close networks in nearly all parts of the body;
their immense number compensating for their small size. It is while
flowing in these delicate tubes that the blood does its nutritive work,
the arteries being merely supply-tubes for the capillaries, through
whose delicate walls liquid containing nourishment exudes from the blood
to bathe the various tissues.
The quantity of blood in any part of the body at any given time is
dependent upon certain relations which exist between the blood-vessels
and the nervous system. The walls of the arteries are abundantly
supplied with involuntary muscular fibres, which have the power of
contraction and relaxation. This power of contraction and relaxation is
controlled by certain nerves called _vasomotor_ nerves, because they
cause or control motion in the vessels to which they are attached. When
arteries supplying blood to any particular part of the body contract,
the supply of blood to that part will be diminished in proportion to the
amount of contraction. If the nervous control be altogether withdrawn,
the arterial walls will completely relax, and the amount of blood in
the part affected will be increased correspondingly.
Alcohol, even in moderate doses, paralyzes the _vasomotor_ nerves which
control the minute blood-vessels, thus allowing these vessels to become
dilated with the flowing blood.
"With the disturbance of power in the extreme vessels, more
disturbance is set up in other organs, and the first organ that
shares in it is the heart. With each beat of the heart a certain
degree of resistance is offered by the vessels when their
nervous supply is perfect, and the stroke of the heart is
moderate in respect both to tension and to time. But when the
vessels are rendered relaxed, the resistance is removed, the
heart begins to run quicker like a clock from which the pendulum
has been removed, and the heart-stroke is greatly increased in
frequency. It is easy to account in this manner for the
quickened heart and pulse which accompany the first stage of
deranged action from alcohol."--RICHARDSON.
Dr. Parkes of England, assisted by Count Wollowicz, conducted inquiries
upon the effects of alcohol upon the heart, with a young and healthy
man. At first they made accurate count of the heart beats during periods
when the young man drank water only; then of the beats during successive
periods in which alcohol was taken in increasing quantities. Thus step
by step they measured the precise action of alcohol on the heart, and
thereby the precise primary influence induced by alcohol. Their results
are stated by themselves as follows:--
"The average number of beats of the heart in 24 hours (as
calculated from eight observations made in 14 hours), during
the first, or water period, was 106,000; in the earlier
alcoholic period it was 127,000, or about 21,000 more; and in
the later period it was 131,000, or 25,000 more.
"The highest of the daily means of the pulse observed during the
first, or water period, was 77.5; but on this day two
observations are deficient. The next highest daily mean was 77
beats.
"If, instead of the mean of the eight days, or 73.57, we compare
the mean of this one day; viz. 77 beats per minute, with the
alcoholic days, so as to be sure not to over-estimate the action
of the alcohol, we find:--
"On the 9th day, with one fluid ounce of alcohol, the heart beat
4,300 times more.
On the 10th day, with two fluid ounces, 8,172 times more.
On the 11th day, with four fluid ounces, 12,960 times more.
On the 12th day, with six fluid ounces, 20,672 times more.
On the 13th day, with eight fluid ounces, 23,904 times more.
On the 14th day, with eight fluid ounces, 25,488 times more.
But as there was ephemeral fever on the 12th day, it is right to
make a deduction, and to estimate the number of beats in that
day as midway between the 11th and 13th days, or 18,432.
Adopting this, the mean daily excess of beats during the
alcoholic days was 14,492, or an increase of rather more than 13
per cent.
The first day of alcohol gave an excess of 4 per cent., and the
last of 23 per cent.; and the mean of these two gives almost the
same percentage of excess as the mean of the six days.
Admitting that each beat of the heart was as strong during the
alcoholic period as in the water period (and it was really more
powerful), the heart on the last two days of alcohol was doing
one-fifth more work.
"Adopting the lowest estimate which has been given of the daily
work of the heart; viz. as equal to 12.2 tons lifted one foot,
the heart during the alcoholic period, did daily work excess
equal to lifting 15.8 tons one foot, and in the last two days
did extra work to the amount of 24 tons lifted as far.
"The period of rest for the heart was shortened, though,
perhaps, not to such an extent as would be inferred from the
number of beats, for each contraction was sooner over. The
heart, on the fifth and sixth days after alcohol was left off,
and, apparently at the time when the last traces of alcohol were
eliminated, showed in the sphygmographic tracing signs of
unusual feebleness; and, perhaps, in consequence of this, when
the brandy quickened the heart again, the tracings showed a more
rapid contraction of the ventricles, but less power than in the
alcoholic period. The brandy acted, in fact, on a heart whose
nutrition had not been perfectly restored."
Richardson quotes these experiments of Parkes and Wollowicz as if he
agrees with them that increased heart-beat must of necessity mean
increased work done by the heart. Dr. Nathan S. Davis, Dr. Newell
Martin, Dr. A. B. Palmer, and some other investigators, show
conclusively that mere increased frequency of beat above the natural
standard is no evidence of increased force or efficiency in the
circulation.
"The more frequent beats under the influence of alcohol
constitute no exception to the general rule, for while the heart
beats more frequently, its influence on the vasomotor nerves
causes dilatation of the peripheral and systemic blood-vessels,
as proved by the pulse-line written by the sphygmograph, which
more than counterbalances the supposed increased action of the
heart. The truth is, that under the influence of alcohol in the
blood the systolic action of the heart loses in sustained force
in direct proportion to its increase in frequency, until, by
simply increasing the proportion of alcohol, the heart stops in
diastole, as perfectly paralyzed as are the coats of the smaller
vessels throughout the system. This was clearly demonstrated by
the experiments of Professor Martin of Johns Hopkins University,
to determine the effects of different proportions of alcohol on
the action of the heart of the dog; and those of Drs. Sidney
Ringer and H. Sainsbury, to determine the relative strength of
different alcohols as indicated by their influence on the heart
of the frog. Professor Martin states that blood containing 1/4
per cent. by volume of absolute alcohol, almost invariably
diminishes, within a minute, the work done by the heart."
(This estimate would equal in an adult man an amount equal to the
absolute alcohol in two or three ounces of whisky or brandy.)
"These investigations of Professor Martin, being directly
corroborated by those of Drs. Ringer and Sainsbury, complete the
series of demonstrations needed to show the actual effects of
alcohol on the cardiac, as well as on the vasomotor, and also on
the direct contractability of the muscular structure, when
supplied with blood containing all gradations in the relative
proportion of alcohol, leaving no longer any basis for the idea,
popular both in and out of the profession, that alcohol in any
of its forms is capable of increasing, even temporarily the
force or efficiency of the heart's action."--Dr. N. S. Davis in
_Influence of Alcohol On the Human System_.
The following letter will be of great interest to all students of the
physiological effects of alcohol:--
"CHICAGO, ILL., March 3, 1899.
"To MRS. MARTHA M. ALLEN,
"Syracuse, N. Y.,
"MADAM: Your letter asking my attention to the apparent
contradiction of authorities concerning the _work_ done by the
heart when influenced by alcohol was received yesterday.
"The explanation is not difficult. It depends entirely on the
different views of what constitutes the _work_ of the heart.
"One class of investigators, led by the original and valuable
experiments of Parkes and Wollowicz base their estimate of the
heart's work entirely on the _number of times it contracts or
beats per minute_. Thus Dr. Parkes, finding that moderate doses
of alcohol increased the number of contractions of the heart
from three to six beats per minute more than natural, readily
estimated the number of additional contractions that would occur
in twenty-four hours, and thereby demonstrated a large amount of
increased work done by the heart under the influence of alcohol.
All writers who speak of 'stimulating' or increasing the action
of the heart by alcohol follow this method of measuring the
amount of _work_ done. They generally add that it is like
applying 'the whip to a tired horse.'
"The other class of investigators who claim that _alcohol_
diminishes the actual _work_ done by the heart base their
estimates on the amount _of blood the heart passes through its
cavities into the arteries in a given time_. This is the
physiological function of the heart; i.e. to aid in circulating
the blood. Professor Martin's experiments were admirably
contrived to determine, not how frequently the heart beat, but
the amount of blood it delivered per minute under the influence
of alcohol and without alcohol.
"He, and all others who take this basis of work, found that
alcohol in any dose diminished the efficiency of the heart in
circulating the blood in direct ratio to the quantity taken.
"My own original experiments, made fifty years ago, uniformly
showed that alcohol quickly increased the number of heart beats
per minute, but at the same time diminished the efficiency of
the circulation generally. Every experienced practitioner knows
that the weaker the _heart_ becomes, the _faster_ it beats.
Consequently, the number of times the heart contracts per minute
is no measure of the efficiency of its work in circulating the
blood. Indeed the mechanism of the heart is such that there must
be sufficient time between each of its contractions for its
_cavities_ to _fill_, or it is made to contract on an
insufficient supply, and the efficiency of the circulation is
diminished.
"Yours respectfully,
"N. S. DAVIS."
The International Medical Congress of 1876 adopted as its reply to the
Memorial of the National Temperance Society, and of the National Woman's
Christian Temperance Union respecting "Alcohol as a Food and as a
Medicine," the paper by Dr. Ezra M. Hunt, one conclusion of which was,
"Its use as a medicine is chiefly that of a cardiac stimulant."
As experiments conducted since that time show that it is not a cardiac
stimulant, but a direct cardiac paralyzant, what excuse is there for
using it as a medicine now?
"Whenever the heart is compelled to more rapid contraction than
is natural, it has less time to rest. Although it seems to be
constantly at work, it really rests more than half the time, so
that, although the periods of relaxation are very short, they
are so numerous that the aggregate amount of rest in a day is
very great. Now, if the rapidity of the contractions is
increased materially and continuously, although the aggregate
amount of time for rest may be the same as before, yet the waste
caused by the contractions is greater, while the time for rest
after each one is shorter. This lack of rest produces exhaustion
of the heart-muscle, ending in partial change of the muscular
tissue into fat. The heart then becomes flabby and weak and its
walls become thinner, a condition known to physicians as a
'fatty heart,' often resulting in sudden death."--_Tracy's
Physiology_, page 158.
Dr. T. D. Crothers, of Hartford, Conn., has made many observations with
the sphygmograph to learn the effects of alcohol upon the heart. He
says:--
"On general principles, and clinically, the increased activity
and subsequent diminution of the heart's action brings no
medicinal aid or strength to combat disease. This is simply a
reckless waste of force for which there is no compensation.
Without any question or doubt the increased heart's action,
extending over a long period, is dangerous.
"The medicinal damage done by alcohol does not fall exclusively
upon the heart, although this organ may show it more permanently
than others."--_Transactions of Second Annual Meeting of A. M.
T. A._
Dr. I. N. Quimby, of Jersey City, N. J., in an address before the
American Medical Temperance Association, after describing two clinical
cases which ended in death, made the following statement:
"There was nothing so strange about the death of these two
patients, although they both died unexpectedly to the physician
and their friends, but the declaration I am about to make may be
somewhat new and startling, namely: That neither of these
patients, in my candid judgment, died from the effect of
disease, but rather from vasomotor paralysis of the heart,
_superinduced by the administration of the alcohol_, which
brought on a sudden and unexpected collapse and death."
Alcohol causes fatty degeneration of the heart and other muscular
structures. Old age also causes these degenerations, hence alcohol is
said to produce premature aging of the body.
"In fatty degeneration the cells and fibres of the body become
more or less changed into fat. If a muscular fibre undergoes
fatty degeneration, the particles of which it is made disappear
one by one, and particles of oil or fatty matter take their
place, so that the degree or amount of degeneration varies
according to the extent to which this change has gone on. When
the fibres of which a muscle is composed have become thus
altered by fatty degeneration they become softer according to
the amount of it; they are more easily torn and may even tear
across when the muscle is being used during life. The more a
muscle is thus degenerated the weaker it is, because it contains
less muscular substance and more fat. Not only do the heart and
other voluntary muscles thus degenerate, but those of the
arteries also.
"Fatty degeneration is promoted by alcohol because alcohol
prevents the proper removal of fat, which has been seen to
accumulate in the blood; alcohol prevents the proper oxidation
or burning up of waste matters; growing cells which are affected
by the chemical influence of alcohol are not quite natural or
healthy, so are more liable to degeneration; alcohol hinders the
proper removal of waste matter from individual cells and
tissues."--DR. J. J. RIDGE, London.
Dr. Newell Martin says in _The Human Body_:--
"Although fatty degeneration of the heart may occur from other
causes, alcoholic indulgence is the most frequent one. Fatty
liver or fatty heart is rarely if ever curable; either will
ultimately cause death."
Dr. Ridge says these degenerations occur in the tissues of thin people
as well as in those of stout persons. In thin people they are usually in
the fibres only, not between them.
It is because of this degeneration of the heart and other muscles caused
by alcohol that athletes in training need to be so very careful to
avoid the use of beer and other intoxicating drinks.
Diseases such as fevers, diphtheria, and pneumonia which interfere with
the reception, and internal distribution of oxygen, favor granular and
fatty degeneration of the heart and other structures of the body. Hence
non-alcoholic physicians urge that alcohol and such other drugs, as have
like action in hindering full oxidation of the blood, and causing fatty
degenerations should be studiously avoided. These physicians attribute
many of the deaths from heart-failure in such diseases to the combined
action of the disease and the alcohol in exhausting the heart, and
weakening its structure.
_Comparative death-rates with and without alcohol show conclusively the
superiority of the latter treatment._
EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE LIVER.
The liver is a very large organ, the largest and heaviest in the body,
weighing in a healthy adult from three to four pounds. It secretes the
bile. Its cells also store up, "in the form of a kind of animal starch
called glycogen," excess of starchy or sugary food absorbed from the
intestine during the digestion of a meal. This it gradually doles out to
the blood for general use by the organs of the body until the next meal
is eaten.
Dr. William Hargreaves says:--
"The office of the liver is to take up new substances having
not yet become blood, as well as the portions of integrated
matter that can be worked over, and brought again into use. It
is in fact the economist of the system. It excretes bile, and
liver-sugar, and _renews_ the _blood_. When the liver is
disordered the whole body is more or less deranged and the
proper nutrition of its parts arrested."
Dr. Alfred Carpenter says:--
"The liver has to do several things; a considerable part of its
duty is to purify the blood from _débris_ (waste matter), to
filter out some things, to break up and alter others, and to
expel them from the body in the form of bile. There are certain
diseases in which the liver suddenly declines to do any more
work. Acute atrophy of the liver is the name of this condition,
and when it arises death rapidly results from suppression of the
secretion of bile. It brings about a state of things called
_acholia_; the patient is actually poisoned by the non-removal
of those ingredients from the blood which it is the duty of the
liver to remove. This corresponds in effect to the condition
which alcohol can bring about by slow degrees."
The liver is the first important organ, next to the stomach and bowels,
to receive the poisonous influence of alcohol.
"If alcohol is used habitually, though only in small quantities
at a time, the liver may become the seat of serious changes.
There may be a great increase of fat deposited in the cells,
producing what is called 'fatty liver,' or it may lead to a
great increase of connective tissue (membrane) between the
cells, and surrounding the blood-vessels. This newly-developed
connective tissue gradually contracts, and in so doing crushes
the cells and obstructs the blood-vessels, making the organ much
smaller than natural, and causing the surface to be covered with
little projecting knobs, consisting of portions of liver-tissue
that have been less compressed than the part that separates
them. The pressure upon the liver-cells and the destruction of
many of them, prevents the proper formation of bile and
liver-sugar. The contraction of the newly-developed tissue, by
obstructing the blood-vessels, interferes with the circulation.
Malt liquors seem to produce fatty degeneration, while the
stronger liquors cause the development of connective
tissue."--_Tracy's Physiology._
Speaking of diseases of the liver, Dr. Trotter said in his _Essay on
Drunkenness_:--
"The chronic species is not a painful disease; it is slow in its
progress, and frequently gives no alarm, till some incurable
affection is the consequence. Hence, the fallacy and danger of
judging merely by the feelings of the beneficial effects of the
use of intoxicating drinks; for the liver and stomach may be
seriously diseased, while a man imagines himself in moderate
health."
Hardening of the liver, or "hob-nailed" liver, is said to be the result,
largely, of taking liquor upon an empty stomach. Dr. E. Chenery, of
Boston, in his excellent book, _Facts for the Millions_, tells of a
patient of his who was well up to the evening before, when he went out
and drank with some companions, taking the liquor on an empty stomach.
That night, vomiting and pain in the right side came on, with high
fever. Headache began and increased, followed by delirium and a general
jaundiced condition. He died as a result. The disease was acute
inflammation of the liver, brought on by the one broadside of alcohol
poured "point blank" into the organ.
Dr. Chenery says further on in the same book:--
"There is another disorder of a very serious nature which
science is now laying at the doors of the liver--_diabetes
mellitus_, or sugar in the urine. Till quite recently, this
formidable affection has been regarded as having its seat in the
kidneys; and it is so classified in medical writings. Later
researches, however, show that the sugar has been formed in the
economy before it reaches the kidneys, and that these organs act
only as strainers with respect to it, removing it from the blood
as they remove salt and various other substances. In seeking for
the fountain-head of diabetic sugar, it is found that the liver
is the great glycogenic, or sugar-originating factory of the
body. In an ordinary state of health this substance is produced
in just the proper amount for the uses for which it is intended,
so that it is all disposed of in the organism, and does not pass
off by the kidneys. If any cause interrupts the processes by
which the sugar is consumed, while its manufacture goes on
normally, there will come to be an over-supply of sugar in the
blood, which, when it reaches 3 parts to 1,000 of the blood,
will begin to pass off by the kidneys and appear in the urine.
On the other hand, if an undue amount of it is formed, the
consumption remaining normal, it will also accumulate in the
circulation, and be eliminated by the kidneys. In either case we
have diabetes, the sugar irritating and diseasing the kidneys as
it passes."
Dr. Harley, of the Royal Society of London, has made the subject of
alcohol and diabetes matter for considerable study. He says a small
quantity only of alcohol injected into the portal (liver) circulation of
healthy animals will cause diabetic urine.
"If any one doubt the truth of the assertion that alcohol causes
diabetes, let him select a case of that form of the disease
arising from excessive formation, and after having carefully
estimated the daily amount of sugar eliminated by the patient,
allow him to drink a few glasses of wine, and watch the result.
He will soon find the ingestion of the liquor is followed by an
increase of sugar. If alcoholics increase the amount of
saccharine matter in the urine of the diabetic, we can easily
understand how their excessive use may induce the disease in
individuals _predisposed_ to it."--DR. HARLEY.
Some physicians claim that in jaundice and certain other bilious
disorders even medicines prepared in alcohol are decidedly prejudicial
and aggravating.
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, and other writers draw attention to the effects of
alcohol in hindering the liver in its duty of destroying the toxic
substances generated within the system of a sick person by the specific
microbes to which the disease owes its origin, saying that the activity
of the liver in destroying these poisons is one of the physiologic
processes which stand between the patient and death.
The more this question is studied the more apparent is it that, other
things being equal, the sick person who is cared for by a non-alcoholic
physician has a much better chance of recovery than the one dosed by "a
brandy doctor."
EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE KIDNEYS.
"The kidneys, being the chief organs for the excretion of
nitrogen waste, are among the most important organs of the body.
Any defect in their healthy activity leads to serious
interference with the working of many organs, due to the
accumulation in the body of nitrogenous waste products. If both
kidneys be cut out of an animal, it dies in a few hours from
blood-poisoning, due to the accumulation of waste poisonous
substances which the kidneys should have got rid of. Serious
kidney-disease amounts to pretty much the same thing as cutting
out the organs, since they are of little use if not healthy. It
is always fatal if not checked, and often kills in a short time.
The things which most frequently cause kidney disease are undue
exposure to cold, and indulgence in alcoholic drinks."--Martin's
_Human Body_.
"The kidneys are supplied with arterial blood, which, having
given up water, urea, salt, and certain other substances, either
secreted or simply strained from it, returns to the kidneys
nearly as bright and fresh as when it entered them. While the
lungs are concerned in removing carbonic acid--the ashes of the
furnace--it is the peculiar province of the kidneys to remove
the products of the wear and tear of the bodily machinery--the
wasted nerve and muscle--in the form of urea, or other
crystallizable substances, the presence of which in the economy
for any considerable time is attended with disastrous results.
"Now, nature has put these organs, charged with so important
work, as far away as possible from any source of irritation.
Could alcohol get as direct access to them as to the liver,
there is no doubt that their function would be destroyed almost
at once, since the change in arterial blood by alcohol is much
more extensive and damaging than that wrought in such venous
blood as the liver receives from the portal veins. Thus while
the liver takes the alcohol immediately from the alimentary
canal, the kidneys receive it only after it has passed through
the liver, the heart, the lungs, and the heart again; by which
time much of it has escaped, while the remainder has been
greatly diluted by the blood of the general circulation; yet
coming to the kidneys even so considerably diluted, it has power
to congest, irritate, and excite them to the excretion of an
unusual amount of the watery elements of the urine, as if to
wash the irritant away.
"But it is only the watery element that is increased, not the
urea, which is the substance representing the waste of vital
action, and is a poison to the system; this it is the special
office of the kidneys to remove. Not only does alcohol not
increase its elimination, but actually lessens the discharge.
And should the irritation of the spirit continue, or be
augmented in force, inflammation would follow, and the excretion
of urea nearly or entirely cease and life be in the greatest
jeopardy. Relief or death then must speedily follow."--Dr. E.
Chenery, of Boston, in _Alcohol Inside Out_.
"Alcohol causes kidney-disease in several ways. In the first
place it unduly excites the activity of the organs. Next, by
impeding oxidation it interferes with the proper preparation of
nitrogen wastes: they are brought to the kidneys in an unfit
state for removal, and injure those organs. Third, when more
than a small quantity of alcohol is taken, some of it is passed
out of the body unchanged, through the kidneys, and injures
their substance. The kidney-disease most commonly produced by
alcohol is one kind of "Bright's disease," so called from the
physician who first described it. The connective tissue of the
organ grows in excess, and the true excreting kidney-substance
dwindles away. At last the organ becomes quite unable to do its
work, and death results.
"The three most common causes of Bright's disease are an acute
illness, as scarlet fever, of which it is a frequent result;
sudden exposure to cold when warm (this often drives blood in
excessive quantity from the skin to internal organs, and leads
to kidney-disease); and the habitual drinking of alcoholic
liquids."--Dr. Newell Martin in _The Human Body_.
"Every physician knows or should know, that the quantity and
quality of the effete, or waste, material separated from the
blood by the kidneys and voided in the urine, is such as to
render a knowledge of the action of any remedy or drink on the
function of these organs, of the greatest importance in the
treatment of all diseases, and especially those of an acute
febrile character. As was long since demonstrated by clinical
observation, and more recently by patient and accurate
experiments by Bouchard and others, the amount of toxic, or
poisonous, material naturally separated from the blood by the
kidneys and passed out in the urine is so great that if wholly
retained by failure of the kidneys to act for two or three days,
speedy death ensues. Equally familiar to every observing
physician is the fact that in all the acute febrile and
inflammatory diseases, not only is the quantity of the urine
secreted generally diminished, but its quality or constituency
is also changed to a greater degree than even its quantity.
Thus, some of the more important constituents are increased,
others diminished, and often new or foreign elements are found
present, all resulting from the disordered metabolic processes
taking place throughout the system during the progress of these
diseases.
"It is, therefore, hardly necessary to remind the physician that
it is of the greatest importance to know as correctly as
possible both the direct and the indirect influence of every
medicine or drink on the action of the kidneys and all other
eliminating organs and structures, lest he unwittingly allow the
use of such as may not only retard the elimination of the
specific causes of disease, but also favor auto-intoxication by
retarding the elimination of the natural elements of excretion.
"That the presence of alcohol in the living system positively
lessens the reception and internal distribution of oxygen, and
consequently retards the oxidation processes of disassimilation
by which the various products for excretion are perfected and
their elimination facilitated, is so fully demonstrated, both by
observation and experiment, as no longer to admit of doubt.
"As nearly all the toxic elements of urine are the results of
these oxidation processes, the presence of alcohol in the system
could hardly fail to interfere with them in a notable degree.
"The direct and somewhat extensive series of experiments
instituted by Glazer, as published in the _Deut. Med.
Wochensch._, Leipsic, Oct. 22, 1891, demonstrated this, as shown
by the following conclusions:--'Alcohol, in even relatively
moderate quantities, irritates the kidneys, so that the
exudation of leucocytes and the formation of cylindrical casts
may occur. It also produces an unusual amount of uric acid
crystals and oxalates, due to the modified tissue changes
produced by the alcohol. The effect of a single act of
over-indulgence in alcohol does not last more than thirty-six
hours, but it is cumulative under continued use.'
"Dr. Chittenden kept several dogs under the influence of alcohol
eight or ten days, and found it to increase the amount of uric
acid in their urine more than 100 per cent. above the normal
proportion.
"Mohilansky, house-physician to Manassein's clinic, in the
conclusions drawn from his interesting experiments on fifteen
young men to determine the effects of alcohol on the metabolic
processes generally, stated that 'it does not possess any
diuretic action: but rather tends to inhibit the elimination of
water by the kidneys.' It is further stated that this result is
owing to the coincident effect of diminished systemic oxidation
and of blood pressure.
"On the other hand, several observers have reported that the
flow of urine was increased by the use of alcohol. From as full
an examination of the subject as I have been able to make, it
appears that the diverse results obtained have depended upon the
previous habits of those experimented on, and the widely varying
quantities of water drank with the alcohol. When the alcohol is
taken with large quantities of water, as is usual with those who
use beer and fermented drinks generally, the total amount of
urine passed is usually increased, but not more than is found to
result from taking the same quantity of water without any
alcohol. When alcoholic drinks are taken by those already
habituated to its use, it has less marked effect on the quantity
and quality of the urine than when taken by those who had
previously been total abstainers. This was illustrated by the
experiments of Mohilansky on the fifteen men, some of whom were
habitual drinkers, some occasional drinkers, and others total
abstainers. When all were subjected to the same diet and drinks,
with alcohol, in two the daily amount of urine voided remained
unaltered, in five it was increased seven per cent., and in
eight it decreased twelve per cent. But whatever may be the
variations in the mere quantity of urine voided under the
influence of alcohol, the alterations in quality pretty
uniformly show an increase in the products of imperfect internal
metamorphosis or oxidation, such as uric acid, oxalates, casts,
leucocytes, albumen and potassium, with less of the normal
products, as urea and salts of sodium.
"During the past year I have met with three cases in which the
regular daily use of alcoholic drinks for several months, in
quantities not sufficient to produce intoxication, had so
altered the blood, and the renal function, that the urine
contained both casts and albumen, and some degree of oedema
was observable in the face and extremities. These changes were
so marked as to justify a diagnosis of incipient nephritis, or
Bright's disease. Yet after totally abstaining from the use of
alcoholic drinks and remedies, and taking such vasomotor tonics
as strychnine and digitalis, with a regulated diet and fresh
air, they completely recovered.
"When it is remembered that in diphtheria, pneumonia and typhoid
fever, the acute diseases in which a large part of the
profession administer most freely alcoholic remedies, the
function of the kidney is altered in almost the same direction
as are found to take place under the influence of alcohol, it
should certainly cause every practitioner to pause and
critically review the pathological basis on which he has been
prescribing. An anæsthetic, like alcohol, may certainly render a
patient with diphtheria, pneumonia or typhoid fever more quiet,
and cause him to say he feels better, but if it at the same time
diminishes the internal distribution of oxygen, retards the
oxidation and elimination of waste and toxic products through
the kidneys and lungs, and lessens vasomotor force, it cannot
fail to protract the duration of disease, and increase the
ratio of mortality."--Dr. N. S. Davis, _A. M. T. A. Quarterly_,
April, 1894.
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, by a series of carefully executed experiments,
conclusively demonstrated that alcohol hinders the elimination of
poisonous matter by the kidneys. This property of alcohol is one of the
objections which he sees to its use as a medicine. He says:--
"Water applied externally stimulates elimination by the pores of
the skin, and employed freely internally by water drinking, and
enemas to be retained for absorption, aids liver and kidney
activity. If the patient dies it is because his liver and
kidneys have failed to destroy and eliminate the poisons
generated with sufficient rapidity to prevent their producing
fatal mischief in the body."
CHAPTER VI.
ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE.
Although nearly all of the foremost scientific investigators of the
effects of alcohol upon the body have lost faith in the old views of the
usefulness of alcoholic liquors as remedial agencies a considerable
proportion of the medical profession do not seem yet to have learned how
to treat disease without recourse to the alcohol therapy. This is
largely due to the fact that the new thought has not yet crystallized to
any large extent in the medical text-books, and also to the widely
variant views held by professors of medicine.
The medical use of alcohol has been, and still is, the great bulwark of
the liquor traffic. The user of alcoholics as beverages always excuses
himself, if hard pressed by abstainers, upon the ground that they must
be of service or doctors would not recommend them so frequently. In all
prohibitory amendment, and no-license campaigns, the cry of "Useful as
Medicine" has been the hardest for temperance workers to meet, for they
have felt that they had to admit the statement as true, knowing nothing
to the contrary. Indeed, thousands of those who advocate the prohibition
of the sale of liquor as a beverage, use alcohol in some form quite
freely as medicine, and are as determined and earnest in defence of
their favorite "tipple" as any old toper could well be. Many use it in
the guise of cordials, tonics, bitters, restoratives and the thousand
and one nostrums guaranteed to cure all ills to which human flesh is
heir.
The wide-spread belief in the necessity and efficacy of alcoholics as
remedies is the greatest hindrance to the success of the temperance
cause. It is impossible to convince the mass of the people that what is
life-giving as medicine can be death-dealing as beverage. The two stand,
or fall, together. Hence there is no more important question before the
medical profession, and the people generally, than that of the action of
alcohol in disease, and, as a goodly number of the most distinguished
and successful physicians of Europe and America declare it to be harmful
rather than helpful, it behooves thoughtful people to carefully study
the reasons they assign for holding such an opinion. Certainly it is
true that if physicians and people would all adopt the views of the
advocates of non-alcoholic medication the temperance problem would be
solved, and the greatest source of disease, crime, pauperism, insanity
and misery would be driven from the face of the earth.
To understand the arguments advanced in favor of non-alcoholic
medication it is needful to make some study of the effects of alcohol
upon the body, and of the purposes for which alcoholics are prescribed
medically.
_Alcohol is used in sickness as a food, when solid foods cannot be
assimilated, "to support" or sustain, the vitality; it is used as a
stimulant, a tonic, a sedative or narcotic, an anti-spasmodic, an
antiseptic and antipyretic; it is used in combination with other drugs,
in tinctures and in pharmacy._ It is not wonderful that the people
esteem it above all other drugs, for none other is so variously and so
generally employed. Those who discard it as a remedy teach that only in
human delusions is it a food or a stimulant, and for the other uses to
which it is put, outside of pharmacy, there are different agents which
may be more satisfactorily employed.
IS ALCOHOL FOOD?
So well agreed are all the scientific investigators that alcohol has no
appreciable food value that it would seem foolish to spend time upon a
discussion of alcohol as food were it not that the idea of its
"supporting the vitality" in disease, in some mysterious way is deeply
rooted in the professional, as well as the popular mind.
_Foods are substances which, when taken into the body, undergo change by
the process of digestion; they give strength and heat and force; they
build up the tissues of the body, and make blood; and they induce
healthy, normal action of all the bodily functions._
Alcohol does none of these. It undergoes no change in the stomach, but
is rapidly absorbed and mixed with the blood, and has been discovered
hours after its ingestion in the brain, blood and tissues, unchanged
alcohol. In many of the experiments made with it upon animals,
considerable quantities of the amount swallowed were recovered from the
excretions of the body, without any change having taken place in its
composition. This, of itself, is sufficient evidence to show that it is
a substance which the body does not recognize as a food.
_Foods build up the tissues of the body._ All physiologists are agreed
that since alcohol contains no nitrogen it cannot be a tissue-forming
food; there is no difference of opinion here. Dr. Lionel Beale, the
eminent physiologist, says that alcohol is not a food and does not
nourish the tissues.
"There is nothing in alcohol with which any part of the body can
be nourished."--Cameron's _Manual of Hygiene_.
"Alcohol contains no nitrogen; it has none of the qualities of
the structure-building foods; it is incapable of being
transformed into any of them; it does not supply caseine,
albumen, fibrine or any other of those substances which go to
build up the muscles, nerves and other active organs."--SIR B.
W. RICHARDSON.
"It is not demonstrable that alcohol undergoes conversion into
tissue."--DR. W. A. HAMMOND.
If it is a food why do all writers and experimenters exclude it from the
diet of children, and why is the caution always given people to not
take it upon an empty stomach? Foods are supposed to be particularly
suited to an empty stomach.
_Foods induce healthy, normal action of all the bodily functions._
The chapter upon "Diseases Produced by Alcohol" is evidence that by this
test alcohol shows up in its true nature as a poison, and not a food.
Alcohol destroys healthy normal action of all the bodily functions, and
builds up impure fat, fatty degeneration, instead of strong, firm
muscle. Dr. Parkes, one of the most famous of English students of
alcohol, says:--
"These alcoholic degenerations are certainly not confined to the
notoriously intemperate. I have seen them in women accustomed to
take wine in quantities not excessive, and who would have been
shocked at the imputation that they were taking too much,
although the result proved that for them it was excess."
Dr. Ezra M. Hunt, late secretary of New Jersey State Board of Health,
remarks:--
"The question of excess occurs in sickness as well as in health,
and all the more because its determination is so difficult and
the evil effects so indisputable. The dividing line in medicine,
even between use and abuse, is so zigzag and invisible that
common mortals, in groping for it, generally stumble beyond it,
and the delicate perception of medical art too often fails in
the recognition."
All non-alcoholic writers assert that the continuous use of alcohol as a
medicine is equally injurious to all the bodily functions as the
employment of it as a beverage. Calling it medicine does not change its
deadly nature, nor does the medical attendant possess any magical power
by which a destructive poison may be converted into a restorative agent.
Dr. Noble, writing recently to the _London Times_, said:--
"The internal use of alcohol in disease is as injurious as in
health."
Since foods induce healthy, normal action of all the bodily functions,
and alcohol injures every organ of the body in direct proportion to the
amount consumed, by this test it is proved to not be a food.
_Foods give strength._ Alcohol weakens the body. This has been
determined again and again by experiments upon gangs of workmen and
regiments of soldiers. These experiments always resulted in showing that
upon the days when the men were supplied with liquor they could neither
use their muscles so powerfully, nor for so long a time, as on the days
when they received no alcoholic drink. Of the results of such tests Sir
Andrew Clark, late Physician to Queen Victoria, said:--
"It is capable of proof beyond all possibility of question that
alcohol not only does not help work but is a serious hinderer of
work."
So satisfied are generals in the British army of the weakening effect of
alcohol that its use is now forbidden to soldiers when any considerable
call is to be made upon their strength. The latest example of this was
in the recent Soudan campaign under Sir Herbert Kitchener. An order was
issued by the War Department that not a drop of intoxicating liquor was
to be allowed in camp save for hospital use. The army made phenomenal
forced marches through the desert, under a burning sun and in a climate
famous for its power to kill the unacclimated. It is said that never
before was there a British campaign occasioning so little sickness and
showing so much endurance. Some Greek merchants ran a large consignment
of liquors through by the Berber-Suakim route, but Sir Herbert had them
emptied upon the sand of the desert. A reporter telegraphed to
England:--
"The men are in magnificent condition and in great spirits. They
are as hard as nails, and in a recent desert march of fifteen
miles, with manoeuvring instead of halts, the whole lasting
for five continuous hours, not a single man fell out!"
This was in decided contrast to the march in the African war some years
before when, as they passed through a malarial district, and a dram was
served, men fell out by dozens. Dr. Parkes, one of the medical officers,
prevailed upon the commander-in-chief to not allow any more alcoholic
drams while the troops were marching to Kumassi.
Experiments in lifting weights have also been tried upon men by careful
investigators. In every case it was found that even beer, and very
dilute solutions of alcohol, would diminish the height to which the
lifted weight could be raised. As an illustration of the deceptive power
of alcohol upon people under its influence, it is said that persons
experimented upon were under the impression, after the drink, that they
could do more work, and do it more easily, although the testing-machine
showed exactly the contrary to be true.
Athletes and their trainers have learned by experience that alcohol does
not give strength, but is, in reality, a destroyer of muscular power. No
careful trainer will allow a candidate for athletic honors to drink even
beer, not to speak of stronger liquors. When Sullivan, the once famous
pugilist, was defeated by Corbett, he said in lamenting his lost
championship, "It was the _booze_ did it"; meaning that he had violated
training rules, and used liquor. University teams and crews have proved
substantially that drinking men are absolutely no good in sports, or
upon the water. Football and baseball teams, anxious to excel, are
beginning to have a cast-iron temperance pledge for their members. So
practical experience of those competing in tests of strength and
endurance teach eloquently that alcohol does not give strength, but
rather weakens the body, by rendering the muscles flabby.
Sandow, the modern Samson, wrote his methods of training in one of the
magazines a few years ago, and stated that he used no alcoholic
beverages. The ancient Samson was not allowed to taste even wine from
birth.
A question worthy of serious consideration is: how are the sick to be
strengthened and "supported" by drinks which athletes are warned to
specially shun as weakening to the body? Either the sick are mistakenly
advised, or the athletes are in error. Which seems the more likely?
Dr. Richardson says in _Lectures on Alcohol_:--
"I would earnestly impress that the systematic administration of
alcohol for the purpose of giving and sustaining strength is an
entire delusion."
In another place he says:--
"Never let this be forgotten in thinking of strong drink: that
the drink is strong only to destroy; that it never by any
possibility adds strength to those who drink it."
Sir William Gull, late physician to the Prince of Wales, said before a
Select Committee of the House of Lords on Intemperance:--
"There is a great feeling in society that strong wine and other
strong drinks give strength. A large number of people have
fallen into that error, and fall into it every day."
Any unprejudiced person can readily see that experience and experiment
unite in testifying that alcohol does not give strength, hence differs
radically from most substances commonly classed as foods. Yet millions
of dollars are spent annually by deluded people upon supposedly
strength-giving drinks, and thousands of the sick are ignorantly, or
carelessly, advised to take beer or wine to make them strong and to
_support_ them when solid food cannot be assimilated. Truly, "My people
is destroyed for lack of knowledge."
_Foods give force to the body._
Dr. Richardson says:--
"We learn in respect to alcohol that the temporary excitement is
produced at the expense of the animal matter and animal force,
and that the ideas of the necessity of resorting to it as a
food, to build up the body or to lift up the forces of the body,
are ideas as solemnly false as they are widely disseminated."
Dr. Benjamin Brodie says in _Physiological Inquiries_:--
"Stimulants do not create nerve power: they merely enable you,
as it were, to use up that which is left."
Dr. E. Smith:--
"There is no evidence that it increases nervous influence, while
there is much evidence that it lessens nervous power."
Dr. Wm. Hargreaves, of Philadelphia:--
"It is sometimes said by the advocates and defenders of alcohol,
that by its use force is generated more abundantly. This it
certainly cannot do, as it does not furnish anything to feed the
blood or to store up nourishment to replenish the expenditure.
For by their own theory, the increase of action must cause an
increase of wear and tear; hence alcohol instead of sustaining
life or vitality, must cause a direct waste or expenditure of
_vital force_."
Dr. Auguste Forel, of Switzerland:--
"All alcoholic liquors are poisons, and especially
brain-poisons, and their use shortens life. They cannot
therefore be regarded as sources of nourishment or force. They
should be resisted as much as opium, morphia, cocaine, hashish
and the like."
Dr. W. F. Pechuman, of Detroit, in his valuable little treatise,
_Alcohol--Is it a Medicine?_ says clearly:--
"When alcohol or any other irritant poison is put into the
system, the conservative vital force, recognizing it as an
enemy, at once makes an effort through the living matter to rid
the system of the offender;--the heart increases in action and
new strength seems to appear. Now, right here is where the great
mass of people and a large number of physicians are deluded.
They mistake the extra effort of the vital force to preserve the
body against harmful agencies for an actual increase in strength
as the result of the agent given; we wonder that they can be so
blind as not to see the reaction which invariably occurs soon
after the administration of their so-called stimulant."
Dr. F. R. Lees, of England:--
"All poisons lessen vitality and deteriorate the ultimate tissue
in which force is reposited. Alcohol is an agent, the sole,
perpetual and inevitable effects of which are to avert blood
development, to retain waste matter, to irritate mucous and
other tissues, to thicken normal juices, to impede digestion, to
deaden nervous sensibility, to lower animal heat, to kill
molecular life, _and to waste, through the excitement it creates
in heart and head, the grand controlling forces of the nerves
and brain_."
If alcohol is a destroyer of bodily force, as any ordinary observer of
drinking men can readily see, it is a problem beyond solving, how it is
going to give force to, or sustain vitality in, the patient hovering
between life and death. Too often has it been the means of hastening
into eternity those who, but for its mistaken use, might have recovered
from the illness affecting them.
_Food gives heat to the body._
Alcohol does not, but really robs the body of its natural warmth. This
finding of science was received with the utmost incredulity when first
presented to the medical world, but the invention of the clinical
thermometer settled it beyond controversy. It is now believed by all but
a very few of those who have knowledge of the physiological effects of
alcohol. While Dr. N. S. Davis, of Chicago, was the first to demonstrate
this fact, it was Dr. B. W. Richardson, of England, who succeeded in
putting it prominently before the attention of physicians.
The normal temperature of the human body is a little over 98 degrees by
Fahrenheit's thermometer. If the temperature is found to be much above
or below 98 degrees the person is considered out of health; indeed by
this condition alone physicians are able to detect serious forms of
disease. By the use of the clinical thermometer, placed under the
tongue, it is easy to determine what agents acting upon the body will
cause the temperature to vary from the natural standard. When alcohol is
swallowed there is at first a decided feeling of warmth induced; if the
temperature be taken now it will be found that in a person unaccustomed
to alcohol the warmth may be raised half a degree; in one accustomed to
alcohol the warmth may be raised a full degree, or even a degree and a
half beyond the natural standard. But this warmth is only temporary, and
is soon succeeded by chilliness.
Dr. Richardson says in his _Temperance Lesson Book_:--
"The sense of warmth occurs in the following way: When the
alcohol enters the body, and by the blood-vessels is conveyed to
all parts of the body, it reduces the nervous power of the small
blood-vessels which are spread out through the whole of the
surface of the skin. In their weakened state these vessels are
unable duly to resist the course of blood which is coming into
them from the heart under its stroke. The result is that an
excess of warm blood fresh from the heart is thrown into these
fine vessels, which causes the skin to become flushed and red as
it is seen to be after wine or other strong drink has been
swallowed and sent through the body. So, as there is now more
warm blood in the skin than is natural to it, a sense of
increased warmth is felt. The skin of the body is the most
sensitive of substances and the sense of warmth through, or over
the whole surface of the skin is conveyed from it to the brain
and nervous centres of the body, by which we are enabled to
feel.
"The warmth of surface which seems to be imparted by alcohol,
only _seems_ to be imparted. Positively the warmth is not
imparted by the alcohol, but is set free by it.
"In a short time the sense of warmth is succeeded by a feeling
of slight chilliness. Unless the person is in a very warm room,
or has recently partaken of food, the thermometer will now show
a decided decrease in temperature, reaching often to a degree.
Should the person go out into a cold air, and especially should
he go into a cold air while badly supplied with food, the fall
of temperature may reach to two degrees below the natural
standard of bodily heat. In this state he easily takes cold, and
in frosty weather readily contracts congestion of the lungs, and
that disease which is known as bronchitis. If the person drinks
to drunkenness his temperature will be found to be from two and
a half to three degrees below the natural standard. It takes
from two to three days, under the most favorable circumstances,
for the animal warmth to become steadily re-established after a
drunken spree.
"The excitement of the mind in the early stages of drunkenness
is not natural; it is exhaustive of the bodily powers, and
exhaustive for no useful purpose whatever. * * * * *
"As nothing has been supplied by the alcohol to keep up the
supply of heat the vital energy is rapidly exhausted, and if the
person is exposed to cold, the exhaustion becomes extreme,
sometimes fatal. All great consumers of alcohol are chillier
during winter than are abstainers, and as they labor under the
delusion that they must take wine or ale or spirits to keep them
warm, they keep on making matters worse by constantly resorting
to their enemy for relief."
Dr. Newell Martin makes this very clear in his physiology, _The Human
Body_.
"Our feeling of being warm depends on the nerves of the skin. We
have no nerves which tell us whether heart or muscles or brain,
are warmer or cooler. These inside parts are always hotter than
the skin, and if blood which has been made hot in them flows in
large quantity to the skin, we feel warmer because the skin is
heated. As alcoholic drinks make more blood flow through the
skin, they often make a man feel warmer. But their actual effect
upon the temperature of the whole body is to lower it. The more
blood that flows through the skin, the more heat is given off
from the body to the air, and the more blood, so cooled, is sent
back to the internal organs. The consequence is that alcohol, in
proportion to the amount taken, cools the body as a whole,
though it may for a time heat the skin."
If other evidence that alcohol is not heat-producing in the body were
necessary it could be found in the fact that the products of combustion
are decreased when it is present in the body. The quantity of carbonic
acid exhaled by the breath is proportionately diminished with the
decline of animal heat.
Arctic explorers learned by experience what science discovered by
experiment. Dr. Hayes, the explorer, says:--
"While fresh animal food, and especially fat, is absolutely
essential to the inhabitants and travelers in Arctic countries,
alcohol, in almost any shape, is not only completely useless,
but positively injurious."
Lieutenant Johnson, who accompanied Nansen upon his northern expedition,
said, when interviewed by a reporter of the London _Daily News_:--
"The common opinion that alcohol becomes in some way a necessity
in cold countries is entirely a mistaken one. This has been
conclusively proved by the expedition. In making up his list of
the _Fram's_ equipments, Nansen did not include any spirits,
with the exception of some spirits of wine for lamps and
stoves."
In the list of stores taken upon the long sledging expedition after
leaving the _Fram_ no liquors are mentioned. See _Farthest North_, by
Nansen. The omission of spirits was not because of any "temperance
fanaticism," but because the experience of former Arctic expeditions had
shown clearly that men freeze more readily after partaking of alcohol
than when they totally abstain from it.
That wine is not a fuel-food was shown conclusively in the
Franco-Prussian war during the siege of Paris. Food was scarce in the
French Army, and wine was liberally supplied. The men complained
bitterly of the extreme chilliness which affected them. Dr. Klein, a
French staff surgeon, was reported in the _Medical Temperance Journal_
of England, October 1873, as saying of this:--
"We found most decidedly that alcohol was no substitute for
bread and meat. We also found that it was no substitute for
coals. We of the army had to sleep outside Paris on the frozen
ground. We had plenty of alcohol, but it did not make us warm.
Let me tell you there is nothing that will make you feel the
cold more, nothing which will make you feel the dreadful sense
of hunger more, than alcohol."
There is no evidence against alcohol stronger than that which shows it
to be not heat-producing, as commonly believed, but a reducer of heat in
the body. Indeed, this question of bodily temperature is used in recent
times to decide whether a man who has fallen upon the street is troubled
by apoplexy, or influenced by alcoholism. If the clinical thermometer
shows the temperature to be above normal, it is apoplexy; if below
normal, it is alcoholism.
"Alcohol is clearly proved to be not a fuel-food, for if it were
it would enable the body to resist cold, instead of making it
colder; and in the extreme degrees of cold it would go on
burning like other fuel-foods, and would maintain, instead of
helping to destroy, life."--Richardson's _Lesson Book_.
Yet because it creates a glow of warmth in the skin immediately after
drinking it, thousands of people will discredit all evidence that it is
a reducer of bodily heat. Clinical thermometers, and after-sensations of
chilliness, are unheeded, for "Wine is a mocker," and multitudes are
willing to be deceived by it.
So, also, with the conclusions against it as a strengthening agent;
because it dulls the sense of hunger and of fatigue, those who crave it
will declare in the face of all scientific testimony that it strengthens
them, and takes the place of food. They will cite, too, the cases of
people who "lived upon whisky" during an illness of greater or less
duration. Of the sustaining of life upon alcohol only, Dr. N. S. Davis
has said:--
"The falsity of all such stories is made apparent by the fact
that nineteen-twentieths of all the alcoholic drinks given to
the sick are given in connection with sugar, milk, eggs or
meat-broths, which furnish the nutriment, and would support the
patients better if given with the same perseverance without the
alcohol than with it. While we have quite a number of examples
of men living on nothing but water forty or fifty days, I have
never seen or learned of a well-authenticated case of a man's
taking or receiving into his system nothing but alcohol for half
of that length of time, without becoming sick with either
gastro-duodenitis, nephritis, or delirium tremens."
_Some of the defenders of the medicinal use of alcohol claim that since
it has been shown to reduce tissue waste it should be classed as an
indirect food, a conserver of tissue._ Of this claim, Dr. N. S. Davis
says in the _Bulletin of the A. M. T. A._, November, 1895:--
"A careful study of the conditions and processes necessary for
both tissue building or nutrition, and tissue waste or
disintegration, in all the higher order of animals, will show
that neither process can be materially retarded without
retarding or preventing the other. Both processes take place
only in bioplasm or vitalized matter, supplied with oxygen,
water and heat. Neither the assimilation of new material food,
nor its use in tissue building can be effected without the
presence of free oxygen and nuclein, or corpuscular elements of
the blood. And without the presence of the same elements we can
have no natural tissue disintegration and removal of the waste.
The processes of tissue building and tissue disintegration, are
therefore, so intimately related, and dependent upon the same
materials and forces, that neither can be hastened or retarded
from day to day without influencing the other. When alcohol or
any other substance, introduced into the blood, retards the
tissue waste, as shown by the diminished amount of excretory
products, it must do so by either diminishing the amount of free
oxygen in the blood, by impairing the vasomotor and trophic
nerve functions or by direct impairment of the properties of the
nuclein or protogen elements of the blood and tissues. The
popular idea, both in and out of the profession is, that the
alcohol, by further oxidation in the blood, lessens the amount
of oxygen to act on the tissues, and generates heat or 'some
kind of force.' Those who advocate this theory of saving the
tissues by combining the oxygen with alcohol seem to forget that
in doing so they are diverting and using up the only agent,
oxygen, capable of combining with, and promoting the elimination
of, all natural waste products as well as the various toxic
elements causing disease.
"But the theory that alcohol directly combines with the oxygen
of the blood by which it would be converted into carbonic acid
and water with evolution of heat is completely refuted by the
well-known fact that its presence in the blood diminishes both
temperature and elimination of carbonic acid as already stated.
Physiologists of the present day very generally agree that the
capacity of the blood to receive oxygen from the lungs, and
convey it to the systemic capillaries and various tissues,
depends chiefly on its hemoglobin (red coloring matter),
protein, or albuminous and saline elements.
"Both experimental and clinical facts in abundance show that
alcohol at all ordinary temperatures displays a much stronger
affinity for these elements of the blood and tissues, than it
does for oxygen. And when present in the blood, it rapidly
attracts both water and hemoglobin from the corpuscular and
albuminoid elements of that fluid, and thereby diminishes its
reception and distribution of oxygen. We are thus enabled to see
clearly how the alcohol diminishes the oxygenation and
decarbonization of the blood, and retards all tissue changes
both of nutrition and waste without itself undergoing oxidation
with evolution of heat. Consequently, instead of acting as a
shield or conservator of the tissues by simply combining with
the oxygen, the alcohol directly impairs the properties and
functions of the most highly vitalized elements of the blood
itself, and thereby not only retards tissue waste but also
equally retards the highest grades of nutrition, and favors only
sclerotic, fatty and molecular degenerations, as we see
everywhere resulting from its continued use. Can an agent
displaying such properties and effects be called a _food_,
either direct or indirect, without a total disregard for the
proper meaning of words?"
In another place he says:--
"This lessening of the elimination of tissue waste is simply an
evidence of the accumulation of poisonous substances within the
body, through the lessened activity of liver and kidneys and the
impairment of the blood."
Dr. Ezra M. Hunt says in _Alcohol as Food and as Medicine_, page 37:--
"It sounds conservative of health to say of a substance that it
delays the breaking down of tissue, but the physiologist does
not allow a substance which occasions such delay, to possess,
because of that, either dietetic or remedial value. To increase
weight by prolonged constipation is not a physiological
process."
Dalton says:--
"The importance of tissue change to the maintenance of life is
readily shown by the injurious effects which follow upon its
disturbance. If the discharge of the excrementitious substances
be in any way impeded or suspended, these substances accumulate
either in the blood or tissues, or both. In consequence of this
retention and accumulation they become poisonous, and rapidly
produce a derangement of the vital functions. Their influence is
principally exerted upon the nervous system, through which they
produce most frequent irritability, disturbance of the special
senses, delirium, insensibility, coma, and finally, death."
The power to retard the passage of waste matter from the system is one
of the gravest objections to the use of alcohol in sickness, as the
germs of disease are thereby caused to remain longer in the body than
they would, were no alcohol or drug of similar action, used. Thus
recovery is delayed, if not effectually hindered.
The preponderance of scientific evidence is all against alcohol as
possessing food qualities. It contains no elements capable of entering
into the composition of any part of the body, hence cannot give
strength; it is not a fuel-food as it does not supply heat to the body,
but decreases temperature; and its classification as indirect food
because it retards the passage of waste matter is shown to be utterly
unscientific, as any agent which interferes with the natural processes
of assimilation and disintegration is a dangerous agent, a poison rather
than a food.
The question naturally arises:--
If these drinks are not liquid food, as we have been taught to believe,
how is it, since they are made from food, as barley, corn, grapes,
potatoes, etc?
These drinks are not food, although made from food, because in the
process of manufacturing them the food principle is destroyed. The grain
is malted to change starch into sugar--loss of food principle begins
here--then the malted grain is soaked in water to extract the saccharine
matter. When the sugar is all in the water the grain goes to feed cattle
or hogs, and the sweetened water is fermented. The fermentation changes
the sugar into alcohol.
Analyses of beer by eminent chemists show an average of 90 per cent.
water, 4 per cent. alcohol, and 6 per cent. malt extract. The malt
extract consists of gum, sugar, various acids, salts and hop extract.
Starch and sugar are all of these capable of digestion, and the amount
of them would be equal to 39 ounces to the barrel of beer. Liebig, the
great German chemist, said:--
"If a man drinks daily 8 or 10 quarts of the best Bavarian
beer, in a year he will have taken into his system the
nutritive constituents contained in a 5 pound loaf of bread."
Eight quarts a day for a year would be 2,920 quarts, or a little more
than 23 barrels. If sold to the consumer at the low rate of five cents a
pint, it would cost him $292; a high price for as much nourishment as in
a 5 pound loaf!
Analyses of wine by reliable chemists show that the consumer must pay
$500 for the equivalent in nourishment of a 5 pound loaf of bread, wine
being higher priced than beer. Wines average 80 per cent. water, about
15 per cent. alcohol, and 5 per cent. residue. This residue is composed
of sugar, tartaric, acetic and carbonic acids, salts of potassium and
sodium, tannic acid, and traces of an ethereal substance which gives the
peculiar or distinguishing flavor. The only one of these ingredients
possessing food value is sugar; this exists chiefly in what are called
sweet wines. Yet how many thousands of people spend money they can ill
afford for wines and beers to build up the failing strength of some
loved one! A costly delusion, and too often a fatal one!
"Distilled liquors, if unadulterated, contain literally nothing
but water and alcohol, except traces of juniper in gin, and the
flavor of the fermented material from which they have been
distilled."--_Influence of Alcohol_, by N. S. Davis, M. D.
It is the solemn duty of those to whom the people look for instruction
in matters of health to undeceive the toiling masses as to the
food-value of alcoholic liquids. Some of the medical profession are
faithful in this regard, but too many others are themselves deceived, or
care not for the destruction of the people.
IS ALCOHOL A STIMULANT?
A lady asked her family physician several years ago what he thought of
the views of those medical writers who class alcohol as a narcotic, and
not a stimulant. He answered with some heat, "Any one who says alcohol
is not a stimulant is either a fool or a knave!" He could not have been
aware that some of the most distinguished professors in American medical
colleges teach that alcohol is not, properly speaking, a stimulant, but
a narcotic.
The accepted definition of a stimulant in medical literature is some
agent capable of exciting or increasing _vital activity_ as a whole, or
the natural activity of some one structure or organ.
Dr. N. S. Davis has said repeatedly that both clinical and experimental
observations show that alcohol directly diminishes the functional
activity of all nerve structures, pre-eminently those of respiration and
circulation, thus decreasing the internal distribution of oxygen, which
is nature's own special exciter of all vital action.
"Consequently it is antagonistic to all true stimulants or
remedies capable of increasing vital activity. Instead,
therefore, of meriting the name of _stimulant_, alcohol should
be designated and used only as an anæsthetic and sedative, or
depressor of vital activity."
The following is taken from an editorial article in the _American
Medical Temperance Quarterly_ for January, 1894:--
"Drs. Sidney Ringer and H. Sainsbury in a carefully executed
series of experiments on the isolated heart of the frog, found
that all the alcohol when mixed with the blood circulating
through the heart, uniformly diminished the action of that organ
in direct proportion to the quantity of alcohol used, until
complete paralysis was induced. In closing their report in
regard to the action of different alcohols, they say that 'by
their direct action on the cardiac tissue these drugs are
clearly _paralyzant_, and that this appears to be the case from
the outset, _no stage of increased force of contraction
preceding_.'
"Professor Martin, while in connection with the Johns Hopkins
University, performed an equally careful series of experiments
in regard to the action of ethylic, or ordinary alcohol,
directly on the cardiac structures of the dog, and with the same
results. He makes the following explicit statement of the
results obtained by him. 'Blood containing one-fourth per cent.
by volume, that is two and a half parts per 1000 of absolute
alcohol, almost invariably diminishes, within a minute, the work
done by the heart; blood containing one-half per cent. always
diminishes it, and may even bring the amount pumped out by the
left ventricle to so small a quantity that it is not sufficient
to supply the coronary arteries.'
"In 1883, R. Dubois, by direct experimenting upon animals, found
that the presence of alcohol in the blood much intensified the
action of chloroform and thereby rendered a much less dose
fatal.
"Prof. H. C. Wood of the University of Pennsylvania, in an
address upon Anæsthesia to the Tenth International Medical
Congress, of Berlin, in 1890, said: 'In my own experiments with
alcohol, an eighty per cent. fluid was used largely diluted with
water. The amount injected into the jugular vein varied in the
different experiments from 5 to 20 c. c.; and in no case have I
been able to detect any increase in the size of the pulse or in
the arterial pressure produced by alcohol, when the heart was
failing during advanced chloroform anæsthesia. On the other
hand, on several occasions, the larger amounts of alcohol
apparently greatly increased the rapidity of the fall of
arterial pressure, and aided materially in extinguishing the
pulse.
"Sir Henry Thompson says: 'That alcohol is an anæsthetic and
paralyzant is a fact too well established to be questioned or
contradicted.'
"Dr. J. J. Ridge, of London, has published elaborate tables,
showing that even small doses of alcohol, averaging one
tablespoonful of spirits--not quite half a wineglass of claret
or champagne, and not quite a quarter of a pint of ale--impair
vision, feeling, and sensibility to weight, without the
subject's being conscious of any alteration. Dr. Scougal, of New
York, has repeated and confirmed these experiments, and also
demonstrated that the hearing was similarly affected.
"Drs. Nichol and Mossop, of Edinburgh, conducted a series of
experiments on each other, examining the eye by means of the
ophthalmoscope while the system was under the influence of
various drugs. They found that the nerves controlling the
delicate blood-vessels of the retina were paralyzed by a dose of
about a tablespoonful of brandy.
"Dr. T. D. Crothers, of Hartford, Conn., has deduced some
valuable facts from his experiments with the sphygmograph, upon
the action of the heart. He has found by repeated experiments
that while alcohol apparently increases the force and volume of
the heart's action, the irregular tracings of the sphygmograph
show that the real vital force is diminished, and hence its
apparent stimulating power is deceptive."--Extract from the
Annual Address before the Medical Temperance Association at San
Francisco, Cal., June 8, 1894, by Dr. I. N. Quimby, of Jersey
City, N. J.
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Mich., has made extensive
experiments as to the effects of alcohol. In summing up the results of
these he says:--
"It would seem that no further evidence could be required that
alcohol is a narcotic and an anæsthetic, rather than a
stimulant, and that its use as a supporting and tonic remedy is
a practice without foundation in either scientific theory or
natural clinical experience."
Sir B. W. Richardson at a medical breakfast in London in 1895, stated
that though alcohol produced an increase in the motion of the heart it
was ultimately weaker in its action, so he resolved to give up using
such an agent.
Dr. A. B. Palmer of the University of Michigan prepared a "Report" upon
alcohol in 1885 for the Michigan State Medical Society in which he cited
experiments showing that the opinion that alcohol stimulates the heart
by an increase of real force, is an error. It creates a flutter, but
decreases power.
"Increased frequency of pulsation is often the strongest
evidence of diminished power--as the fluttering pulse of extreme
weakness."
He classes alcohol with chloroform.
"If chloroform is a narcotic, alcohol is a narcotic. If
chloroform is an anæsthetic, alcohol is an anæsthetic. If one is
essentially a depressing agent, so is the other. Their strong
resemblance no one can question. The chief difference is that
the alcoholic narcosis is longer continued, and its secondary
effects are more severe."
In closing his summary of the changes in scientific knowledge of this
drug he says:--
"We said it was a direct heart exciter. We now know it is a
direct heart depressor. We said, and nearly all the text-books
still say, it is a direct cardiac stimulant. We know from most
conclusive experiments it is a direct _cardiac paralyzant_."
The following is taken from one of the many excellent papers upon
alcohol written by that Nestor among physicians, Dr. N. S. Davis:--
"Alcoholics are very generally prescribed in that weakness of
the heart sometimes met with in low forms of fever and in the
advanced stage of other acute diseases. It is claimed that these
agents are capable of strengthening and sustaining the action of
the heart under the circumstances just named, and also under the
first depressing influence of severe shock.
"There is nothing in the ascertained physiological action of
alcohol on the human system, as developed by a wide range of
experimental investigation, to sustain this claim. I have used
the sphygmograph and every other available means for testing
experimentally the effects of alcohol upon the action of the
heart and blood-vessels generally, but have failed in every
instance to get proof of any increased force of cardiac action.
"The first and very transient effect is generally increased
frequency of beat, followed immediately by dilatation of the
peripheral vessels from impaired vasomotor sensibility, and the
same unsteady or wavy sphygmographic tracing as is given in
typhoid fever, and which is usually regarded as evidence of
cardiac debility. Turning from the field of experimentation to
the sick-room, my search for evidences of the power of alcohol
to sustain the force of the heart, or in any way to strengthen
the patient has been equally unsuccessful. I was educated and
entered upon the practice of medicine at a time when alcoholic
drinks were universally regarded as stimulating and
beat-producing, and commenced their use without prejudice or
preconceived notions. But the first ten years of direct clinical
or practical observation satisfied me fully of the incorrectness
of those views, and very nearly banished the use of these agents
from my list of remedies. While it is true that during the last
thirty years I have not prescribed for internal use the
aggregate amount of one quart of any kind of fermented or
distilled drinks, either in private or hospital practice, yet I
have continued to have abundant opportunity for observing the
effects of these agents as given by others with whom I have been
in council; and 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 beyond the first thirty minutes after it was swallowed.
* * * * *
"Nothing is easier than self-deception in this matter. A patient
is suddenly taken with syncope, or nervous weakness, from which
abundant experience has shown that a speedy recovery would take
place by simple rest and fresh air. But in the alarm of patient
and friends something must be done. A little wine or brandy is
given, and, as it is not sufficient to positively prevent, the
patient in due time revives just as would have been the case if
neither wine nor brandy had been used."
In the _Medical Pioneer_ of November, 1895, Prof. E. MacDowel Cosgrave,
Professor of Biology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, says:--
"The result of all recent investigation is to show that the use
of alcohol when a stimulant effect is desired, is an error; and
that, from first to last alcohol acts as a narcotic."
Dr. Edmunds, of London, said in an address given in Manchester:--
"By giving alcohol as a stimulant in exhausting diseases, I
believe we always do as we should in giving a dose of opium and
brandy and water to comfort a half suffocated patient; i. e.,
increase his danger. If that be so, we reduce alcohol not only
from the position of food medicine, but we reduce it from the
position of a goad; and we say that the supposititious
stimulating or goading influence of alcohol is a mere delusion;
that in fact alcohol always lessens the power of the patients,
and always damages their chance of recovery, when it is a
question of their getting through exhausting diseases."
Many more such quotations might be adduced. Enough are given to show
that the popular use of alcohol, when a stimulant is required, is
considered a grave error by those who have most thoroughly studied the
effects of this drug.
ALCOHOL AS A TONIC.
Dr. J. J. Ridge, of London, says:--
"The action of alcohol in relaxing unstriped muscular fibre,
which entitles it to be called an anti-spasmodic, robs it of all
claim to give tone. The sense of exhilaration which follows
small doses of alcohol has been mistaken for real strength and
increase of vitality. It is well known that relaxation of the
blood-vessels throughout the body is one of the first effects of
alcohol. The arteries of the retina have been observed to dilate
after very small doses of alcohol. The diminution of tone is
well seen in the tracings of the pulse under the influence of
alcohol. If one needs a tonic, therefore, alcohol is one of the
things to be shunned altogether.
"But alcoholic beverages contain other things beside alcohol.
Beer contains infusion of hops, or other bitter stomachics. Some
wines contain tannin. These ingredients, by creating or
stimulating the appetite, increase the strength and vital power
in certain cases. But we have a large number of drugs which
will do the same without the disadvantages arising from the
presence of alcohol, and, if the flavor be objected to, many of
them can be taken in the form of coated pills.
"The external use of cold, either by a dripping sheet, cold
sponging, or a shower-bath, according to the power of reaction,
is a valuable means of giving real tone.
"Wine is frequently prescribed for those young persons who are
growing rapidly, and whose strength does not seem to keep pace
with their growth. It is important to know that alcohol is not
desirable in such circumstances. There is often found in such
cases a defective appetite, perhaps even sub-acute gastric
catarrh, which may be due to imperfect mastication through bad
teeth, or aggravated by it. There are other causes, such as late
hours, bad habits, improper food or irregular meals. In such
cases those means must be resorted to which are so effectual in
improving the condition and strengthening the heart of athletes.
Regular and regulated meals, exercise in the fresh air, a good
amount of rest and sleep--these will do more than anything else
to invigorate the bodily health."
Dr. N. S. Davis says:--
"Although I was taught, like all others, to use alcohol as a
tonic when patients were sick, to hasten their recovery and
promote their strength, yet it did not take me very long to find
out that here and there was one already a teetotaler who would
not take wine long, nor any kind of alcoholic drink unless
prescribed, just as castor-oil, dose by dose, but who, when he
got beyond the necessity of having it as a medicine, took no
more. What was the comparison? My patients who refused, or did
not take alcohol, got strong quicker and had less tendency to
relapse than those who continued its use. Here was the first
step in progress, and consequently I came soon to cease the
recommending it merely to hasten recovery of strength. As a
tonic, I found it of no value."
Dr. James Miller, of Edinburgh, says in _Alcohol, Its Place and Power_,
written many years ago:--
"It may be well here to correct an important error, yet very
current, in regard to the medicinal use of alcohol. People
regard it as a simple and common tonic; and are ready to accept
its supposed help as such in every form of weakness and general
disorder of health. But it is ordinarily, no true tonic."
Dr. Ernest Hart, editor of the _British Medical Journal_, stated some
years ago at a meeting of the British Medical Temperance Association
that "the medical profession were nearly all agreed that alcohol is
neither a food nor a tonic."
Many drunkards have been made, especially among women, by the delusion
that alcohol has tonic effect. As a sample of these sad cases the
following is given, taken from a recent number of _The National
Advocate_:--
"There is in the jail at Elizabeth, N. J., a woman who was
arrested while participating in wild drunken orgies with a gang
of tramps in the woods near the town. She appears nothing but a
besotted hag, but was only a short time ago a dutiful wife of a
respectable man, and the mother of three beautiful children. Her
father, who is said to be living in a village in New York State,
is a highly respected minister of the Methodist Episcopal
Church. Her children are in an asylum, and her husband is a
wanderer in the West. The cause of her ruin was beer, prescribed
for her by the family physician as a tonic. At first she refused
to take it, having always been a teetotaler, but persuaded to
obey the physician, she soon acquired a taste for the drink that
speedily developed into the overmastering appetite, which has
brought her and hers to this sad condition."
ALCOHOL AS A SEDATIVE.
Dr. J. J. Ridge says in the _Medical Pioneer_, April, 1893:--
"Alcohol, chiefly in the form of spirits, is often given to
procure sleep and to relieve pain, such as that of neuralgia,
dyspepsia, colic and diarrhoea. It is as a sedative that
alcohol is so insidious and seductive in cases of chronic
disease, as, if frequently resorted to, the drink craving is
almost certainly developed. Hence the importance in many cases
of rather bearing the ills we have than of flying to others that
we know not of. It is clear that other narcotics, such as opium,
morphia, chorodyne, chloral, are open to the same objection, and
the victims of these drugs are terribly numerous. * * * * * In
many instances some form of dyspepsia is the cause of the
sleeplessness, palpitation or other uneasy feeling for which a
sedative is desired, and when this is cured the symptoms
vanish."
A prominent minister in a large American city was afflicted with
insomnia a few years ago, and, after trying various remedies, was
advised by a physician to try whisky "night-caps." He became a hopeless
drunkard. A young medical student in New York appealed to one of his
professors for aid in overcoming aggravated insomnia. The professor
advised whisky and morphine! The advice led to the ruin of the young
man.
ALCOHOL AS AN ANTIPYRETIC.
"By the power of alcohol to retard the evolution of heat in
retarding molecular changes in the tissues, the liquids
containing it may be used as antipyretics when the temperature
is too high, and to retard the processes of waste when these are
too rapid. But the antipyretic influence of alcohol is so feeble
in comparison with the proper application of water to the
surface, or with the internal administration of sulphate of
quinia, salicylic acid, digitalis, etc. that no one thinks of
using it for antipyretic purposes."--Dr. N. S. Davis in
_Principles and Practice of Medicine_.
PROFESSOR ATWATER'S CONCLUSIONS UPON ALCOHOL AS A FUEL-FOOD.
In 1899 a decided sensation was caused by the announcement that Prof.
Atwater, of Middletown, Conn., had proved that alcohol is a fuel-food
equal in value to carbohydrates and fats. The study later of Prof.
Atwater's report of his investigations led to prolonged discussions
among medical men interested in the alcohol question, and his theory
that alcohol is a food because it is oxidized in the body was vigorously
opposed by many scientists of high standing. Professor Abel, of Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore, an investigator of alcohol who worked
with the Committee of Fifty, said on this point:--
"Oxidizability cannot be made the measure of usefulness in
regard to this substance."
Professor Gruber, president of the Royal Institute of Hygiene, Munich,
said:--
"Does alcohol truly deserve to be called a food substance?
Obviously, only such substances can be called food material, or
be employed for food, as, like albumen, fat, and sugar, exert
non-poisonous influence in the amounts in which they reach the
blood and must circulate in it in order to nourish * * * *
Although alcohol contributes energy it diminishes working
ability. We are not able to find that its energy is turned to
account for nerve and muscle work. Very small amounts, whose
food value is insignificant, show an injurious effect upon the
nervous system."
Sir Victor Horsley, the well-known London surgeon, said:--
"We know that alcohol lowers the temperature of the body. It can
only do that by diminishing the activity of the vital processes.
It also diminishes very greatly the power of the muscles, and it
diminishes the intellectual power of the nervous system. To call
an agent that causes such diminution of activity throughout the
whole body a food is ridiculous."
An editorial in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_ said:
"The fallacy of the reasoning which would place alcohol among
the foods is very apparent when we put it in the form of a
syllogism: All foods are oxidized in the body; alcohol is
oxidized in the body; therefore alcohol is food. As logically we
might say: 'All birds are bilaterally symmetrical; the earthworm
is bilaterally symmetrical; therefore the earthworm is a bird.'
Oxidation within the body is simply one of several important
properties of food, as bilateral symmetry is one of several
important characteristics of a bird."
Schafer's Physiology says:--
"It cannot be doubted that any small production of energy
resulting from the oxidation of alcohol is more than
counterbalanced by its deleterious influences as a drug upon the
tissue elements, and especially upon those of the nervous
system."
The _Bulletin_ of the A. M. T. A. for July, 1899, contained an article
upon Prof. Atwater by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, from which the following is
taken:--
"Starch, sugar and fats become foods or fuels only through their
assimilation. Abundant physiological evidence attests that no
substance can act as a food, or as a true source of energy,
unless it has first entered into the composition of the body. It
must be assimilated. The forces manifested by the body, the
muscular forces, or nervous energy, are the result of the
breaking down of organized structure into simpler forms. For
example, in the case of nervous energy, material from which
nerve energy is derived is stored up in the nerve cell, and can
be seen with the microscope in the form of minute granules,
which disappear as the cell energy is expended, leaving the cell
blank and shriveled when in a state of extreme fatigue from
overwork. The same is essentially true of the muscle cell. The
source of muscular energy is glycogen, an organized substance
which becomes a part of the muscle tissue in a well-nourished
muscle in a state of rest.
"Experiments have clearly shown that fat, sugar and starch must
all alike be converted into the form of glycogen and enter into
the muscle structure before they can become a source of energy.
"Professor Atwater tells us that alcohol can not form tissue,
hence the query is pertinent, How can it be a source of vital
energy? The body does not burn food as a stove does fuel. Food
can be called fuel only in a highly figurative sense. The
oxidation of food in the body does not take place directly. Food
is assimilated, becoming a part of the tissue. Oxygen is also
assimilated, entering into the composition of the tissue along
with the food elements under the action of special organic
ferments brought into play by nervous impulses received from the
central ganglia.
"The molecules of these residual tissues which form the
storehouse of energy in the body are rearranged in simpler
forms, thereby giving up a portion of the energy which holds
them together in the state in which they exist in the tissues,
and this energy thus set free appears as muscle force, mental
activity, glandular work and various other forms of functional
activity."
CHAPTER VII.
ALCOHOL IN PHARMACY.
In the _Journal of the American Medical Association_ for November 13,
1897, Dr. T. D. Crothers, editor of the _Journal of Inebriety_, says in
a paper upon "Concealed Alcohol in Drugs":--
"A very important question has been repeatedly raised, and
answered differently by persons who claim to have some expert
knowledge. The question is, can strong tinctures of common drugs
be given in all cases with safety; tinctures of the various
bitters which contain from 10 to 40 per cent. of alcohol, and
are used very freely by neurotic and debilitated persons? It is
asserted with the most positive convictions that such tinctures
are more sought for the narcotic effect of the alcohol than for
the drugs themselves.
"In my experience a large number of inebriates who are restored,
relapse from the use of these tinctures given for their
medicinal effects. * * * * *
"The question is asked, how much alcohol can be used as a
solvent in drugs without adding a new force more potent than
that which is brought out by the alcohol? Opinions of experts
differ. One writer thinks 10 per cent. of alcohol in any drug
will, if given any length of time, develop the physiologic
effect of alcohol in addition to that of the drug. An English
writer says that in some cases a 5 per cent. tincture is
dangerous from the alcohol which it contains.
"There is some doubt expressed by many authorities as to the
potency of a drug which is covered up in a strong tincture. It
is clear that the value of a drug is not enhanced, and it is
certain that a new force-producing, or exploding agency, has
been added to the body.
"In experience, any drug which contains alcohol can not be given
to persons who have previously used it without rousing up the
old desire for drink, or at least producing a degree of
irritation and excitement that clearly comes from this source.
It is also the experience of persons who are very susceptible to
alcohol, that any strong tincture is followed by headache and
other symptoms that refer to disturbed nerve centres.
"In many studies I have been surprised at the increased action
of drugs when given in other forms than the tincture. Gum and
powdered opium, have far more pronounced narcotic action than
the tincture. Yet the tincture is followed by a more rapid
narcotism, but of shorter duration, and attended with more nerve
disturbance at the onset.
"I am convinced that a more exact knowledge of the physiologic
action of alcohol on the organism will show that its use in
drugs as tinctures is dangerous and will be abandoned.
"There are many reasons for believing that its use in
proprietary drugs will be punished in the future under what is
called the poison act."
Dr. J. J. Ridge published in May, 1893, in the _Medical Pioneer_, the
following statement of the pharmacy of the London Temperance Hospital:--
"When the Temperance Hospital was first opened, it became a
question of practical importance, what should be done with
regard to the alcohol so largely employed as a vehicle and drug
excipient. Not that the principle of the treatment of disease
without the ordinary administration of alcoholic beverages
precludes the employment of alcoholic tinctures, but it was felt
that in such a test case as this it was important to obviate the
objection that while withholding alcohol as a beverage, it was
given in the medicine. As a matter of fact, it is surprising,
when one looks into it, how much alcohol is often given merely
as a vehicle for other drugs, and without the special action of
alcohol being required or desired. In prescriptions which are to
be seen in many text-books, it is not uncommon to find from one
to two or three, or even four drachms of rectified spirit in the
form of tinctures or spirits. This is very undesirable. If
alcohol is needed it should be given in proper measured dose.
But if it is not indicated, then it is not well to administer it
in this indirect manner.
"Experiments were therefore made, partly at the hospital and
specially by Messrs. Southall Bros. & Barclay, of Birmingham,
with the result that new non-alcoholic tinctures were made
replacing the following alcoholic tinctures and wines:--
Tinct. Aloes.
" Arnicæ.
" Aurantii.
" Belladonnæ.
" Buchu.
" Calumbæ.
" Camph. Co.
" Capsici.
" Cascarillæ.
" Catechu.
" Chiratæ.
" Cinchonæ Co.
" " Flav.
" Cinnamomæ.
" Colchici Sem.
" Conii.
" Digitalis.
" Ferri Acet.
" Ferri Perchlor.
" Gentiani Co.
" Hyosciami.
" Kino.
" Krameriæ.
" Limonis.
" Lobeliæ.
" Nucis Vomicæ.
" Opii.
" Quassiæ.
" Rhei.
" Scillæ.
" Serpentariæ.
" Stramonii.
" Valerianæ.
" " Ammon.
Vin. Aloes.
" Colchici Rad.
" " Sim.
" Ipecac.
" Opii.
" Rhei.
"These were made by extracting the principles of the drugs in
the usual way except that instead of alcohol a mixture of
glycerine and water was used in the proportion of one-fourth to
one-third part of glycerine, and about five per cent. of acetic
acid. These made very elegant preparations, and in the majority
of cases appeared to have just the same, and just as great
physiological action. Subsequently the ordinary tinctures were
distilled, and the extracts thus obtained dissolved in the above
menstruum, as far as was possible, in most cases the residuum
being found to be inert.
"Gum resins and essential oils were found to be insoluble in
this menstruum, and hence such drugs have been given in the form
of pill, powder or mixture. Such tinctures are those of
assafoetida, benzoin, cannabis indica, cantharides, castor,
cubebs, lavender, myrrh, pyrethrum, sumbul, tolu and ginger. Out
of 62 tinctures it was found that 46 made good preparations, and
16 did not.
"These were employed for several years. But for some time past,
somewhat more reliable preparations have been made for us which
contain _all_ the constituents of the alcoholic tinctures
without the alcohol. They are for the most part made by taking
standardized tinctures, mixing with them sugar of milk, and
distilling off the alcohol. The alcoholic extract remains behind
in a finely divided condition mingled with sugar of milk. This
is broken up, pulverized and compressed into tabloids of a
definite dose, which can be taken either in that form or rubbed
up and dissolved or suspended in gum water.
"The following have been made up in this form: aconite,
belladonna, camph. co., cannabis indica, capsicum, cinchon. co.,
and cinchon. simpl., digitalis, gelseminum, hyosciamus, nux
vomica, opium, strophanthus, ginger and Warburg. Other tinctures
will be gradually added to this list.
"As external liniments those commonly used are the linimentum
terebinthinæ and the linimentum terebinthinæ aceticum, which do
not contain alcohol. A strong solution of iodine is made with
iodide of potassium.
"The spiritus ammoniæ aromaticus is made without the spirit, the
aromatic oils being emulsionized by means of rubbing up with
fine sand, but most of these subsequently rise to the surface.
The spiritus etheris nitrosi is impossible without alcohol, but
nitrite of amyl, and nitrites of potash or soda can be
substituted. The spiritus chloroformi is replaced by aqua
chloroformi, or as a sweetening agent by solution of saccharin.
Thus a favorite expectorant mixture contains carbonate of
ammonia five grains, acetum ipecac, ten minims, and solution of
saccharin in each dose.
"As a special stimulant a subcutaneous injection of a drachm of
pure ether has been given in a few cases; in others digitalis,
or caffeine or ammonia in some form, such as the carbonate
dissolved in a cup of hot coffee; or hot solution of Liebig's
extract, or rectal injections of hot water."
It may be objected by some that glycerine belongs to the family of
alcohols, hence hospitals using glycerine tinctures are not, strictly
speaking, non-alcoholic. To this the answer is, that while glycerine
certainly is classed in the family of alcohols, it is of a very
different nature from ethyl alcohol, which is used for beverage
purposes. Ethyl alcohol, the alcohol in all intoxicating beverages in
common use, and the alcohol generally used in medicine, creates a fatal
craving for itself, and is injurious to the body. Glycerine does not
create any craving for itself, and has not been demonstrated to have
injurious properties, and is not used for beverage purposes.
At the annual meeting of the New York State Medical Society, held in
New York City, in October, 1898, a discussion was held upon the use of
alcohol as medicine. Dr. E. R. Squibb, a leading pharmacist of Brooklyn,
stated that during the last two or three years much had been
accomplished in retiring alcohol as a menstruum for exhausting drugs. Of
the other menstrua experimented with up to the present time, that which
had given the best results was acetic acid, in various strengths. It had
been discovered that a ten per cent. solution of acetic acid was almost
universal in its exhausting powers. There were now in use in veterinary
practice, and in some hospitals, extracts made with acetic acid. They
were made according to the requirements of the pharmacopoeia, except
that acetic acid was substituted for alcohol. Acetic acid, when used
with alkaloids gives the physician some advantages in prescribing, owing
to there being fewer incompatibles. In small doses, the percentage of
acetic acid in the extract is so small as to be hardly appreciable, and
when larger doses are required, the acetic acid can be neutralized by
the addition of potash or soda.
Dr. Noble said, in article to _London Times_ before referred to:--
"Modern science has shown that those drugs which are soluble in
alcohol only, are, in all probability, more hurtful than
useful."
The following from Dr. Jas. R. Nichols, editor Boston _Journal of
Chemistry_, is too good to be omitted, although it should be familiar
to temperance students:--
"The facetious Dr. Holmes has said, that if the contents of our
drug-stores were taken out upon the ocean and thrown overboard,
it would be better for the human race, but worse for the fishes.
This statement may be a little sweeping; but it is true that all
the showy bottles in drug-stores which contain alcoholic
decoctions and tinctures might be submerged in the ocean, and
invalids would suffer no detriment. Since the active alkaloidal
and resinoidal principles of roots, barks and gums have been
isolated and put in better and more convenient forms, there is
no longer need of alcoholic tinctures and elixirs. Laudanum,
which is a tincture of opium, might be banished from the shelves
of every apothecary, as it is not needed. It is now known that
the valuable narcotic and hypnotic principles of opium are
contained in certain crystalline bodies, which can be isolated,
and used in minute and convenient forms, and that they can be
held in aqueous solutions. Alcohol is no longer needed to hold
the active principles of opium, Peruvian bark or other
indispensable drugs. As regards the vegetable tonics so called,
the best among them is the columbo (Radix columbo) and this
readily yields its bitter principle to water, as does quassia,
gentian, senna, rhubarb and most other valuable substances. A
careful survey of the contents of a well-appointed modern
pharmacy leads to the conclusion that there is no one
indispensable medicinal preparation which requires alcohol as a
free constituent.
"The catalogue of modern remedies is almost endless, and many of
them hold alcohol in some form; but every intelligent physician
knows that 90 per cent. of these alleged remedies have little or
no intrinsic value. The nostrums of the quack, the bitters,
elixirs, cordials, extracts, etc. nearly all contain alcohol,
and this is the ingredient which aids their sale. The whole
unclean list might, with advantage to mankind, be thrown to the
fishes.
"The chemist, more particularly the pharmaceutical chemist, may
inquire how he is to conduct his processes without alcohol. It
is from the pharmaceutical laboratory we derive some of the most
important substances used in medicines and the arts. Among them
may be named ether, chloroform and chloral hydrate, three of the
most indispensable agents known to science, and the employment
of alcohol is essential to their production. Alcohol is a
laboratory product; it is a chemical agent which belongs to the
laboratory; it is the handmaid of the chemist, and, so long as
it exists, should be retained within the walls of the
laboratory. In the manufacture of most of the important products
in which alcohol is either directly or indirectly used, its
production may be made simultaneous with the production of the
agent desired. In the manufacture of ether and chloroform, the
apparatus for alcohol may be made a part of the devices from
which the ultimate agents, ether and chloroform, result.
Fermentation and distillation may be conducted at one end, and
the anæsthetics received at the other. It is true that in a
chemical laboratory alcohol is an agent very convenient in a
thousand ways. But, if it were banished utterly, what would
result? There are other methods of fabricating the useful
products named, and many others, without the use of alcohol, but
the processes would be rather inconvenient and more costly. The
banishment of alcohol would not deprive us of a single one of
the indispensable agents which modern civilization demands, and
neither would chemical science be retarded by its loss."
"It must be remembered that modern science has given us
glycerine, naptha, bisulphide of carbon, pyroligneous products,
carbolic acid and a hundred other agents which are capable of
taking the place of alcohol in a very large number of appliances
and processes."
The sale of liquor in drug-stores is beginning to be deplored by the
more respectable pharmacists. At the annual meeting of the Massachusetts
State Pharmacists' Association in 1895 the president said in his
address:--
"One thing that every pharmacist, who has the best interests of
his calling at heart, must bear in mind is that the liquor part
of their business is being, and must be, slowly crowded out.
Public sentiment has changed greatly in the last few years, and
instead of all being classed alike, the line has been sharply
drawn, and the stores that sell the least amount of liquor that
they possibly can are gaining the confidence and esteem of the
public, and consequently their business is growing from year to
year, while the others are losing ground and dropping lower and
lower."
The _Evening Record_ of Boston contained the following in its issue of
March 7, 1896:--
"The number of flagrant offences on the part of druggists in
certain no-license towns--offences not only against the liquor
laws, but also against the laws of decency and humanity--brought
before the board of pharmacy, would appall the public if they
were known. The Looker-On has seen the record of several of
these druggists as transcribed from the police courts and they
are very black records. One druggist after selling liquor over
and over again to one customer, and several times getting him
completely intoxicated, finally deposited him one night in a
snowbank, in a state of frozen stupor, where he would have
frozen to death had not the wife of the druggist's clerk
threatened to complain to the police unless he was rescued.
"The story is told of one of the druggists of a neighboring
no-license town. A man came in and asked for a pint of whisky.
He was asked what he wanted it for. His reply was that he wanted
it to soak some roots in. He got it, and as he went out he dryly
remarked, 'I should have told you that it was the roots of me
tongue that I want to soak.'"
CHAPTER VIII.
DISEASES, AND THEIR TREATMENT WITHOUT ALCOHOL.
The question, "What shall I take instead of wine, beer or brandy?" is
frequently asked by those who have been trained to think some form of
alcohol really necessary to the cure of disease, but, who, from
principle would prefer other agents, if they knew of any equal in
effect. This chapter deals somewhat with the answer to that question.
ALCOHOLIC CRAVING:--The craving for alcohol may be present for a time
after a person has commenced to abstain from all beverages containing
it. Or, it may occur periodically, as a sort of irresistible impulse.
For the periodical craving Dr. Higginbotham, of England, recommends that
a half drachm of ipecacuanha be taken so as to produce full vomiting. He
says the desire for intoxicating drinks will be immediately removed. The
craving is caused by vitiated secretions of the stomach; the vomiting
removes these. Dr. Higginbotham says:--
"If a patient can be persuaded to follow the emetic plan for a
few times when the periodical attacks come on, he will be
effectually cured."
Some men in trying to abstain have found the use of fresh fruit,
especially apples, very helpful. Nourishing and digestible food should
be taken somewhat frequently. A cup of hot milk or hot coffee taken at
the right moment has saved some.
ANÆMIA:--In this complaint there is a deficiency of the red corpuscles
of the blood. It may be the result of some fever or exhausting illness;
it may accompany dyspepsia, and is then due to imperfect digestion and
assimilation of the food. The poverty of the blood produces shortness of
breath, and often palpitation of the heart also, especially on a little
exertion. There is generally more or less weariness, languor and
debility, sometimes also giddiness, sickness, fainting and neuralgia.
"In the treatment of anæmia, port wine and other alcoholic
liquors are worse than useless."--DR. J. J. RIDGE, London.
"The common prescription of wine or some form of spirits for
states of general exhaustion and anæmia, is a serious mistake.
It assumes that the temporary increase in the action of the
heart is renewed vigor, and that some power is added to the
failing energies. This theory rests solely on the statement of
the patient that he feels better. In reality the exhaustion is
intensified, though covered up."--_Medical Pioneer._
"Deficiency of nutrition, of light and of pure air may be
mentioned as common causes of anæmia. * * * * * It is evident
that the first step in the treatment of this disease is to
remove the cause. If the cause is dyspepsia, this must receive
attention; if intestinal parasites, they must be dislodged; if
prolonged nursing, nursing must be interdicted; if too little
food, a larger quantity of nourishing, wholesome food must be
employed. Such simple and easily digested foods as eggs, poached
or boiled, boiled milk, kumyzoon, good buttermilk, purée of
peas, beans or lentils, boiled rice, well-cooked gruels and
other preparations of grains are suitable. Beef tea and extracts
are worthless. * * * * *
"A careful course of physical training is essential to securing
perfect recovery in cases of chronic anæmia due to indigestion,
or any other serious disturbance of the nutritive
processes."--DR. J. H. KELLOGG.
APPETITE, LOSS OF:--"There is often disinclination for food
because _it is not required_. Many cannot eat much breakfast,
because they have had a hearty supper. Or having had both a
hearty breakfast and luncheon, they feel but little desire for a
dinner of four or five courses. Generally the stomach is right
and the habits wrong. What is to be done then, for such lack of
appetite? Simply go without food until appetite comes.
"When ale or beer is taken regularly with meals the stomach
learns to expect them, and the food is not relished without
them. The appetizing power of beer and bitter ales is chiefly
due to the hop or other bitter ingredients which they contain.
When it seems necessary to assist the appetite temporarily, a
small quantity of simple infusion of hops may be taken.
"Sometimes appetite fails because of exhaustion of body and
mind. This may be nature's warning against overwork, and cannot
be neglected with impunity. Life will inevitably be shortened if
it is found necessary to rely upon the aid of alcohol in any
form in order to do a day's work.
"Bouillon, or beef soup, at the beginning of a meal are
incentives to appetite. Change of scene, and life in the open
air are the very best aids to appetite, when aids are really
required."
APOPLEXY:--"There is a popular idea that whenever a person is
taken ill with giddiness, fainting or insensibility, brandy
should be at once procured and poured down his throat. Nothing
can be more dangerous in apoplexy. This disease is due to the
bursting of some blood-vessel in the head, and the poured-out
blood presses on the brain and leads to more or less
insensibility. If fainting occurs, it may possibly save the
patient's life, because then the blood-vessels contract, and the
flow of blood ceases immediately; time is thus given for the
ruptured blood-vessel to became sealed up by a clot, which will
prevent further loss of blood. If brandy is given, there is,
first, great risk of choking the patient; if that danger is
escaped and the brandy is swallowed and absorbed, the vessels
become relaxed and the heart recovers its force; hence the
ruptured vessel, if not sufficiently sealed by clot, may be
started again, and fatal hemorrhage result.
"The only _treatment_ which unskilled hands can adopt is to lay
the patient on his back on the floor or sofa with the head and
shoulders somewhat raised; to loosen all the dress round the
neck and body; to apply cold to the head and hot flannels or a
hot bottle to the feet and hands, or to soak them in hot mustard
and water, and to gently rub the arms and legs."--DR. J. J.
RIDGE.
Dr. Alfred Smee, surgeon to the Bank of England, says:--
"Give nothing by the mouth. Apply a stream of cold water to the
head. If the feet are cold apply warm cloths. If relief is not
soon obtained, apply hot fomentations to the abdomen, keeping
the head erect."
BED-SORES:--Some object to using alcohol even as an outward application.
Dr. Ridge recommends that when a patient is confined to bed the parts
pressed on be well washed every day with strong salt and water or alum
water, and carefully dried. _Glycerine of Tannin_ may then be applied.
If any redness appears, especially if any dusky patch is formed,
_collodion_ may be applied with a brush, and all pressure should be
taken off the part by a circular air-pillow or by a cushion; or small
bran or sand-bags may be made and carefully arranged. If the skin is
broken, _zinc_ or _resin ointment_ may be applied.
Some recommend finely powdered iodoform sprinkled over the surface of
the sore.
BOILS AND CARBUNCLE:--"In many cases these troubles result from
an overloaded condition of the system, which is the result of
taking too much food, or some error in diet. The boils are an
effort of nature to be rid of offending matter. In some cases
they are due to the use of impure water, or the presence of
sewer gas in the house. In others, overwork, or other
debilitating causes, may have produced the state of the
digestive organs which usually causes the boils. Carbuncle is,
essentially, an extensive boil.
"Apply iodine early or a piece of belladonna plaster. The diet
should be plain and unstimulating, condiments being avoided and
plenty of fresh vegetables taken, if possible. Fresh-air,
exercise and proper rest should be obtained, and late hours
avoided.
"Medical advice is requisite in carbuncle. The popular notion
that port wine is absolutely necessary is both erroneous and
mischievous."--RIDGE.
CATARRH:--Among the causes are repeated colds; errors in diet,
especially excess in the use of fats and sugar, and an inactive state of
the liver.
Cut off from your bill of fare all salted foods, avoid fats and
condiments; drink freely of pure water; live in the open-air and
sunshine as much as possible, taking much out-door exercise. Take a
cold sponge or towel bath every morning, beginning at the face and
finishing by plunging the feet into a foot-tub. Follow with vigorous
rubbing with a crash or Turkish towel. Those subject to sore throat
should hold the head over a basin of cold water and lave the neck with
the water for about two minutes. The writer was formerly subject to
frequent sore throats, but has had none for over two years, as she
believes, because of the adoption of this measure, together with the
towel bath every morning, summer and winter.
Care should be taken to avoid exposure to draughts, or any other means
which will produce liability to cold. Care in diet, good ventilation and
the morning cold bath are essential if a radical cure is desired. Local
measures, while giving relief, will not remove the predisposing causes.
Dr. Kellogg recommends saline solutions in the form of the nasal douche,
a teaspoonful of salt to a pint of soft water, adding twenty to thirty
drops of carbolic acid, if there is offensive odor, as a relief measure.
Sleeping in a poorly ventilated room is said to be one cause of catarrh.
_Hay Fever_ is a form of catarrh. The vapor bath is recommended as very
helpful in this trouble. _Nature Cure_ says that two vapor baths and a
two or three days' fast will cure any case of hay fever. The use of pork
and other clogging foods should be avoided by those afflicted with this
trouble. The bowels should be kept in good condition. If constipated,
the use of prunes, figs, grapes, apples and other such fruits will be
very beneficial; walking, and massage of the bowels, being added if the
fruits are not sufficient. No one able to walk should depend upon drugs
to relieve a constipated condition.
COLDS:--"If the bowels are constipated, the skin over-burdened
and clogged with bilious matter, and the lungs weak, it is as
easy to take cold as to roll off a log. If, on the contrary, the
lungs are well developed, and the respiratory power large,
providing abundant oxygen to keep bright the internal fires, the
colon clean, the skin daily washed, and the system hardened by
the cold bath, taking cold is next to impossible.
"The first remedial agent for a cold should be a copious enema.
Then open the pores of the skin by a hot bath; take a glass of
hot lemonade and go to bed."--_The New Hygiene._
CHILLS:--For chill, take a hot foot and hand bath, with mustard in the
water, 1/4 pound to a gallon; then go to bed in a well ventilated room.
Drink freely of hot lemonade or hot water. Catarrh, colds and hay fever
may all be effectually relieved by hot baths. Relief may be gained also
from inhaling the vapor from pine needles or hemlock leaves. Put them in
a bowl, pour boiling water over them, hold the face down over the bowl,
the head being covered, and inhale the vapor well up into the nostrils
and head. A few drops of hemlock oil in the hot water will do as well.
COUGHS AND HOARSENESS:--Boil flaxseed in 1 pint water, strain, add two
teaspoons honey, 1 ounce rock candy, and juice 3 lemons. Drink hot.
Also; roast a lemon till hot, cut, and squeeze on 3 ounces powdered
sugar.
COLIC:--This may arise from cold, or from error in diet. If the latter
it is desirable to induce vomiting. For the pain, apply hot flannels or
fomentations; drink hot water. In severe cases, sprinkle a little
turpentine on flannel, wrung from hot water, and apply to abdomen. Colic
resulting from the accumulation of fecal matter should be treated with
hot enemas until relieved. A hot hip-bath is sometimes necessary to
relief.
The colic of children and infants should never be treated with
alcoholics. In infants it generally arises from excessive or improper
feeding; care should be taken that the milk provided them is not sour.
In severe cases the babe should be immersed in warm water, keeping the
head above water, of course. This is also the best remedy in
convulsions. The hot bath, with a copious enema of warm water, has saved
the lives of many babes.
For adults, hot water, with a pinch of red pepper added, will do all
that brandy can do, and more.
CHOLERA:--Brandy has been considered by many a really necessary medicine
in cholera. The following is a discussion upon Alcohol in Cholera which
was held at the annual meeting of the British Medical Temperance
Association, in May, 1893, and is taken from the _Medical Pioneer_ of
June, 1893:--
"Dr. Richardson opened a discussion on Cholera in relation to
Alcohol. He said he would bring forward five points on the
subject.
1. The negligence among the people at large produced by alcohol
in the presence of a cholera epidemic. There was no doubt on the
part of any who had seen an epidemic of cholera as to the
mischief done by alcohol, apart from its action as a remedy.
People rush to the public houses and take it to ward off the
danger, or to relieve them when they begin to feel ill, and the
result is very bad morally. He had seen this in different
epidemics. Or people got in spirits to face the danger, and many
became intoxicated and less able to resist.
2. Its misuse by those affected. It was often given to cheer
them up and remove their fear and nervousness. In his opinion it
invariably produced mischief.
3. He was unable to find any physiological reason for giving it.
There was a constant drain of fluid, causing spasms and cramp,
both of the muscles and blood-vessels, and difficult circulation
through the lungs. Spasm may be relaxed by alcohol, but, on the
other hand, alcohol is exceedingly greedy of water, and so
increases the flux. But it also reduces animal temperature,
which is a strong feature of cholera, so much so that he could
almost diagnose cholera blindfold in the stage of collapse, by
the icy coldness.
4. Its uselessness as a remedy during the acute stage. He had
seen a great deal of cholera and never saw alcohol do any good
whatever. There was a temporary glow which passed away in a few
minutes, and then the evil it does in other ways was brought
out. Water was far better, even if cold. The College of
Physicians had given some instructions and ordered great care in
the administration of alcohol; this was not far enough, but good
as far as it went. The recoveries were best where the treatment
was simplest, such as external warmth with plenty of diluents.
He had given creasote largely.
5. Its injuriousness during the stage of reaction. The reactive
fever following collapse caused a great number of deaths. In
this stage alcohol was absolutely poisonous. He could recall
many such cases in which he had given alcohol through ignorance,
and always with disaster.
"Brigade-Surgeon Pringle said that when he went out to India he
thought alcohol was something to stand by, but he had soon found
out his mistake; he had himself suffered from it. He could
confirm what Dr. Richardson had said as to the demoralization
produced by alcohol to which men resort to keep up their
spirits, and men seized under these circumstances were in the
greatest danger. Nature effects a cure in many cases without
assistance, and often with wonderful rapidity. People apparently
dead and about to be buried, he had known to get up and recover.
When alcohol is given during collapse there is often no
absorption until reaction occurs, and then the quantity
accumulated speedily produces intoxication. It was the same with
opium: he had found pills unchanged in the stomach for hours. He
recommended hot drinks; he had tried every kind of medicine and
had little faith in it. The nursing was very important, and it
was important that the nurses should abstain.
"Dr. Morton said it was easy to see that on physiological
grounds alone, alcohol, with its strong affinity for water and
its tendency to lower temperature, could not be a useful drug in
the treatment of cholera collapse, and with its powers of
paralyzing vascular inhibition and checking elimination of
effete matter, could not be otherwise than harmful in the stage
of reaction. As these conclusions were corroborated by practical
experience he did not think members would hesitate to banish it
from their equipment against cholera.
"Dr. Ridge said it should be remembered that Doyen had made
experiments on guinea-pigs and had found they were proof against
cholera, unless they had previously had a dose of alcohol. This
explained why drunkards and hard drinkers were so much more
liable to have cholera, and have it badly as all observers
declared to be the case. Another reason might be that small
quantities of alcohol, such as would be found circulating in the
blood, favored the growth and multiplication of bacteria,
certainly those of decomposition, and probably those of cholera.
Hence, other things being equal, the abstainer had a great
advantage.
"Dr. Norman Kerr said that he had observed both in America and
Glasgow that not only notorious drunkards but free drinkers
suffered; abstainers were less liable unless they took
contaminated water, and the less liquid taken the less chance of
taking cholera; beer-drinkers often took more than abstainers.
The alcohol-drinker uses up more water from his blood and so has
less to flush out the system. Alcohol, given to a patient,
disguised his condition so that he might seem better though
really worse. Hence it is better and safer not to give any. The
doctors and nurses ought to be abstainers. A doctor after dinner
was more likely to take a roseate view of a case, looking at it
through an alcoholic pair of spectacles. Alcohol was not really
a stimulant, but a depressant, and this is a very depressing
disease; it was important to have our vital resisting power as
vigorous as possible. Hot water both relaxes and stimulates, and
the whole cry of the sufferer is for water. Many persons who
died in cholera did not die of the disease, but of the drugs
such as alcohol and opium. Acid drinks should be given, as the
bacilli could not live in acid mixtures. Cholera might come, but
he believed we were better prepared to meet it and to treat it.
"Surgeon-General Francis sent a communication which was read by
the Honorable Secretary. He said: 'Having had many opportunities
of treating cholera in various parts of India and amongst all
classes, I have no hesitation in affirming that alcohol in any
shape is one of the very worst remedies. Life is, so to speak,
paralyzed, and we give a remedy which, apparently stimulating,
is in reality, a paralyzer and therefore mischievous; the
death-rate might be considerably reduced provided alcohol were
rigidly excluded.'"
Dr. Norman Kerr in a valuable paper upon Cholera says:--
"The first thing is to get rid of the poison. How? By assisting
it out; but alcohol keeps it in by blocking the doors, just as
the doors were blocked in the terrible calamity at Sunderland
not long ago. The alcohol makes the heart and circulation labor
more. Alcohol not only retains the cholera poison, but retards
the action of the heart. Brandy and opium used to be employed,
but the records show that if the object had been to make cholera
as fatal as possible, that object was achieved by the
indiscriminate administration of brandy and opium. Better leave
the victim alone, and his chances of recovery will be greater
than if he have a thousand doctors, and as many nurses,
administering to him brandy and opium. Alcohol is especially
dangerous in the third stage, that of reactive fever, because it
adds to the fever. Then, alcohol is not only unsafe in the three
stages of genuine cholera, but especially unsafe in the
premonitory diarrhoea stage, which gives nearly every one
warning before they are attacked by genuine cholera. Brandy is
taken simply because it puts away the pain. If there are only
the pain and slight diarrhoea, speaking medically, it is all
right, but if there is anything behind the pain, it is all
wrong. After the alcohol, the mischief is going on, only the
patient does not know it, and valuable time is lost. All the
alcohol does is to deaden sensation. * * * * * Here I can
thoroughly recommend ice and iced water. I have always treated
cholera patients with these. Let them drink iced water to their
hearts' content; they can never drink too much; and this opinion
is fortified by that of Professor Maclean, of Netley. There is
no need of a substitute for brandy in cholera, because in
ordinary circumstances in that disease the action of a stimulant
is bad. Flushing of the blood is required, and water will do
it. Milk will not do it, because it is too thick--nothing but
pure, cold water, all the better if iced."
In 1893 Dr. Ernest Hart, editor of the _British Medical Journal_, read
an able paper upon Cholera before the American Medical Association. His
argument was that the introduction of such a substance as alcohol,
itself being a product of germ action, into a system already suffering
from the toxic influence of a ptomaine, could not be otherwise than
pernicious.
CHOLERA MORBUS:--Dr. Kellogg says: "The stomach should be washed
by means of the stomach-tube when possible. A large hot enema
should be given after each evacuation of the bowels. The
addition of tannin, one drachm to a quart of water, is
serviceable. When the vomited matter no longer shows signs of
food, efforts should be made to stop the vomiting. Give the
patient bits of ice the size of a bean to swallow every few
minutes. At the same time apply hot fomentations over the
stomach and bowels. If the patient suffer much from cramp, put
him into a warm bath. The first food taken should be
farinaceous. Oatmeal gruel, well boiled and strained, is
useful."
CHOLERA INFANTUM:--"Iced water may be given in very small
quantities every few minutes. Give the stomach entire rest for
at least twenty-four hours. There will be no suffering for want
of food as long as the stomach is in such a condition. Withhold
milk until nature has had time to rid the alimentary canal of
the poison-producing germs. White of egg dissolved in water is
an excellent preparation in these cases. Egg enemata may also be
advantageously used.
"Warm baths, the hot blanket pack when the surface is cold, and
the hot enema are all useful. Keep the child wrapped warmly.
"Great care should be taken in returning to the milk diet. The
milk should be thoroughly sterilized by boiling for half an
hour, and should be mixed with some barley water so as to avoid
the formation of large curds in the stomach. Cream, diluted with
water, may be used instead of milk."
CONSUMPTION.
Dr. Koch, the celebrated German microscopist, pronounces consumption
contagious, because during its progress a very minute bacterium is
developed which may be transmitted from one person to another.
It is said that a person with healthy lungs might daily breathe millions
of tubercle bacilli without any danger, and that the best preventive of
this disease is to live much in the open air, or if this is impossible
to spend ten or fifteen minutes a day in deep breathing exercises in the
open air. "Fresh-air and disease-germs are antagonistic."
Alcohol, chiefly in the form of whisky, was for many years considered of
great value in the treatment of consumption of the lungs. Indeed, it was
looked upon not only as a curative, but also as a prophylactic, or
preventive, of great service to those predisposed to this disease by
reason of narrow chest and weak lungs.
Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson was the first medical scientist who showed
plainly that alcohol, instead of being a preventive of consumption, is
really the sole cause of one type of this disease, the type now classed
under the head of "alcoholic phthisis." For this kind of phthisis there
is no hope of cure.
French physicians some years ago came to the conclusion that alcohol was
a prolific cause of tuberculosis and that the administration of
alcoholic liquors in tubercular troubles was a great error, and in the
International Anti-Tuberculosis Congress held in Paris in 1905, about
2000 medical scientists being present, they presented the following
resolution, which was adopted: "In view of the close connection between
alcoholism and tuberculosis, this Congress strongly emphasizes the
importance of combining the fight against tuberculosis with the struggle
against alcoholism."
Since that time a great crusade against tuberculosis has been carried on
by means of exhibits and lectures, and in connection with these, almost
invariably the people are warned against intemperance. For example, a
pamphlet sent out by the Boston Association for the Relief and Control
of Tuberculosis says: "Do not spend money for beer or other liquors, or
for quack medicines or 'cures.' Self-indulgence and intemperance are
very bad. Vice which weakens the strong kills the weak." The New York
State Charities Aid Association, working with the State Board of Health,
says in a pamphlet: "Patent medicines do not cure consumption. They are
usually alcoholic drinks in disguise, and the use of alcoholic drinks is
dangerous to the consumptive." At the great exhibit in Washington in
September, 1908, in connection with the International Anti-Tuberculosis
Congress different warnings against alcohol were upon the walls. Among
these was a large poster of white cloth on which was printed the
opinions on alcohol, in brief, of some of the best-known authorities on
consumption. The opinions as given on that poster are given here, with
others, in order to show the great change of sentiment regarding alcohol
and consumption which has come about within a few years:--
"Alcohol has never cured and never will cure tuberculosis. It
will either prevent or retard recovery. It is like a two-edged
weapon; on one side it poisons the system, and on the other it
ruins the stomach and thus prevents this organ from properly
digesting the necessary food."--S. A. KNOPF, M. D., New York,
Honorary Vice-President of the British Congress on Tuberculosis.
Dr. Knopf in his prize essay on "Tuberculosis and How to Combat
It," says in several places: "Avoid all alcoholic beverages." He
says also, "Alcohol should never be given to children even in
the smallest quantities."
"It is a recognized fact in the medical profession that the
habitual use of alcoholic drinks predisposes to tubercular
infection. It is also recognized, I think, by most physicians
that alcohol as a medicine is harmful to the tubercular
invalid."--FRANK BILLINGS, M. D., Chicago, Ill., Former
President American Medical Association.
"Alcoholic liquors are of damage to consumptives because they
tend to impair nutrition, disturb the action of the stomach, and
give a false strength to the invalid on which he is sure to
presume. Besides, we know that in countries where drinking
prevails most, the ravages of tuberculosis are most
marked."--EDWARD L. TRUDEAU, M. D., Adirondacks Sanitarium for
Consumptives, Saranac Lake, N. Y.
"In my judgment whisky should not be used by people who have
consumption, and in my practice I prohibit its use absolutely.
At the White Haven Sanitarium and Henry Phipps Institute we do
not use alcohol in any form in the treatment of our
patients."--LAWRENCE F. FLICK, M. D., Vice-President of the
National Association for the Study and Prevention of
Tuberculosis, Philadelphia, Pa.
"I do not feel that I can emphasize strongly enough the harm
that can be done by the use of alcohol in tuberculosis, and the
indiscriminate use of it certainly borders on the criminal. I do
not believe that any legitimate reason can be given for the
routine employment of alcohol in the treatment of tuberculosis.
I furthermore know of no emergency in which it is indispensable.
My experience with patients who have been accustomed to the use
of alcohol, especially moderately, is very unsatisfactory. They
seem to show an abnormally low resisting power to the tubercle
bacillus. The fact has been established that alcoholism is a
very potent factor in the causation of tuberculosis. I find it
not only unnecessary in treatment but believe it to be
contraindicated."--F. M. POTTENGER, M. D., Superintendent the
Pottenger Sanitarium for Diseases of the Lungs and Throat,
Monrovia, California.
"I have met with a small class of consumptive patients who could
take alcoholic liquors freely for a length of time, without
deranging either the stomach or the brain, and with a decided
amelioration of the pulmonary symptoms, and an arrest of the
emaciation. Some of these have actually increased in
_embonpoint_, and for three to six months were highly elated
with the hope that they were recovering. But truth compels me to
say that I have never seen a case in which this apparent
improvement under the influence of alcoholic drink was
permanent. On the contrary, even in those cases in which the
emaciation seems at first arrested, and the general symptoms
ameliorated, the physical signs do not undergo a corresponding
improvement; and after a few months the digestive function
becomes impaired; the emaciation begins to increase rapidly; and
in a short time the patient is fatally prostrated."--DR. NATHAN
S. DAVIS, SR., of Chicago.
"The use of whisky in this disease positively interferes with
digestion which must under all circumstances be kept as perfect
as possible in order that the patient may assimilate the food
which is so necessary to the upbuilding of the system and to
gain strength to fight the onslaught of the disease.
"Its constant use would not only interfere with digestion but
would have a tendency to create disease in other organs of the
body so that we therefore consider the use of whisky in
tuberculosis positively contraindicated.
"Wishing you success in your laudable campaign."--DR. M.
COLLINS, Superintendent National Jewish Hospital for
Consumptives, Denver, Colorado.
"It is difficult for many people to adapt themselves to a
methodical plan of life long enough to establish a permanent
cure in consumption. I have known many a young fellow with only
a slight trouble in his lungs to die in the Adirondacks more
from the effects of whisky than from the disease itself."--DR.
HENRY P. LOOMIS, of New York City, in a Lecture on Consumption.
(See page 232, of Handbook, on the Prevention of Tuberculosis.)
"The majority of our patients receive no medication whatsoever.
The stomach is rarely in condition to bear excessive medication,
and the promiscuous use of creosote and similar preparations is
to be condemned. Milk and raw eggs are the best articles of diet
in addition to a regular diet of simple food."--JAMES ALEXANDER
MILLER, M. D., of the Vanderbilt Clinic, New York. (From Medical
Record.)
"In my specialty, the treatment of pulmonary diseases, I rarely
prescribe alcohol in any form, and in the sanitaria with which I
have been connected it is the exception where alcohol in any
form is prescribed. I have advised against its use where such
has been the custom, believing that as a rule alcoholic liquors
do more harm than good in the treatment of this disease."--PROF.
VINCENT Y. BOWDITCH, M. D., Harvard Medical School, Boston.
"From personal experience in handling pulmonary tuberculosis,
not only at the Nordrach Ranch Sanitorium, for the past five
years, but in an active practice of thirteen years, I am more
than convinced that whisky and liquor, in any form, are
absolutely poisonous to the consumptive.
"Whenever we admit a patient to the Nordrach Ranch Sanitorium,
we ascertain whether the individual is an alcoholic or not; and
we invariably find that such an individual is lacking in
vitality enough to combat the disease. They may look fat and
strong, pulmonary tuberculosis usually makes quick work of them.
"It is also a noticeable fact, proven by various statistics,
that a very large percentage of alcoholics become tubercular;
and if we ever stamp out tuberculosis, we will also have to
stamp out intemperance.
"Trying to cure consumption with whisky is like trying to put
out a fire with kerosene. This is very easy to understand when
we stop to consider the nature of this disease. In the first
place, we have a very rapid heart's action, dating from the very
earliest manifestations of the disease. The pulse is often in
excess of 100, even in incipient cases, and if the stimulation
of alcohol is added, we have what might be called a 'runaway
heart'; and if there is one thing needed in the long combat
against tuberculosis, it is a good heart."--JOHN E. WHITE, M.
D., Medical Director Nordrach Ranch Sanitorium, Colorado
Springs, Colorado.
"You ask me my opinion as to the use of whisky in the treatment
of consumption. In reply permit me to say that I regard its use
in this disease as most universally pernicious."--PROF. CHARLES
G. STOCKTON, M. D., Buffalo Medical College, Buffalo, N. Y.
"It was formerly thought that alcohol was in some way
antagonistic to tuberculous disease, but the observations of
late years indicate clearly that the reverse is the case, and
that chronic drinkers are more liable to both acute and
pulmonary tuberculosis. It is probably altogether a question of
altered tissue soil, the alcohol lowering the vitality and
enabling the bacilli more readily to develop and grow."--DR.
OSLER, formerly Professor of Medicine in Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, Md., now of Oxford University, England.
"Upon investigation I found 38 per cent. of our male tubercular
patients were excessive users of alcohol, 56 per cent. moderate
users. From my study of the cases I am led to believe that in a
vast majority of these cases drink has been a large factor in
producing the disease, by exposure, lowering of vitality, etc. I
believe that alcohol has no place in the treatment of
tuberculosis. Many patients are deceived by the false strength
it gives them."--O. C. WILLHITE, M. D., Superintendent of Cook
County Hospital for Consumptives, Dunning, Ill.
"In tuberculosis there is a state of over-stimulation of the
circulatory system due to the toxins. The use of alcoholics
simply makes the condition worse. It reduces resistance and
makes the person more susceptible to the disease."--H. J.
BLANKMEYER, M. D., Sanatorium Gabriels, in the Adirondacks,
N. Y.
"The practice of taking alcoholics of any sort, and in any
quantity, over a considerable length of time, is certain to
produce more or less injury to a tubercular patient, and their
use by tubercular people cannot be too strongly condemned."--H.
S. GOODALL, M. D., Lake Kushaqua, N. Y.
Most of these opinions were written for the author of this book in
response to letters of inquiry. Are they not indicative of a day when
the medical profession will lay aside alcoholic liquors in the treatment
of all diseases? It is acknowledged that the past usage of giving whisky
and cod-liver oil to consumptives was an error; some day, it may be not
far distant, a larger acknowledgment may be made, and the medical use of
alcoholic liquors will be entirely a thing of the past.
Rev. J. M. Buckley, D.D., editor of _The Christian Advocate_, was in
early manhood considered an incurable consumptive. Being a man of great
will power and indomitable perseverance, he resolved to try the open-air
cure, together with the use of an inspirator. The result was perfect
restoration to health, so that, as is well known, he can be easily heard
by audiences of thousands at Chautauqua and other places where he is
greatly in request for lectures. He has written a pamphlet giving a full
history of his case. It can be obtained from Eaton & Mains, 150 Fifth
Avenue, New York, for fifty cents, and should be read by all
consumptives who have any "grit" in their composition.
Dr. Forrest, a hygienic physician, says:--
"What is to be done if the germs have already obtained lodgement
in the lungs? Increase the general nutrition of the body in
every way, and then the lungs can resist the inroads of the
disease. The first thing necessary to improve the nutrition of
the body is to stimulate the digestive and absorbent functions
of the stomach and intestines. Naturally then, you must throw
the so-called cough medicines out of the window. The drugs used
to stop a cough are sedatives. Now, no sedative or nauseant is
known that does not lock up the natural secretions and thus
lessen the digestive powers. The cough is nature's method of
expelling offending matter from the lungs and bronchial tubes.
It is infinitely better to have this stuff thrown out of the
lungs than retained there."
Keep the bowels clean is this physician's next recommendation.
Sweet cream is preferable to cod-liver oil as it is not so likely to
derange the stomach. Easily digested food is necessary, as the organs
of digestion are in weakened condition.
Again Dr. Forrest says:--
"The consumptive should live as much as possible in the open
air.
"Dr. Trudeau inoculated twelve rabbits with tubercle or
consumptive germs. Six of these he turned loose on an island
where they ran wild. The other six were kept confined in hutches
such as rabbits are usually kept in. Results--All the six
rabbits in the open air recovered from the inoculation and
remained well. Five of the confined rabbits died of tubercles in
the lungs and different parts of the body. The sixth was still
lingering, badly diseased, when the experiment was brought to a
close. Fresh air and exercise enabled the first six to overcome
the disease germs. Confinement gave full play to the disease in
the others.
"Now, you house lovers, sleepers in close bedrooms, people
afraid of cold air, you are the rabbits in the hutches. Beware,
lest the verdict be in your case, 'Died of tubercles in the
lungs.' If you are not able to leave your home, live with open
windows, day and night, summer and winter.
"Exercise systematically, especially those exercises,
accompanied by deep breathing, that open and strengthen the
lungs--exercises without fatigue.
"If you are hoping that some wonderful, mysterious drug has been
or will be discovered, a drug that will cure consumption without
your help, you are hoping against hope. Improved nutrition is
your salvation, and that must come through exercise, diet and
fresh air."
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, in his _Home Hand-Book of Hygiene and Medicine_,
recommends a salt sponge bath upon retiring, to arrest night sweats, or
sponging with hot water. He adds:--
"It is important that patients should know that the sweats are
greatly aggravated by opium in any form, and hence are increased
by cough mixtures of any sort which contain this drug. Very
simple remedies are often effective to relieve the most
distressing cough, such as gargling of water in the throat,
holding bits of ice in the mouth, taking occasional sips of
strong lemonade, and similar remedies. As a general rule,
patients run down and the disease progresses much more rapidly,
after beginning the use of opium in any form. Sometimes it is
best that the cough should be encouraged instead of being
repressed. When the patient expectorates very freely, the cough
is a necessary means of relieving the chest of matters which
would seriously interfere with the functions of the lungs if
retained, by filling up the bronchial tubes and air-cells. The
kind of cough needing relief is an irritable, ineffective cough,
unaccompanied by any considerable degree of expectoration. Loaf
sugar, honey or a mixture of honey and lemon juice, and other
simple, familiar remedies are often effective in relieving such
a cough. * * * * *
"It is perhaps needless to add that the numerous quack remedies
for consumption advertised in the newspapers are wholly without
merit. There is no known drug which will cure this disease, or
in any certain degree influence its progress. Numerous remedies
have been recommended as curative, but not one has thus far
stood the test of experience."
DISPLACEMENTS OF THE UTERUS:--These conditions are not among those for
which alcoholic liquors are likely to be advised by a physician, but
women frequently resort to Lydia Pinkham's Compound and other alcoholic
preparations in the vain hope of finding the relief so positively
promised in the nostrum advertisements. Women are sometimes seriously
injured by using the nostrums specially advised for uterine weaknesses,
for this reason: a drug which may be of service in an anæmic condition
of the womb may do much damage in an inflamed or engorged condition, yet
the nostrum vendors advise their preparations for all alike, without a
word of warning as to possible dangers.
Ordinary displacements may be recovered from by cleanliness of the parts
and by exercises which strengthen the muscles in the pelvic region. The
writer has known a considerable number of women who have been restored
to health by exercises after months, in some cases, and several years in
others, of weakness and misery. One of these women was a close relative
of a celebrated specialist in women's diseases. He said he could not do
any more for her, and gave permission for her to try the exercises,
which were given her by a well-equipped teacher of physical training.
There are three kinds of displacements: anteversion, retroversion, and
prolapsus. The causes of these troubles are various; lack of proper care
in child-bearing, miscarriages, heavy lifting, a hard fall, jumping out
of a carriage, straining, too violent exercise in gymnasium work, and
tight-lacing, also gradual weakening of the ligaments which sustain the
uterus in position.
An abdominal supporter should be worn constantly during the day for a
year or so, then left off gradually an hour or two at a time. It should
be worn during the second year whenever any extra work is to be done.
There is a supporter sold by the Battle Creek Sanitarium which is highly
recommended, but any physician can get one for a patient.
Perfect cleanliness is necessary. For this purpose a hot vaginal douche
should be taken two or three times a day. This douche should be made
astringent by adding to a pint of water a quarter ounce of alum or
tannin. The hot astringent injections tone up the lower supports of the
uterus, and cleanse the passage. The patient should remain in a
recumbent position for some hours after the douche if possible.
Considerable rest hastens a cure. Take the rest in the fresh air when
weather permits. Persistent use of sitz baths will be found helpful.
For prolapsus the simplest form of internal supporter is a small roll of
cotton. After the organ is carefully put into position this supporter
should be pressed up against the mouth of the womb, the patient
meanwhile lying upon her back. The ball of absorbent cotton should be
large enough to be retained in position, and should be saturated with a
weak solution of glycerine and alum or glycerine and tannin before being
applied. A piece of white cord should be tied firmly around the centre
of this tampon by which it may be removed. Remove before taking the
douche.
Persons who feel unable to purchase an elastic or other abdominal
supporter can make a substitute (not so good, but of considerable
service) from unbleached muslin made in the shape of the letter T, and
having the cloth double. It should go up to the waist and be made to
fit over the hips, then should be fastened firmly in front with
safety-pins, and the cross-piece be drawn up from the back and fastened
securely in front.
The daily exercises are the most important part of the treatment. They
must be begun gradually, and taken at greater length as strength is
gained. Those for prolapsus will be given first:--
The patient should lie upon a rug, or on a firm long sofa or couch. The
feet should be drawn up as close to the body as possible. Now lift the
lower part of the body so that the hips and lower portion of the trunk
will have no support but what comes from the feet and shoulders. Hold
this position for a minute or two (longer when able without much
fatigue). After a few minutes' rest repeat. This exercise may be
continued from twenty to thirty minutes, according to patient's
strength. The elevation of the hips in this exercise aids in the
restoration of the organ to its natural position. This exercise should
be continued daily, the number of times being increased as strength
increases.
A second exercise which is very helpful in prolapsus is to support the
body on the toes and elbows with the face downward, and the hips raised
as high as possible. Another exercise may be taken with an assistant;
the patient should lie face downward, supporting the body by the chest,
and keeping the limbs rigid while the assistant lifts the feet as high
as possible without hurting. These movements strengthen the abdominal
muscles and draw fresh blood to the weakened parts, and cause quickened
circulation in addition to restoring the displaced organ to natural
position. They should be taken at night just before retiring after a hot
douche. The bowels should be kept open by the free use of fruit. The
patient should sleep with the hips elevated as much as can be endured
without real discomfort and sit with the feet on a stool. When strength
sufficient is acquired the exercises for anteversion will be found
useful, and any other exercises which strengthen the abdominal muscles,
such as bending backward and forward, and sideways. Kneading and
percussing the abdomen by an osteopath or masseur strengthens, and also
relieves constipation. Rest during the day should be taken with the feet
higher than the head.
Prolapsus due to laceration in child-birth may require a surgical
operation.
In case of antiflexions the first exercise given for prolapsus should be
taken daily. (The advice for the prolapsus treatment and the exercises
are taken from the writings of Dr. J. H. Kellogg, superintendent of the
Battle Creek Sanitarium.).
ANTEVERSION:--Persons suffering from anteversion or retroversion should
sleep without pillows under the head, and lie flat upon the back; they
should sit with the feet as high as convenient and avoid high seats
which hinder the feet from touching the floor. They should discard
corsets and tight stocking supporters which push or hold down the organs
which need to be replaced. Stocking supporters should be fastened over
the hips and comfort waists can be bought in place of corsets.
It is well to have an attendant to prepare weak patients for first
exercises in all uterine troubles by the use of towels wrung from hot
water applied to the back and abdomen for a few minutes to relax the
muscles, or a hot water bottle, or hot salt bag may be used. Then, with
the patient lying with head low, the attendant should give the abdomen
and small of the back a thorough rubbing or kneading for ten minutes or
less according to strength of patient. Olive oil can be used on the hand
in the rubbing.
FIRST EXERCISE FOR ANTEVERSION:--Lie on bed or rug; fold arms on chest;
hold trunk of body still; stretch legs, and hold the position about half
a minute, then relax at the knee and ankle. Then point the toes down and
stretch upper leg muscles; relax; then stretch under leg muscles by
stretching heel out. The patient will feel the exercise as far as the
shoulders, and should be careful not to lift the body from the floor at
first. When patient can hold stretching exercise for a minute then lift
first the right, then the left leg, and take same exercise until the
person can give a quick little kick for, say, twelve times, as the leg
is straightened.
SECOND EXERCISE:--Lying on the back, stretch to full length; move the
left leg out at the side, then up and back to position, forming a
semi-circle, keeping muscles tense throughout. Then move right leg out
at the side--left--stretch toes long--relax--stretch heel--, lift a
little higher and bring back to place in a circle and rest. Same with
left leg and then both together. Few people can do this easily at first,
the weight of the legs is too much for the weak muscles at the back; but
some one can hold the foot at first. When the patient can do this easily
without bringing on any pain or ache, she may sit in a low chair and
take arm lifting exercises.
Raise both arms out at the sides, then slowly raise them up close to the
head and consciously lift all the organs of the body up, relax, and
lower arms down front and repeat slowly, six or ten times at first,
until for five minutes the patient can do this sitting. Then take it
standing for ten minutes or more. Stand with feet wide apart. Dr.
Anderson says, "A woman who will do this twenty times each day can never
have anteversion, if she dresses properly, for it lifts the organs in
place each time." It lifts the chest and abdomen up, and brings a
feeling of exhilaration if done in the open air.
After the patient has taken exercises for five or six weeks she may lie
flat on the back, fold arms and raise body up to sitting position
without unfolding arms. Then turn on right side and do the same, then on
left side and do the same. This is fine for back and abdomen muscles.
Anteversion needs the Rest Cure, and resting with the body in a position
in which nature can right things is an important thing to remember. Rest
always after exercise, either with a pillow under the knees or with the
legs hanging over a low foot-board, or lying on a couch with the feet
higher than the head. Exercise will relax the muscles and call for
blood which will revitalize and stimulate the weakened conditions. A
woman with this trouble should be careful about bending quickly over, or
climbing stairs, until she gains strength.
RETROVERSION:--Place the patient with face downward on bed or mat and
with a small pillow under the lower part of the abdomen. Relax the
muscles by applying a hot towel, hot salt bag or hot water-bottle just
below the small of the back, and lower part of the abdomen for ten or
fifteen minutes. (Hot salt bags are most effective and are easy to
handle.) Then rub the back briskly with a circular movement; if tender
in front, do not rub the abdomen. The circulation will gradually carry
away any inflammation as soon as the muscles reach a normal condition,
though kneading of back and abdomen, using sweet oil on the hand, is
helpful if the patient can bear it.
The patient must remember that these conditions have been months in
coming and only painstaking work and time can restore the weakened
organs. The manner of dress is very important; loose, comfortable
clothing must be worn. Sleep with the face down as much as possible;
nature will correct itself, if allowed, many times.
FIRST EXERCISE:--Fold arms under forehead and draw right knee up close
to body and hold two minutes (unless painful) and slowly straighten, and
stretch very slowly. Do the same with the left leg until the patient can
repeat the exercise twelve times with each leg and hold five minutes
instead of two, with the knee close to the body. It will probably take
two weeks to gain strength for this. After that time raise the body up
on hands, and move legs just as a baby does when creeping, except that
the patient only follows the movement and does not move along.
SECOND EXERCISE:--Patient take sitting position on floor and clasp hands
under knees, and bring knees up, so that chin and knees meet and hold.
Then straighten legs, slide hands toward the heels as far as hands can
reach, (stretch hands toward heels); make a continuous movement of this.
THIRD EXERCISE:--Sit on floor. Place the hands on floor at sides, legs
straight out in front, lift the body from the floor with the arms, up
and down. This is a fine exercise for raising up the misplaced organs.
FOURTH EXERCISE:--Place the patient flat on back and push the body up to
sitting position with hands quite far back and palms down, recline
again, up and down until arms and back are very tired. Then sit up, legs
straight in front, raise the body from the floor, (an inch) and move
backward, resting weight on hands, then move over on knees as at first
exercise and creep, then sit up and move backward again. These will take
a month to perfect. Begin by exercising five minutes and gradually work
up to half an hour, rest between, always. The patient must have the
right mental attitude, must think that she is trying to replace the
uterus by lifting it to its natural position. The exercises must not be
lazily done.
Sitting in a tub of hot water is most helpful where there is much
tenderness, or inflammation. Witch-hazel in hot water douches or a weak
solution of hot salt water is a wonderful tonic in some cases.
EXERCISE FOR REPLACING UTERUS TO BE TAKEN JUST BEFORE RETIRING:--Kneel
on the bed; bend forward until the chest is touching the bed and the
hips are elevated as high as possible. The inlet of the vagina should
then be opened so as to admit air. As soon as the air enters the womb
falls into position. Lie down at once and give nature a chance to regain
strength while you sleep.
The tampon soaked in glycerine and alum, and the douches of hot water,
in which a little alum is dissolved, are both of great service in
controlling the flooding which so frequently accompanies change of life
and miscarriages. (Exercises for anteversion and retroversion supplied
by a successful teacher of such work.)
The writer of this book asked a well-known medical writer why physicians
do not advise exercises for the cure of displacements instead of
operations. He said it is because women are not willing to do anything
to help themselves. They expect the physician to cure them, and the only
way a physician can "cure" is to operate. Sensible women, however, will
be glad to practice helpful exercises.
DEBILITY:--"The debility of convalescence requires fresh air,
easily digested food, the avoidance of over-exertion, with a
gradually increasing amount of exercise. Such debility is only
aggravated by alcohol, though it may for a time be partially
masked thereby. Milk, eggs, fresh fruit and farinaceous
articles are the best foods. General debility without obvious
cause, may be treated by cold or tepid bathing. Salt added to
the bath is helpful. Change of air is a good tonic. Port wine
and other alcoholics while giving a false sensation of increased
vigor, really _reduce the tone of the pulse_, and therefore tend
to enfeeble the system. Alcohol is a relaxant, _not a tonic_."
DEPRESSION OF SPIRITS:--"Learn the Delsarte exercise for the
'blues,' and practice them daily. Hot air baths. Avoid rich
food. Take out-door exercise."
DIARRHOEA:--"This is a symptom of the presence of an irritant
of which the stomach is trying to be rid. Do not arrest it
prematurely, but assist it. If it persists, arrowroot, or corn
starch, or flour, mixed with cold water to the consistency of
cream may be taken, a tablespoonful at a time. 2. Bread charcoal
with cold milk. 3. A tablespoonful of cinnamon water with a
teaspoonful of lime water, mixed, every one, two or three hours.
Smaller dose for a child. Diet should be confined to toast, milk
toast, milk, cold or boiled. Tea, broth, meat, etc., are sure to
renew the trouble. Diarrhoea in infants is generally due to
errors in feeding, either over-feeding or the use of improper
kinds of food. Boiled milk thickened with flour is a simple
remedy in light cases. Alcoholics are utterly unnecessary in
diarrhoea, and to order them for young children is quite
wrong. A full enema of water, as hot as can be borne, will
remove offending substances from the bowels.
"Beware of diarrhoea medicines containing opium in any form.
They are unnecessary and dangerous, particularly for young
children."
DYSENTERY:--"At the beginning of the disease the stomach should
be relieved by the use of a large warm-water emetic. The
quantity of food should be restricted to the smallest amount
compatible with comfort. Ripe fruits, especially grapes, and
most stewed fruits, may be used in abundance to keep the bowels
regular. Salads, spices and other condiments, fats and fried
foods should be strictly avoided, together with tea, coffee,
alcoholics and all other narcotics.
"The diet should consist chiefly of simple soups, well boiled
oatmeal gruel, egg beaten with water or milk, and similar foods.
In many cases regulation of the diet is sufficient. Either the
hot or the cold enema may be employed.
"The use of opium, which is exceedingly common in this disease,
is not advisable, as it produces a feverish condition of the
system, decidedly prejudicial to recovery. Herroner, an eminent
German physician, very strongly discourages the use of opium in
this disease."--DR. J. H. KELLOGG.
DYSPEPSIA:--"It is commonly supposed that a little good whisky
or brandy aids digestion, while on the contrary it has been
proved conclusively by observing the processes of digestion upon
persons who have fistula of the stomach, or by evacuating the
contents of the stomach by means of a stomach-pump about an hour
after taking a meal--in one instance after taking an ounce of
alcohol, and in another where no alcohol was taken--that alcohol
coagulates the albuminoids, throws down the pepsin, decreases
the acidity (the combined chlorin and free hydrochloric acid),
and increases the fixed chlorids. Any one can make the
observation upon himself, that a meal taken without alcohol is
more quickly followed by hunger than one with it.
"Blumenau says: 'On the whole, alcohol manifests a decidedly
unfavorable influence on the course of normal digestion even
when ingested in relatively small quantities, and impairs the
normal digestive functions.'
"Dr. Chittenden, professor of physiologic chemistry in Yale
College, as a result of some investigations made by himself and
Dr. Mendel, states in the _American Journal of Medical
Sciences_, that he finds that as small a quantity as three per
cent. of sherry, porter, or beer lessens the activity of the
digestive powers."--_Bulletin of A. M. T. A._
"It should be observed that doses of alcohol which have no
appreciable effect in delaying digestion, are so small as to be
practically useless for any beneficial action."--_Medical
Pioneer._
One doctor writes:--
"What makes dyspepsia so hard to cure? This very alcohol taking.
The best cure is to refuse all alcoholic drinks, at meals and
all other times, and drink nothing but water."
The causes of dyspepsia are various; errors of diet being the most
common. Others are mental worry, care and anxiety, and the use of drugs.
An eminent writer upon this disease says:
"My main object in the treatment is to prevent the sufferers
from resorting to drugs, which in such cases, not only produce
their own morbid conditions, but also confirm those already
existing.
"The extensive and often habitual use of alkalies for acidity,
of purgatives for constipation, nervines and opiates for
sleeplessness, and after-dinner pills to goad into action the
lagging stomach, has been a potent factor in the production of a
large class of most inveterate dyspepsias."
Underdone bread, cake, and pie, are unfit for any stomach, yet are seen
upon many tables. "Breakfast foods," cooked for ten or twenty minutes,
are also dyspepsia producers. All breads, cakes, pies and cereals,
require thorough cooking to fit them for digestion. Most cereals are
better for supper than for breakfast, as they should be cooked in a
double boiler for several hours. A young man, troubled with dyspepsia,
learned to his amazement that the oatmeal, which he supposed was his
best food, had much to do with the giddiness which often overcame him.
He was advised to use dry foods, such as toast, zwieback and shredded
wheat. This diet, together with the abandonment of nostrums, led to a
cure. Zwieback is bread sliced, and dried in a moderate oven until light
brown. Whole wheat bread is best. It is very delicious and is quite
easily digested. In the case of the young man, it is probable that the
difficulty with the oatmeal was the lack of sufficient cooking. Oatmeal
made into gruel, well cooked, and diluted with a large quantity of
scalded milk is easy of digestion.
Eating between meals, and excess in eating, lead to stomach derangement.
"The best remedy for acidity of the stomach is hot-water
drinking. Two or three glasses should be taken as hot as can be
sipped, one hour before each meal, and half an hour before going
to bed. The effect of the hot water is to wash out the stomach,
and so remove any fermenting remains of the previous meal.
Heartburn may be treated the same as acidity."
Persons troubled with slow digestion are better to eat only two meals a
day. The writer has personal knowledge of a goodly number of women who
have been benefited wonderfully by adopting the two meal a day plan.
Some persons, much troubled with dyspepsia, have adopted the plan of
prolonged fasting advocated by Dr. Dewey, and testify to a cure by this
method. While heroic, it is certainly more rational than drug treatment.
For acute dyspepsia a fast is requisite.
All that alcoholics can do for dyspepsia is to allay the uneasy
sensations for a time, while adding to the trouble. It has been
abundantly proved that alcohol must pass from the stomach before
digestion can begin.
Dr. Ridge says:--
"Many cases which seem to be relieved by the use of beer are
really benefited by the hop, or other bitter, which the ale or
beer contains. _Hop tea_ is a useful stomachic, and a quarter of
a pint, or half that quantity, may be taken cold. It is made in
the same way as tea, using a handful of hops to a pint of
boiling water. Make fresh every day."
Dr. Kellogg says:--
"In cases of chronic dyspepsia the use of alcohol seems to be
particularly deleterious, although not infrequently prescribed,
if not in the form of alcohol or ordinary alcoholic liquors, in
the form of some so-called 'bitters,' 'elixir' or 'cordial.'
Nothing could be further removed from the truth than the popular
notion that alcohol, at least in the form of certain wines, is
helpful to digestion. Roberts showed, years ago, that alcohol
even in small doses, diminishes the activity of the stomach in
the digestion of proteids. Gluzinski showed, ten years ago, that
alcohol causes an arrest in the secretion of pepsin, and also of
its action upon food. Wolff showed that the habitual use of
alcohol produces disorder of the stomach to such a degree as to
render it incapable of responding to the normal excitation of
the food. Hugounencq found that all wines, without exception,
prevent the action of pepsin upon proteids. The most harmful are
those which contain large quantities of alcohol, cream of tartar
or coloring matter. Wines often contain coloring matters which
at once completely arrest digestion, such as methylin blue and
fuchsin.
"A few years ago I made a series of experiments in which I
administered alcohol in various forms with a test meal, noting
the effect upon the stomach fluid as determined by the accurate
chemic examination of the method of Hayem and Winter. The result
of these experiments I reported at the 1893 meeting of the
American Medical Temperance Association. The subject of
experiment was a healthy young man whose stomach was doing a
slight excess of work, the amount of combined chlorin being
nearly fifty per cent. above normal, although the amount of free
hydrochloric acid was normal in quantity. Four ounces of claret
with the ordinary test meal reduced the free hydrochloric acid
from 28 milligrams per 100 c. c. of stomach fluid to zero, and
the combined chlorin from .270 to .125. In the same case the
administration of two ounces of brandy with the ordinary test
meal reduced the combined chlorin to .035, scarcely more than
one eighth of the original amount, the free hydrochloric acid
remaining at zero. Thus it appears that four ounces of claret
produced marked hypopepsia in a case of moderate hyperpepsia,
whereas two ounces of brandy produced practically apepsia."
FAINTING OR SYNCOPE:--The following letter from the late Sir B. W.
Richardson was addressed to a lady who had sought the great physician's
advice on the subject:--
"25 Manchester Square, W., July 18, 1896.
"DEAR MADAM: There is no substance which acts as a substitute
for alcohol, nor is anything like it wanted. The human body is a
water engine, as I have often described it, and alcohol plays no
part in its natural motion. The idea that when it begins to
fail, a stimulant has to be called for, springs merely from
habit, and if, whenever any of the symptoms of fainting you
speak of occur, the person merely lies down on the side or back
and drinks a glass of hot water, or hot milk and water, all that
can be done is done. In the London Temperance Hospital I have
been treating the sick for diseases of all kinds and during all
stages, and have never administered a minim of alcohol, or any
substitute for it, and we have got on better than when
I--feeling it at all times at command--made use of it in the
ordinary way.
"I am, dear Madam, faithfully yours,
"B. W. RICHARDSON."
TREATMENT:--"Lay the patient down in a current of air with the
feet raised higher than the head, preferably on one side in case
of sickness occurring, or bend the head down to the knees, to
restore the flow of blood to the brain. Loosen all clothing. Rub
the limbs, chest and over the heart with the hand or a rough
towel. Sprinkle cold water on the head and face. Smell ammonia,
strong vinegar, smelling salts or any pungent odor. Put hot
bottles to the feet, and in severe cases a mustard plaster over
the heart. Sip hot milk, hot water, hot tea, hot black coffee,
beef tea or a meat essence. Crowding round the patient and all
excitement should be avoided. In 999 cases out of 1,000, no
medicine is necessary.
"Faintness often proceeds from indigestion, flatulence inducing
pressure on the heart."
FAINTNESS, WEAKNESS, EXHAUSTION, FATIGUE:--"The truth is that
for simple weakness, faintness, exhaustion, fatigue, cold or
wet, the best remedies are simple fresh air, pure water,
digestible food and rest. These are nature's restoratives, and
the sooner both physicians and people learn to rely upon them
instead of upon drugs the better it will be for all parties. And
as the effect of alcoholic liquors are directly depressing to
the strength and activity of all the natural functions and
processes of life, as shown by the most varied and scientific
investigations, it is important that this fact be taught to both
doctors and people everywhere."--DR. N. S. DAVIS.
FITS:--"Whether the fit be apoplexy or epilepsy all alcoholics
are extremely bad, both at the time and afterwards. Alcohol, the
'genius of degeneration,' is the chief cause of apoplexy, and
also a cause of epilepsy, especially when taken in the form of
beer. It diminishes the tone of the arteries and blood-vessels,
and thus tends to cause, aggravate and maintain a congested
state of the capillaries throughout the whole body. In the
treatment of epilepsy, therefore, neither alcohol nor any
so-called substitute should be given. * * * * *
"In the convulsions of children alcohol is equally
injurious."--DR. RIDGE.
FLATULENCE:--"Many uneasy sensations or pains, even in distant
parts of the body, are due to wind in the bowels, resulting from
indigestion. Asthma, cramps, depression of spirits, faintness,
giddiness, hiccough, prostration, sinking sensations and
sleeplessness, are all frequently due to the same cause. The
diet needs careful attention where there is much flatulence; tea
is often a cause. Charcoal biscuits are useful in some cases;
lemon juice in others. Fluid Magnesia may be taken. Watch for
the cause and remove it."
HEADACHE:--_The New Hygiene_ says: "This is the manifestation of
a deeper-seated trouble, usually in the stomach. The use of
stimulants is a sure promoter of headache. All users of
alcoholic liquors are, I believe, subject to headache, and it is
also a sure result of overindulgence in tea and coffee.
"To prevent the attacks, live regularly, avoid late hours and
excessive brain work; avoid tea, coffee and alcoholic beverages,
also sweets of all kinds, including sauces and pastries, and
anything fried in fat. Eat plenty of good, plain food, including
fruit, especially oranges. Eat none late at night. Exercise
regularly in such a way as to bring all the muscles into play,
at least once a day.
"To relieve an attack flush the colon.
"Headaches, which so largely result from the retention of impure
matter in the body, will be cured if a good quantity, say two or
three glasses, of hot water be drank in the morning or at night,
and then the next regular meal omitted, so that an interval of
house-cleaning can be had before other material is moved
in."--_Life and Health._
"Avoid pills and powders. Persons suffering from headache need
to be warned against taking remedies that contain opium and
alcohol, and also against the use of a recent popular remedy,
usually called a 'white powder' or 'white tablet.' They take the
latter readily because the druggist or physician says it
contains no opium. This is true, but it is one of the lately
discovered coal tar preparations (anti-febrine, acetanilid,
etc.) and is very depressing to the human system. Headache is
usually a symptom of trouble somewhere else, often in the
alimentary canal, an overloaded stomach, constipation, or tight
clothing. Learn the cause and remove that, and the headache will
disappear."--DR. H. J. HALL, Franklin, Ind.
"Gentle massage is helpful and the use of cold compresses. Lack
of sufficient sleep will cause headache. Women often bring on
nervous headache by overwork and worry."
HEMORRHAGE:--"Never give alcohol in a case of profuse
hemorrhage. The faint feeling, or irresistible inclination to
lie down is nature's own method of circumventing the danger, by
quieting the circulation and lessening the expulsive force of
the heart, thus favoring the formation of clot at the site of
the injury."--_Clinique._
"For uterine hemorrhage an emetic to induce vomiting is the best
cure."--Dr. Higginbotham in _British Medical Journal_.
"If the faint is dispelled too quickly, and the blood-vessels
are relaxed by alcohol, or the heart aroused to energetic action
by any remedy, the hemorrhage may recommence, and may prove
fatal. Quiet, the application of cold, pressure, the elevation
of the wound where possible, and the absence of stimulants, are
the cardinal points of treatment in most cases."--DR. RIDGE.
"If then, it seems absolutely necessary to rouse a person out of
a dead faint, what can be done? Swallowing is out of the
question, lest the patient choke. The head must be laid low,
and the face and chest flapped with a cold wet cloth, or
alternately with hot wet cloths; smelling salts (not too strong)
may be applied to the nose.
"When the faint has been recovered from, but the hemorrhage
continues so much that it is feared another faint may occur,
and, perhaps, be fatal, it may be warded off by drinking any hot
liquid; if Liebig's extract of meat, or strong beef tea, is at
hand and can be given hot, there is nothing better."
HEART DISEASE:--Dr. Ridge says: "I trench here on a delicate
subject, because, when there is real disease of the heart,
medical advice will of course have been obtained, and very
probably a doctor may have said that some alcoholic liquor is
essential. There are, also, several different forms of heart
disease which require altogether different treatment, and only a
physician can tell the difference, or appreciate the necessity
for the particular treatment required. But it may be pointed out
that alcohol is utterly unable to 'strengthen' the heart, or
give tone to the blood-vessels, or to the system at large.
"The alteration in the pulse due to alcohol is chiefly owing to
its paralyzing action on the blood-vessels, and when they are
too contracted, and thereby cause the weakened heart to labor
too much, the alcohol will give relief for the time. But we have
in nitrite of amyl, a fluid which will act more quickly and more
powerfully; but this must not be employed without medical
direction. It is very useful in cases of _angina pectoris_, or
_breast pang_, but is rarely required in the majority of cases
in which the valves of the heart are diseased. The paralyzing
action of alcohol is not generally produced by less than half a
wine-glassful of brandy or whisky, or twice that quantity of
wine, and often much more is required. The relief to uneasy
sensations which much smaller quantities sometimes produce is
due to their anæsthetic or benumbing action, by which the nerves
of the patient are rendered less sensible, although the danger
is by no means diminished. * * * *
"The only sensible way to avert the evil consequences of heart
disease is to strengthen the heart, and that is to be done by
strengthening the body generally. The amount of exercise, the
kind of baths, etc., which should be taken, have to be modified
in accordance with the nature of the case. If these natural
health-giving measures cannot be employed nothing is an
effectual substitute.
"_Weak_ or _feeble heart_ is a common complaint, and is as
ordinary an excuse for resorting to alcoholic liquors as
'Timothy's stomach.' If there is no organic disease; if the
valves of the heart are healthy and act properly, all anxiety on
this point may be entirely banished. The slow pulse, the feeble
pulse, the cold feet, the want of energy, these are not to be
got rid of by such a mere temporary agent as alcohol, even if
relief can be thus obtained from day to day. The constant
application of alcohol to the tissues of the body alters them
gradually by its chemical action. In addition to this, the
balance of the nervous system is altered, an unnatural condition
is produced, and the unhappy patient becomes more liable to
disease and more easily succumbs when attacked.
"Many of these 'feeble hearts' mean too little exercise, very
often also, too much or improper food and drink.
"The best remedies are cold sponging (according to the season);
avoidance of coddling; plain, wholesome food; abstinence from
tea, hot drinks and condiments; regular out-of-doors exercise
and all similar true _tonic_ measures."
Dr. Kellogg says:--
"Persons subject to attacks of _angina pectoris_ should carry
with them a small bottle containing a sponge saturated with
nitrite of amyl, and place it to the nose when necessary.
"Sympathetic palpitation may be relieved by bending the head
downward, allowing the arms to hang down. The effect of this
measure is increased by holding the breath a few seconds while
bending over. Another ready means of relief is to press strongly
upon the large arteries on either side of the neck.
"Palpitation of the heart is often mistaken for real organic
disease of the organ. * * * * * A careful regulation of the diet
is in most cases all that is necessary to effect a cure."
Dr. Edmunds, of London, was asked during a medical discussion what he
thought of the use of alcohol in heart disease. His answer is embodied
in the following:--
"With regard to the use of brandy in cases of heart disease, he
was convinced it was a mistake to use it in such cases. There
were many forms of heart disease, but the most common kind arose
from the heart being too fat. Excess of fat debilitated the
heart and injured its working, just as a piece of wax attached
to a tuning fork would impair its usefulness. In such cases he
dieted his patients in order to reduce their weight. Every dose
of brandy taken for heart disease increased the evil. The moment
brandy was taken for heart disease, or any other chronic
complaint of a similar kind, the disease was increased. If
doctors recommended alcohol to their patients, he had been asked
what abstainers should do. In such cases, as had been suggested,
he thought the patients might ask what the alcohol was to do for
them, and if the reply was not satisfactory, they should get
another doctor."
Dr. T. D. Crothers, of Hartford, Conn., has deduced some valuable facts
from his experiments with the sphygmograph, upon the action of the
heart. He has found by repeated experiments that while alcohol
apparently increases the force and volume of the heart's action, the
irregular tracings of the sphygmograph show that the real vital force
is diminished, and hence its apparent stimulating power is deceptive.
Dr. C. W. Chapman, of the National Hospital for Diseases of the Heart,
wrote in the _Lancet_:--
"The very thing (alcohol) which they supposed had kept their
heart going was responsible for many of its difficulties."
Of cases of palpitation and irregularity caused by business anxieties or
indigestion, he said:--
"To give alcohol is only to add fuel to the fire."
HEART FAILURE:--"In cases of cardiac weakness, the thing needed
is not simply an increased rate of movement of the heart, or an
increased volume of the pulse, but an increased movement of the
blood current throughout the entire system. In the application
of any agent for the purpose of affording relief in a condition
of this kind, the peripheral heart as well as the central organ
must be taken into consideration. In fact, the whole circulatory
system must be regarded as one. The heart and the arteries are
composed of essentially the same kind of tissue, and have
practically the same functions. The arteries as well as the
heart are capable of contracting.
"Both the heart and the arteries are controlled by excitory and
inhibitory nerves. These two classes of nerves are kindred in
structure and in origin, the vagus and the vasodilators being
medullated, while the accelerators of the heart and the
vasoconstrictors of the arteries are non-medullated and pass
through the sympathetic ganglia on the way to their
distribution.
"Winternitz and other therapeutists have frequently called
attention to the value of cold as a cardiac stimulant or tonic.
The tonic effect of this agent is greater than that of any
medicinal agent which can be administered. The cold compress
applied over the cardiac area of the chest may well replace
alcohol as a heart tonic. The thing necessary to encourage the
heart's action is not merely relaxation of the peripheral
vessels, but, as Winternitz has shown, increased activity of the
peripheral circulation in the skin, muscles and elsewhere.
Alcohol paralyzes the vasoconstrictors, and so dilates the small
vessels and lessens the resistance of the heart action; but at
the same time it lessens the activity of the nerve centres which
control the heart, diminishes the power of the heart muscle, and
lessens that rhythmical activity of the small vessels whereby
the circulation is so efficiently aided at that portion of the
blood circuit most remote from the heart. A continuous cold
application applied to that portion of the chest overlying the
heart stimulates the nerves controlling the walls of the
vessels, and at the same time energizes the corresponding
cardiac nerves. It is wise to remember that the vasoconstrictor
nerves are one in kind with the excitor nerves of the heart,
while the vasodilators are in like manner associated with the
vagus. With this in mind, it is clear that while alcohol
paralyzes the vasoconstrictors, it at the same time weakens the
nerves which initiate and maintain the activity of the heart;
while, on the other hand, cold excites to activity those nerves
which produce the opposite effect.
"The apparent increase of strength which follows the
administration of alcohol in cases of cardiac weakness is
delusive. There is increased volume of the pulse for the reason
that the small arteries and capillaries are dilated, but this
apparent improvement in cardiac action is very evanescent. This
is a natural result of the fact that while the heart is relieved
momentarily by sudden dilation of the peripheral vessels, the
accumulation of the blood in the venous system, through the loss
of the normal activity of the peripheral heart, gradually raises
the resistance by increasing the amount of blood which has to be
pushed along in the venous system. This loss of the action of
the peripheral heart more than counterbalances the temporary
relief secured by the paralysis of the vasoconstrictors.
"Thermic applications, general and local, may safely be affirmed
to be the true physiological heart tonic. In the employment of
the cold pericardial compress as a heart tonic, the application
should generally be continued not more than half an hour at a
time, and its use may be alternated with general cold
applications to the surface. A cold towel rub, or the cold trunk
pack is the best form for application if the patient is very
feeble.
"The cold towel rub is applied thus: wring a towel as dry as
possible out of very cold water, and spread it quickly and
evenly over the surface; rub vigorously outside until the skin
begins to feel warm; then remove, dry the moistened surface, rub
until it glows, and make the same application to another part;
and so on until the whole surface of the body has been gone
over. The procedure should be rapid and vigorous.
"If the cold trunk pack is employed, a sheet of not more than
one thickness should be wrung as dry as possible out of very
cold water, and wrapped quickly about the body, after first
dipping the hands in water, and rubbing the trunk vigorously. In
cases of extreme cardiac weakness, very cold and very hot
applications may be alternately applied over the region of the
heart. The duration of the hot and cold applications should be
about fifteen seconds each.
"Any one who has ever witnessed the marvelous effects of
applications of this sort in reviving a flagging heart will
never doubt their efficacy, and will have no occasion to resort
to alcohol, or any other intoxicant, to stimulate a flagging
heart. The writer has employed these measures for stimulating
the heart for more than twenty years, and might cite hundreds of
instances in which their efficiency has been demonstrated. They
are applicable not only to the cardiac depression encountered in
the adynamic stage of typhoid and other fevers, but in cases of
heart failure from hemorrhage, of surgical shock, collapse under
chloroform or ether, opium poisoning, coal gas asphyxia,
drowning, etc."--Dr. J. H. Kellogg, in _Bulletin of the A. M. T.
A._, Jan., 1899.
Dr. N. S. Davis tells of a case of threatened collapse where he was
called in consultation. Patient was in a small, unventilated room.
"It was easy to see that what she needed was fresh air in her
lungs. Instead of giving alcohol in any form she was moved into
a large, well-ventilated room. All symptoms of 'heart failure'
disappeared. Had she begun to take whisky or brandy, physician
and friends would have attributed her recovery to that, when in
fact it would have retarded recovery by hindering oxygenation of
the blood."
"It would also be a very great mistake to suppose that when
reaction follows collapse, in cases in which alcohol has been
given, this result is always due to the alcohol. I have seen so
many cases of severe collapse recover without alcohol that I
cannot but be skeptical as to its necessity, and even as to its
value. I was much struck many years ago by a case of post partum
hemorrhage which was so severe that convulsions set in. I should
then have given brandy if there had been any to give, but there
was none in the house and none to be got. I administered
teaspoonfuls of hot water and the patient revived and recovered;
next day, except for anæmia, she was as well as ever, with no
reactionary fever or other disturbance, as would almost
certainly have been the case if brandy had been given.
"In collapse from hemorrhage, we have learned the value of
injections of warm saline water, either into the veins, the skin
or the rectum, and the same treatment is available in other
cases of collapse with contracted vessels.
"Another measure which has proved most efficacious is the
_inhalation of oxygen_ gas. This is especially useful in cases
in which alcohol is decidedly injurious, namely, those in which
there is increasing congestion of the lungs, which the heart,
though doing its utmost, is unable to overcome. Alcohol only
increases the congestion, and the heart is already over-exerted
and nearly exhausted. The effect of the oxygen is apparent in a
few seconds, and cases have been rescued in which death appeared
to be inevitable and imminent."--DR. RIDGE.
HEART STIMULANTS:--"The advantage of beef extract over alcohol
as a stimulant was demonstrated on a large scale in the Ashantee
war."--DR. RIDGE, London.
For those who must have a drug: aqua ammonia, 8 drops to 1/2 cup of hot
water, or 20 grains carbonate ammonia to 1/2 cup water. Hot water alone
is a useful stimulant; also water, hot or cold, with a few grains of
Cayenne pepper added. The latter is good, not only to start the heart's
action in collapse, but also to relieve violent pain. Hot milk is a most
valuable stimulant. Many persons to whom hot milk has been given during
the extreme weakness of acute disease have testified afterward to its
good effects in comparison with the wine formerly administered. The wine
caused an after-feeling of chilliness and weakness, while the milk gave
warmth and added strength.
INSOMNIA OR SLEEPLESSNESS:--"A person who suffers from
sleeplessness should avoid the use of tea and coffee, tobacco,
alcoholic liquors and all other disturbers of the nervous
system. Eating immediately before retiring has been recommended,
but the ultimate result may be an aggravation of the difficulty
instead of relief. If a person suffers from 'all gone feelings'
so that he cannot sleep, he should take a few sips of cold water
or a glass of lemonade. As complete relief will generally be
obtained as from eating, and the stomach will be saved work when
it should be resting. A warm bath just before retiring, a
wet-hand rub, a cool sponge bath, gentle rubbing of the body
with the dry hand, a moist bandage worn about the abdomen during
the night, are all useful measures. When the feet are cold, they
should be thoroughly warmed by a hot foot or leg bath, and
thorough rubbing. When the head is congested, these measures
should be supplemented by the application of cold to the head,
as the cold compress or the ice-cap."
A walk in the evening, or gentle calisthenics, may help those of
sedentary habits. Bicycle riding and horse-back riding in the evening
have helped many.
The practice of long deep breathing will often put persons to sleep when
all other devices fail. The lungs should be filled to their utmost
capacity, and then emptied with equal slowness, repeating the
respiration about ten times a minute, instead of eighteen or twenty, the
natural rate. Those who fall asleep upon first going to bed, and after a
few hours awake, and are unable to sleep again, may find relief by
getting out of bed, and rubbing the surface of the body with the dry
hand. Or walk about the room a few minutes, exposing the skin to the
air, go back to bed and try the deep breathing.
"The use of drugs for the purpose of inducing sleep should be
avoided as much as possible. Opium is especially harmful. Sleep
obtained by the use of opiates is not a substitute for natural
sleep. The condition is one of insensibility, but not of natural
refreshing recuperation. Three or four hours of natural sleep
will be more than equivalent to double that amount of sleep
obtained by the use of narcotics. When a person once becomes
dependent upon drugs of any kind for producing sleep, it is
almost impossible for him to dispense with them. It is often
dangerous to resort to their temporary use, on account of the
great tendency to the formation of the habit of continuous use.
The use of opiates for securing sleep is one of the most
prolific means by which the great army of opium-eaters is
annually recruited. Chloral, bromide of potash, whisky and other
drugs are to be condemned almost as strongly as opium."--DR.
KELLOGG.
Dr. Furer, of Heidelberg, Germany, in a paper before the International
Congress against alcohol, held in Basle, Switzerland, in Sept., 1895,
said:--
"The sleep from alcohol does not act as a mental tonic, but
leaves the mind weaker next day."
Some noble specimens of manhood have become wrecks through accepting the
advice to try "whisky night-caps." Edison recommends manual labor,
instead of going to rest, for aggravated insomnia. He says sleep will
soon come naturally.
LA GRIPPE:--"Alcohol has no place in the treatment of _la
grippe_; on the contrary it is because of the too frequent use
of this, and other narcotics, that epidemics make such fearful
headway in our land, and such must be the rule until the people
study the laws of health and obey them. Profuse sweating,
followed by a careful bathing of the body in tepid water,
gradually cooling it to a normal temperature, and avoiding
unnecessary exposure, will relieve. The patient should sleep in
pure air and eat as little as possible, and that only when
hungry. * * * * * Quinine is essentially a nerve poison, and
capable of producing a profound disturbance of the nervous
centres. A drug of such potency for evil should be employed with
the greatest care, and never when a milder agency will secure
the result. Exceedingly pernicious is the habit of dosing
children with this drug."--DR. CHARLES H. SHEPARD, Brooklyn, N.
Y.
"A late surgeon of the gold coast of Africa wrote the following
to the London _Lancet_ of Jan. 2, 1890: 'Some of the worst cases
of this disease, the grippe, remind me of an epidemic I saw
among the natives of the swamps of the Niger. * * * * *
Irrespective of disinfectants and inhalations there is a simple,
effective and ready remedy, the juice of oranges in large
quantities, not of two or three, but of dozens. The first
unpleasant symptoms disappear, and the acid citrate of potash of
the juice, by a simple chemic action decreases the amount of
fibrine in the blood to an extent which prevents the development
of pneumonia.'"
The Syracuse (N. Y.) _Post-Standard_ contained the following during the
epidemic of 1899:--
"Dr. George D. Whedon declared to a _Post-Standard_ reporter
yesterday that there is practically no subsiding of the grippe
in this city. Dr. Whedon said that the weather conditions have
little, if anything, to do with the disease, and that it is
impossible to define the conditions which produce it. It is some
morbific agency, the influence of which, Dr. Whedon said, is
exerted upon the pneumogastric nerve.
"_Dr. Whedon was emphatic in denouncing treatment by means of
alcoholic stimulants, and coal tar derivatives._ In discussing
the subject at some length he said:--
'I find that infants and young children are practically exempt
from the disease, and the liability increases with age. In my
own experience, which has since 1889 amounted to an aggregate of
3,000 cases, alcoholic stimulants have appeared to be usually of
little or no value; their usual stimulating effect does not seem
to be realized in this condition. Unless malarial complications
exist quinine appears of no benefit, and then should not be used
in larger than two grain doses. Large doses depress the weakened
heart, and in all cases increase the terrible confusion and
headache constantly present in severe cases.
'From the views I entertain of its pathology, and from the
terrible fatality which has attended the extensive use of the
coal tar derivatives in treatment of _la grippe_, I argue that
the manner in which they have been prescribed in the beginning
of the disease, to reduce fever, and relieve the often intense
suffering, lowers the heart's action, which is already
sufficiently incapacitated by the toxic agent producing the
disease.
'The intention is usually to stimulate later, but later is in
many cases unfortunately too late. The heart being overwhelmed
by the poison, and by the added depression of all coal tar
preparations, cannot keep up the pulmonary circulation. The
swelling of the lungs increases, and the result is fatal.
'I am aware of the weight of authority for their administration
and of the relief they afford, but am just as well assured that
were their use discontinued, the greatly increased death-rate
from _la grippe_ would cease to appear.
'These coal tar remedies are being used everywhere, and the
medical journals recommend them despite the fatal results. They
are being used every hour in the day in Syracuse, and, as a
result, are knocking out good people. Among the most popular
coal tar derivatives I might mention anti-kamnia,
salol-phenacetine, anti-pyrine and salicylate of soda.
'Prognosis is favorable at all ages. Patients should be kept
warm, and perfectly quiet in bed, and supplied with such
nutritious and easily digested food, at frequent intervals, as
the partially paralyzed stomach can take care of. All
nourishment must be fluid and warm rather than cold.'"
The _Journal of Inebriety_ for April, 1889, says:--
"The present epidemic of influenza has proved to be very fatal
in cases of moderate and excessive alcoholic drinkers.
"Pneumonia is the most common sequel, breaking out suddenly, and
terminating fatally in a few days. Heart failure and profound
exhaustion, is another fatal termination. One case was reported
to me of an inebriate, who, after a full outbreak of all the
usual symptoms, drank freely of whisky and became stupid and
died. It was uncertain whether cerebral hemorrhage had taken
place, or the narcotism of the alcohol had combined with the
disease and caused death.
"A physician appeared to have unusual fatality in the cases of
this class under his care.
"It was found that he gave some form of alcohol freely, on the
old theory of stimulation. Another physician gave all drinking
cases with this disease alcohol, on the same theory, and had
equally fatal results. It has been asserted that alcohol, as an
antiseptic, was useful in these bacterial epidemics, but its use
has been followed by greater depression, and many new and
complex symptoms. The frequent half domestic and professional
remedy, hot rum and whisky, has been followed by more serious
symptoms, and a protracted convalescence. Many facts have been
reported showing the danger of alcohol as a remedy, also the
fatality in cases of inebriates who were affected with this
disease.
"The first most common symptom seems to be heart exhaustion and
feebleness, then from the catarrhal and bronchial irritation,
pneumonia often follows."
The vapor or Turkish bath is the best means of "breaking up" this
disease, together with hot lemonade and rest in bed for a day or two.
The inhalation of hot steam should be tried when there is much bronchial
irritation.
LIFE-SAVING STATIONS, THE USE OF ALCOHOL IN:--"There is no
possible useful place for alcoholic liquors in connection with a
life-saving station. Applied externally the rapid evaporation of
alcohol reduces the temperature; taken internally it diminishes
the efficiency of both respiration and circulation, and by
increasing congestion of the kidneys it directly increases the
danger of secondary bad effects from exposures of any kind. To
restore warmth and circulation to the surface, light, rapid
friction and the wrapping with dry flannel is the safest,
cheapest and most efficient, while free breathing of fresh air,
and frequent small doses of milk, beef-tea, ordinary tea or
coffee, or even simple water, will afford the greatest amount of
strength and endurance, and leave the least secondary bad
consequences. It is just as easy to keep at hand a jug or flask
of any one of the articles named as it is to keep a flask of
whisky or brandy. There is no need of keeping them hot, as they
act well at any temperature at which they can be drunk."--DR. N.
S. DAVIS, Chicago.
MEASLES:--"In mild cases, very little treatment is required,
except such as is necessary to make the patient comfortable.
Good nursing is much more important than medical attendance. If
the eruption is slow in making its appearance, or is repelled
after having appeared, the patient should be given a warm
blanket pack.
"The old-fashioned plan of keeping the patient smothered beneath
heavy blankets, and constantly in a state of perspiration is
wholly unnecessary. The irritation of the skin, as well as the
sensitiveness to cold, may be relieved by rubbing the skin
gently two or three times a day with vaseline or sweet oil.
There is no danger from the application of cold water to the
surface except in the last stages of the disease, after the
eruption has disappeared.
"The patient should be allowed cooling drinks as much as
desired. During the disease a simple but nutritious diet should
be allowed, but _stimulants of all kinds should be prohibited_."
"It is wholly unnecessary, and dangerous as well, to give whisky
to bring out the eruption."--DR. I. N. QUIMBY, Jersey City.
"Any hot drink, such as ginger tea or hot lemonade, may be used
to hasten the eruption, if delayed."
MALARIA:--Observers of this disease in such regions as the gold coast of
Africa have noted the fact that malarial attacks are generally preceded
by impaired digestion. The disease is said to be due to animal
parasites. These parasites are supposed to generate in the soil of
certain regions, and thence, through the drinking water, or otherwise,
find entrance to the human body.
"A healthy stomach is able to destroy germs of all sorts, hence
the best protection from malaria is the boiling of all drinking
water, and the maintenance of sound digestion and purity of
blood by an aseptic dietary."
Dr. J. H. Kellogg says in _The Voice_:--
"It must be understood, however, that fruit in malarial regions,
especially watermelons, may be thickly covered with malarial
parasites and the parasites may sometimes find entrance to the
fruit when it becomes over-ripe, so that the skin is broken. It
is evident, then, that care must be taken to disinfect such
fruit by thorough washing, or by dipping in hot water, which is
the safer plan. The same remark applies to cucumbers, lettuce,
celery, cabbage and other green vegetables which are commonly
served without cooking. Not only malarial parasites but small
insects of various kinds are often found clinging to such food
substances, their development being encouraged by the free use
of top dressing on the soil, a process common with market
gardeners.
"The treatment of malarial disease is too large and intricate a
subject for proper treatment in these columns. We will say
briefly, however, at the risk of being considered very
unorthodox, that the majority of cases of malarial poisoning can
be cured without the use of drugs of any sort. In fact, in the
most obstinate cases of chronic malarial poisoning, drugs are of
almost no use whatever. Quinine, however, is certainly of value
as a curative agent in these cases, either in destroying the
parasites, or in preventing their development; but as it does
not remove the cause, its curative effect is likely to be very
transient. The practice of habitually taking quinine as a
preventive of malarial disease is a most injurious one, as
quinine is itself a non-usable substance in the system, and
therefore must be looked upon as a mild poison, to be dealt with
by the liver and kidneys the same as other poisons. By habitual
use it may itself become a cause of disease. One or two
periodical doses of quinine often prove of great service in
interrupting the paroxysms of an intermittent fever, but other
treatment must also be employed to develop the bodily
resistance, and fortify the system against disease. The morning
cold bath, followed by vigorous rubbing, is a most excellent
measure for this purpose, but the old-fashioned German wet-sheet
pack is one of the best remedies known. The paroxysm itself can
generally be avoided by means of the dry pack, begun before the
chill makes its appearance; but this requires the services of an
expert nurse. In not a few cases it is wise for a person who
suffers frequently from malarial disease to seek a change of
climate to some non-malarial region.
"Col. T. W. Higginson of the First South Carolina Volunteers, in
1862, said of Dr. Seth Rogers, an eminent Southern physician,
who was surgeon of the regiment: 'Fortunately for us, he was one
of that minority of army surgeons who did not believe in whisky,
so that we never had it issued in the regiment while he was with
us, and got on better, in a highly malarial district, than those
regiments which used it.'"
MATERNITY:--Dr. Ridge says:--"It is one of the greatest mistakes
to make use of alcoholic beverages to 'keep up the strength'
during labor. It is, of course, impossible to predict at the
commencement how long the labor will last; if then brandy, or
other similar drink, is resorted to early, it acts most
injuriously. The desire for food is often entirely removed; the
demand of the system being therefore unperceived, and so not
supplied, a state of weakness and prostration is in time
produced, if the labor should be protracted, which may be really
serious. The nervous system becomes exhausted by the repeated
action of the alcohol. If a fatal result is not occasioned, yet
the prostration of body and mind after delivery is aggravated,
and convalescence thereby retarded. Alcoholic drinks produce
paralysis and congestion of the blood-vessels, and in this way
largely increase the liability to flooding after the labor is
over. Alcohol also increases the liability to a feverish
condition.
"It is necessary to take small quantities of plain, nourishing
food at regular intervals, and nothing is of greater value than
well-cooked oatmeal: other farinaceous food may be substituted,
if preferred. If there is much prostration, meat extracts or
beef tea are of great value. Tea tends to produce flatulence and
to prevent sleep.
"After the labor is over, the best restorative is a cup of hot
beef tea or an egg beaten up in warm milk or a cup of warm
gruel. Rest, and absence of excitement and worry are essential
and alcohol is specially injurious."
MENSTRUATION, PAINFUL:--Young girls often resort to the use of brandy
during the monthly period, and parents ask anxiously, "What can they use
instead of the brandy?"
The very best thing that can be done is to go to bed, wrapped in
flannels, with a hot-water bottle or other hot application to the
abdomen, and to the feet. Take hot ginger tea, or pepper tea.
A warm hip-bath taken at the beginning may give relief, or a large hot
enema retained for half an hour or so. Rest is necessary.
For those who must go to work, Dr. Ridge recommends five drops of oil of
juniper, to be taken on sugar.
NEURALGIA:--"The principal cause of neuralgia is defective
nutrition of the nerves. Disorders of digestion are very often
accompanied by neuralgia in various parts of the body. It may
also result from taking cold, from loss of sleep, from
dissipation, and also from the use of tobacco, alcohol, tea and
coffee.
"The patient's general health must be improved by a wholesome,
simple diet, and the employment of tonic baths, as a daily
sponge bath, and massage in feeble cases. Sun-baths and exercise
in the open air are of first importance. Ordinary neuralgia may
almost always be relieved by either moist or dry heat. In some
cases, cold applications give more relief than hot. As a rule,
abnormal heat requires cold, and unnatural cold requires hot
applications. In many cases it is necessary to give the patient
a warm bath of some kind. Electricity often succeeds when all
other remedies fail.
"For facial neuralgia apply hot fomentations, together with the
use of sitz baths, or hot foot baths. The head may be steamed by
holding it over hot water, adding pieces of hot brick
occasionally to keep water steaming, head being covered.
"There is no complaint, perhaps, in the treatment of which the
use of port wine will be more strongly urged by kind friends,
with the assurance that it is impossible to get well without it.
This is quite untrue, as thousands can testify."--DR. RIDGE.
"Avoid opiates of all sorts. 'It is better to bear the ills we
have than fly to others that we know not of.' The pangs of
neuralgia are as nothing to endure compared with the sufferings
of an opium wreck. Build up the general health, and the
neuralgia will disappear."
NAUSEA.--"A feeling of sickness is not uncommonly due to
indigestion. If it is caused by rich food take a pinch of
bicarbonate of soda in a little water, or a teaspoonful of fluid
magnesia. The acidity of the food will thus be neutralized, and
this course is far preferable to benumbing the stomach with
brandy. If indigestion is the cause, it is often salutary to
miss one or two meals, so as to allow the stomach to recover.
"When due to pregnancy, a little aërated water, or soda water is
useful; sometimes a small wafer or a crust, eaten before rising
in the morning, will check it. An early morning walk, if the
weather is pleasant, is helpful.
"The moist abdominal bandage is a very excellent means of
relieving nausea during pregnancy. It should be worn constantly
for a week or two, and then omitted during the night. Daily sitz
baths are also of great advantage. In many cases electricity
relieves this symptom very promptly. In very urgent cases in
which the vomiting cannot be repressed, and the life of the
patient is threatened, the stomach should be given entire rest,
the patient being nourished by nutritive injections.
Fomentations over the stomach, and swallowing small bits of ice,
are sometimes effective when other measures fail."--DR. J. H.
KELLOGG.
OUTGROWING THE STRENGTH:--"There is sometimes debility or
weakness in rapidly growing boys and girls which is attributed
to this cause. It is popularly supposed that port wine or beer,
is the great remedy; but nothing can be worse. It is true that
gin given continuously to puppies will keep them small, but no
one would advocate the amount of spirit required in proportion
by a lad or girl to produce the same effect. If the growth could
be checked by chemicals it would be most injurious to do so.
"In the treatment of such cases fresh air by day and night is
essential; cold sponging, followed by friction with a rough
towel, and exercise are desirable."
PNEUMONIA.
Dr. Julius Poheman says in _Medical News_:--
"The effect of alcohol upon nearly all the organs of the body
has been carefully investigated. But, strange to say, literature
contains only a few straggling hints upon the action of alcohol
on the pulmonary tissue. It has long been known that the abuse
of alcohol is a predisposing cause of death when the drinker is
attacked with pneumonia. No experimental evidence has been
published of the action of alcohol in producing pathological
conditions in the lungs. In order to determine this action, a
series of experiments was made upon dogs in the winters of
1890-1891 and 1892-1893. The dogs were a mixed lot of mongrels
gathered in by the city dog catchers. They varied in weight from
fifteen to twenty-five pounds, and were apparently in good
health. In all, thirty animals were experimented on.
"The experiments were performed as follows:--A carefully
etherized animal had injected into his trachea just below the
larynx a quantity of commercial alcohol varying from one dram to
one ounce in amount. The effects of equal amounts of alcohol
upon animals of the same weight varies greatly. Two dogs,
weighing twenty-five pounds each, were injected with two drams
of alcohol. One died in one hour, and the other in six hours
after the injection. Four other dogs, two weighing twenty-four
pounds each, another eighteen pounds, and the fourth fifteen
pounds, were all injected with the same amount, two drams. All
four survived, and were as well as usual in four weeks. Another
dog of eighteen pounds died five minutes after an injection of
two drams, while another of fifteen pounds took one ounce and
recovered.
"The symptoms in the dogs were all alike, dyspnea, increasing as
the inflammation increased, until the accessory muscles of
respiration were called into play. The stethoscope showed that
air had great difficulty in entering the bronchi and air
vesicles, and showed also the tumultuous beating of the heart
in pumping blood through the lung. It was impossible to take the
temperatures. Post-mortem examinations showed the lungs dark,
congested and solid in some places. The air passages were filled
with frothy, bloody mucus, even in the dog that died in five
minutes. On section, the lungs were dark, congested, and full of
bloody mucus. This shows how acutely sensitive the respiratory
passages are to the action of alcohol. On microscopic
examination of the lungs, the air tubes and vesicles were found
filled with immense numbers of red and white corpuscles and much
mucus. The same picture was presented as in a slide from the
lungs of a broncho-pneumonic child.
"The striking similarity between the two is enough to prove that
the pathological condition is the same, and that alcohol has
produced a lesion very closely resembling, if not absolutely
like, that of broncho-pneumonia in the human subject. This to
some extent explains why drunkards attacked by pneumonia succumb
more readily than the temperate. The sensitive lung tissue is
enveloped in alcohol--flowing through the capillaries of the
lung on one side, and exhaled, filling the air vesicles and
tubes on the other. The condition must create a state of
semi-engorgement or of mild inflammation, similar to the
drunkard's red nose, or his engorged gastric mucous membrane.
Such a state will reduce the vitality of the pulmonary tissue,
and its power of resistance to external influences. Add to this
an inflammation such as a pneumonia, and the lungs find
themselves unable to stand the pressure."
As previous chapters contain much showing the reasons why alcohol is
dangerous in pneumonia, space need not be taken here to do more than
indicate briefly some points of non-alcoholic treatment.
Pneumonia is generally supposed to result from a cold; it is ushered in
by the symptoms of a chill, followed by fever, headache, shortness of
breath, pain in chest, etc. It sometimes occurs as a complication of
typhoid fever and other acute diseases.
"It is not a very fatal disease in young and healthy subjects,
but in weak children, old persons and habitual drinkers, it is a
very fatal malady."
_Nature Cure_ recommends a vapor bath immediately upon the appearance of
the first symptoms, together with copious drinking of hot lemonade, and
a good supply of pure fresh air in the room, together with the
application of alternating hot and cold compresses, _and no drugs_.
Dr. Kellogg says:--
"Cool compresses or ice-bags, alternated every three hours by
hot fomentations for ten minutes, should be applied to the
chest, particularly to the affected side, the seat of pain. The
hot fomentations relieve the pain, and the cold compresses check
the diseased process. The compresses should be wrung out of cold
water, and changed every five to eight minutes, or as often as
they become warm. Although the cool compresses are not usually
liked by the patient, they will soon give relief if their use is
continued, and they do much towards shortening the course of the
disease. Care should be taken to keep the patient's body from
being wet except where the treatment is applied. The cold
compress is much used in the large hospitals of Germany. When
the pulse becomes as rapid as 95 to 110 or more, cool sponging,
the wet-sheet pack, the cool full bath or the cool enema should
be employed. When much chilliness is produced by the contact of
water with the skin, the cold enema is a most admirably useful
measure. The amount of water required is from half a pint to a
pint. The temperature may be 40 to 60 degrees. The apartment
should be kept as cool as possible without discomfort, and an
abundance of fresh air should be continually supplied.
"The diet of the patient should consist of milk, oatmeal gruel,
ripe fruit, and similar easily digested food. No meat, eggs or
other stimulating food should be allowed.
"Discontinue the cold treatment after the first twenty-four to
forty-eight hours. If the surface is cold, apply hot sponging or
a hot pack. Avoid causing chilliness."
PRE-NATAL INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL:--"The use of beer as a medicine
during pregnancy is without doubt perilous to the health and
vigor of the offspring. Children born under such conditions are
sickly and feeble, and suffer from disease more severely than
others, or die early. Alcoholic prescriptions to pregnant women
are, from all present knowledge of the facts, both dangerous and
reprehensible in the highest degree."--DR. T. D. CROTHERS,
Hartford, Conn.
"M. Fere, an eminent French physician, recently reported to the
Biological Society of Paris the results of experiments which he
had been conducting for the purpose of throwing light upon this
question. These experiments demonstrate that the exposure of
hen's eggs to the influence of the vapor of alcohol, previous to
incubation, retards the development of the embryo, and favors
the production of malformations. It is evident from these
experiments that alcohol may act directly upon the embryo when
there is no marked influence of alcoholism in the parent."
PAIN AFTER FOOD:--"This may occur in acute or chronic gastric
catarrh, or in a neuralgic or oversensitive condition of the
stomach, or in ulcer or cancer of that organ. In all these it
comes on soon after food has been swallowed; but, if occurring a
long time after a meal, it is probably due to atonic dyspepsia.
Alcohol will undoubtedly sometimes relieve this kind of pain by
deadening the nerves of the stomach so that the pain is not
felt so much; but this effect soon passes off, and if the cause
of the malady is not removed by other means, increasing
quantities of alcohol will be required to give relief. Many
cases of drink-craving have originated in this way. Medical aid
will generally be required. A small mustard poultice over the
pit of the stomach is often useful, especially in inflammatory
cases, or any other outward application of heat. Food should be
fluid, or semi-fluid, and digestible. Ginger tea, or peppermint
water, may serve to disperse gas."
POISON, ANIMAL.
The following by Dr. Chas. H. Shepard, of Brooklyn, who introduced the
Turkish bath into America, is taken from the _Journal of the A. M. A._,
for Nov. 13, 1897:--
"Animal poison is by no means uncommon, and so quick and
mysterious is its action that a prompt remedy is a vital
necessity. There is good reason to believe that the numerous
remedies that have been recommended from earliest times as
antidotes for animal poison are worthless, as they have not the
properties commonly ascribed to them. The paucity of remedies is
so great that alcohol is the one which comes most quickly to the
mind of those who have been taught in the traditions of the
past, and who are not fully aware of its action on the human
system. We shall endeavor to show that the action of alcohol is
not helpful, but on the contrary is really detrimental; and also
that there is a better way out of the difficulty.
"If we get a splinter in the body, vital energy is aroused to
get rid of the offending substance, inflammation is set up, and
sloughing goes on until the splinter is voided. If the splinter
is covered with acrid material, the same process is intensified,
and nature endeavors to eliminate the offending substance
through the natural excretions. Upon the peculiarity of the
material depends the direction of this elimination.
"It is well known that some poisons are thrown off by the
kidneys, some by the lungs, while others again are attacked by
all the emunctories. The difference in the power of the system
to absorb different substances, appropriate whatever can be
utilized, and throw off whatever can not be used, is sometimes
called idiosyncrasy, but more properly it may be called vital
resistance, and upon the integrity of this power rests the
ability to combat disease in all its forms, whether it be the
absorption of any animal virus or the poison resulting from
undigested food. This ability is in proportion to the integrity
and soundness of every tissue and organ of the body. This may be
illustrated by the fact that with a person suffering from kidney
disease, which necessarily impedes elimination, the ordinary
effects of a poison are intensified; therefore whatever aids in
the promotion of good health, or in other words, the normal
action of all the functions, will contribute to the safety of
the individual in any and every emergency.
"When a person dies from the effect of poisoning, it is simply
because the system was unable to eliminate the offending
substance and was exhausted in the effort. There is a tolerance
of some substances which frequently results in chronic disease,
and again it is shown in what is called the cumulative effect or
acute disease.
"Those who would hold that a substance is at one time a
medicament, and at another time a poison, have much trouble in
drawing the line between the beneficial and the poisonous
effect. The idea that poisonous substances act on the system is
responsible for many grave mistakes, whereas always, and under
all circumstances, it is the system that does all the action.
"There might be some excuse for the idea that disease is an
entity, from the facts that have been brought to light by the
germ theory, but this theory is of recent date, while the entity
theory is as old as superstition.
"Snake poison, which may be cited as a type of other animal
poisons, takes effect through the circulation, and acts by
paralyzing the nerve centres, and by altering the condition of
the blood. In ordinary cases death seems to take place by arrest
of respiration, from paralysis of the nerves of motion. The
poison also acts septically, producing at a later period
sloughing and hemorrhage.
"Dr. Calmette, a noted French scientist, claims that what is
poisonous in the snake's bite, is not the venom absorbed into
the blood, but a principle which the blood itself has developed
out of the poison. This would necessitate very quick action when
the poison is inserted in one of the large veins, as that is
followed by instant death.
"The following cases fairly represent some of the tragedies that
are occurring in our everyday life.
"A man 60 years old falls and dislocates his finger, he goes to
the hospital, where in a short time he dies from blood
poisoning. * * * * * Another man 48 years old, many years a wine
merchant, whose great toe was severely crushed by a heavy man
stepping on it, was taken with blood-poisoning and in spite of
all treatment, even to the amputation of the leg, he soon
succumbed to the disease. * * * * * A young woman 24 years old,
picks a pimple on her chin and at once her face begins to swell.
In vain was all medical treatment, for in a few days she died in
terrible agony. * * * * * About a year ago there died in
Brooklyn, N. Y., a physician in his 38th year, who six days
previously received a slight scratch in his hand while
performing a post-mortem examination. All that medical science
could suggest was done to no avail. * * * * * In the summer of
1896 a young woman 22 years of age was bitten on the leg by an
insect. Several physicians were called in but their treatment
gave no relief; blood-poisoning set in; it was decided to
amputate the leg, but before it could be done she died. * * * *
* In July, 1896, a veterinary surgeon 34 years of age, while
removing a cancer from a horse pricked his finger with his
knife. The wound was so slight that he forgot all about it. A
few days later blood-poisoning set in and in a short time his
end came. * * * * * Some forty years ago a man named Whitney was
teasing a rattlesnake in a Broadway barroom, was bitten by it,
and, though whisky was poured down his throat by the quart, he
soon died.
"Such results seem entirely unnecessary were the proper course
pursued, and at the same time they are a fearful commentary on
the medical resources of the day.
"The latest researches in regard to alcohol reveal it as a
poison to the human system in whatever way it may be diluted or
disguised. Its effect is always the same in proportion to the
amount taken. It is impossible to habitually use it in any form,
even in small quantities, without disease and degeneration
resulting therefrom. When taken into the stomach the action is
the same as with any other narcotic; the meaning of this word is
_to become torpid_. It benumbs the nerves of sensation, and thus
the vital resistance to any offending material is reduced, and
while the patient _feels_ less of any disturbance the real harm
goes on with accumulated force because of the lack of vitality
and non-resistance of the nervous system.
"When the body is in the throes of a vital struggle with a
virulent poison it would seem, to any unprejudiced mind, the
height of folly to further weaken the vital resistance by the
administration of any narcotic, and especially alcohol.
"The eminent German, Professor Bunge, says: 'All the results
which on superficial observation appear to show that alcohol
possesses stimulant properties, can be explained on the ground
that they were due to paralysis.' * * * * * Professors S. Weir
Mitchell and E. T. Reichert, in _Researches on Serpent Poison_,
make this notable statement: 'Despite the popular creed, it is
now pretty sure that many men have been killed by the alcohol
given to relieve them from the effects of snake bite, and it is
a matter of record that men dead drunk with whiskey and then
bitten, have died of the bite.'
"As a great contrast to the weakness of the mass of our people
who are drug-takers and alcohol-consumers, and who are liable to
almost any epidemic that comes along, and quickly succumb to a
serious injury, may be mentioned the Turkish soldiers of to-day,
who know nothing of drugs as we use them and never use alcohol
in any form. During the late controversy with the Greeks, one of
them who was reported as having been shot in the stomach,
remained in the ranks, and afterward walked ten miles. Another
one who was wounded twice in the legs and once in the shoulder,
continued attending to his duties for twenty-four hours, until
an officer noticed his condition and ordered him to the
hospital. The heat was tremendous, but the troops endured it
without complaint, and the doctors were astonished at the
wonderful vitality of the wounded Turks, who recovered with
remarkable rapidity. This, with good reason, is attributed to
their abstemious lives.
"It has been stated that the Moqui Indians handle the
rattlesnake with impunity, and are not inconvenienced by its
occasional bite.
"The rational treatment of animal poison is to endeavor to
prevent the entry of the virus into the circulation and to
neutralize it in the wound before it is absorbed; but when it
has entered the system everything should be done for its
elimination.
"The most powerful aid to the human system, and the most perfect
eliminator known to man is heat. It is used with much advantage,
and great success by means of water, both internally and
externally, but above all is its use by hot air, as in the
Turkish bath, which works in harmony with every natural
function, promoting the action of all the secretions, and more
particularly the excretions. By this means will the system
unload itself of an accumulation of impurities in an incredibly
short space of time, while the heat aids in destroying whatever
there may be of virus therein.
"Calmette, whom we have previously quoted, has shown that
whatever be the source of snake venom, its active principle is
destroyed by being submitted to a temperature of about 212
degrees for a variable length of time.
"In the not remote future thousands of human beings will owe to
the Turkish bath not only an immunity from disease in general,
but also an escape from the horrors of a premature death from
hydrophobia, the poison of snake bite, or the slower action of
infectious disease.
"The mass of testimony that has been accumulating for over
thirty years past is more than sufficient to convince any
reasonable mind that is willing to examine the facts.
"The medical profession has searched the world over and under
for the means of controlling disease, while within the human
body itself lies the vital power which needs only to be
cultivated and exalted to its true function to banish the mass
of disease from the land."
Dr. Shepard states in another article that Turkish baths are now used in
London and Paris for the cure of hydrophobia.
Dr. J. H. Kellogg says:--
"A great number of remedies have acquired the reputation of
being cures for snake bites. The partisans of each one of these
have been able to produce a large number of cases, which
apparently supported their claims; the uniform testimony of all
scientific authorities upon this subject, however, is that all
these so-called antidotes are worthless. Prof. W. Watson Cheyne,
M. B., F. R. C. S., surgeon of Kings College Hospital, London,
England, states, in the _International Encyclopedia of Surgery_,
that 'there is no known antidote by which the venom can be
neutralized, nor any prophylactic.' This eminent authority also
remarks further: 'Hence medication with this view is to be
avoided altogether, and the aim of treatment should be to
prevent the poison from gaining access to the general
circulation, and to avoid its prostrating effects if its
entrance has already taken place.' The same writer asserts that
the only aim of the constitutional treatment should be 'to
sustain the strength until the poison shall have been
eliminated.' The idea that the saturation of the body with
whisky to the point of intoxication, if possible, is beneficial
in these cases, is in the highest degree erroneous. Whisky
intoxication, according to Dr. Cheyne, actually 'favors the
injurious effect of the poison. What is required is to keep the
patient alive until the poison has been eliminated.' Whisky will
not do this, but actually aids the poison in its fatal work by
lessening the resistance of the patient, and hence lessening his
chances for recovery.
"The reputation of whisky as a remedy in these cases is due to
the fact that on an average only one person in eight who is
bitten by a rattlesnake is really poisoned; the reasons for this
were fully explained in an interesting paper on 'Rattlesnakes,'
by the eminent Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and published in the
Smithsonian Contributions to _Knowledge_ for 1860. If the snake
strikes several times before inflicting a wound, the sacs
containing the venom may be emptied, so that the succeeding bite
will introduce only the most minute quantity of poison--not
enough to produce serious, or fatal results. If the part bitten
is covered by clothing, the poison may be absorbed by the
clothing, so that but very little enters the circulation. In
various other ways the snake is prevented from inflicting a
fatal wound. The popular idea, that every bite of a rattlesnake
is necessarily poisonous, is thus shown to be erroneous. It is
not at all probable that the administration of whisky has ever
in any case contributed to the long life of a person bitten by a
rattlesnake.
"Whisky is often recommended by physicians with the idea that it
will sustain the energies of the patient, or will stimulate the
heart, etc.; but it has been clearly shown that alcohol in all
forms is not only useless for these purposes, but does actual
damage, since it lessens the resistance of the patient, weakens
the heart, and helps along the prostration which is the
characteristic effect of the rattlesnake venom. Alcohol has, for
many years, been used as an antidote for collapse under an
anæsthetic administered for surgical purposes, but no
intelligent physician nowadays thinks of using alcohol for such
a purpose; instead, alcohol is given before the anæsthetic for
the purpose of facilitating its effect. Errors of this sort
which have once become established are very hard to uproot.
Probably some physicians will continue to use alcohol for shock,
exhaustion, general debility and similar conditions as well as
for rattlesnake poisoning for another quarter of a century, but
such use of alcohol does not belong to the domain of rational
medicine and is not supported by scientific facts."
"Under the Pasteur method, a man who did not take alcohol was
much more likely to recover from the bite of a mad dog than one
bitten under the same conditions, who used that drug; while in
lock-jaw there was absolute failure to secure immunity if the
patient had taken alcohol. In India it used to be given in large
quantities for snake bite, but it was found that it had a direct
effect in interfering with the processes of repair, and so is
being abandoned."--DR. SIMS WOODHEAD, of the Royal College of
Physicians and Surgeons, London, Eng.
"Nothing could be more irrational and dangerous than the popular
notion concerning the antagonism of whisky and snake-bites, and
Willson reports that several of the fatalities in his series
were directly due to alcohol rather than to the
bite."--_Editorial, Journal of the American Medical Ass'n._
RHEUMATISM:--"Unquestionably, the most active cause of
rheumatism, as well as of migraine, sick-headache, Bright's
disease, neurasthenia and a number of other kindred diseases, is
the general use of flesh food, tea and coffee, and alcoholic
liquors. As regards remedies, there are no medicinal agents
which are of any permanent value in the treatment of chronic
rheumatism. The disease can be remedied only by regimen,--that
is, by diet and training. A simple dietary, consisting of
fruits, grains, and nuts, and particularly the free use of
fruits, must be placed in the first rank among the radical
curative measures. Water, if taken in abundance, is also a means
of washing out the accumulated poisons.
"An individual afflicted with rheumatism in any form should
live, so far as possible, an out-of-door life, taking daily a
sufficient amount of exercise to induce vigorous perspiration. A
cool morning sponge bath, followed by vigorous rubbing, and a
moist pack to the joints most seriously affected, at night, are
measures which are worthy of a faithful trial. Every person who
is suffering from this disease should give the matter immediate
attention, as it is a malady which is progressive, and is one of
the most potent causes of premature old age, and general
physical deterioration. American nervousness is probably more
often due to uric acid, or to the poisons which it represents,
than to any other one cause."--_Good Health._
"Alcohol favors the development of rheumatism. It does this by
preventing waste matter from leaving the system. Beer and wine,
because they contain lime and salts, are said to cause
rheumatism, or at least to aid in its development. These salts
are absorbed into the system, unite with the uric acid, and form
an insoluble urate of lime, which is deposited around the
joints, thus causing them to become enlarged and stiff. * * * * *
"The success of the Turkish bath treatment has been phenomenal.
Of over 3,000 cases treated here at least 95 per cent. have been
entirely relieved, or greatly helped. Some who were treated over
twenty years ago have stated that they have not had a twinge of
rheumatism since. Very few have persevered in the use of the
bath without experiencing permanent relief."--DR. CHARLES H.
SHEPARD, Brooklyn.
"Those having a bath cabinet can have a good substitute at home
for the Turkish bath. Remember that if tobacco and alcohol are
indulged in, there can be no permanent relief."
_The New Hygiene_ says:--
"Under no circumstances take any of the thousand and one
nostrums advertised as sure cures for this disease. Pure
unadulterated blood is the only remedy. This can only be
produced by cleansing the system of impurities, and giving it
the right kind of material out of which to make it. Keep out the
poisonous physic, clean out the colon, strengthen the lungs, and
feed the system with proper food, and this disease will vanish
like a fog before the rising sun."
The same book in advocating the use of the Turkish bath for rheumatism,
says:--
"The fact, which is well attested, that when a person enters the
bath the urine may be strongly acid, but, on leaving the bath,
after half an hour, it is markedly alkaline, shows that the bath
has a strong effect upon the system."
Dr. Ridge says of _rheumatic fever_:--
"I would urge most strongly the desirability of avoiding every
form of alcoholic liquor, from the very commencement of the
disease, as affording the best chance for a speedy and safe
recovery. The highest authorities are agreed on this point, but
there is a lingering practice which makes reference necessary in
order to confirm the wavering."
In Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York, the hot blanket pack is used in acute
rheumatism, almost to the exclusion of other methods. The pack should be
continued two to four hours at least, and may be repeated two or three
times within the twenty-four hours with advantage.
_Nature Cure_ says that thorough massage, and half a dozen cups of hot
lemonade will cure a severe case of sciatica:--
"The massage should be commenced moderately, and increased as
the patient can bear it. Rubbing and slapping of the muscles
with bare hands will hasten a cure, and be agreeable to the
patient. One to two hours treatment, if _vigorous_, will effect
a cure."
SEA-SICKNESS:--Brandy is a common resort in this trouble, many taking it
under such circumstances who would under no other. Yet it frequently
adds to the sickness, instead of relieving it.
"Be sparing in diet for two or three days before the expected
voyage. If very sensitive, take to your berth as soon as you go
on board, or lie down on deck; get near the centre of the
vessel, and lie with your feet to the stern. Go to sleep if
possible. Iced water may be sipped, but nothing solid should be
taken at first; after a while a cracker or wafer may be taken."
It is said upon good authority that if two or three apples are eaten
shortly before going on board, or before rough water is encountered,
sea-sickness is entirely averted. It will be well to partake of no other
food for some hours previous to the voyage when trying this.
_Good Health_ says:--
"If any of our readers have occasion to cross the ocean in the
stormy season, we recommend three things; keep horizontal, with
the head low; put an ice-bag to the back of the neck, keep the
stomach clean, free from greasy foods and meats, and eat nothing
till there is an appetite for food. A habitually clean dietary
before going on board is doubtless a good preparation for such a
voyage, as well as for any other nerve strain, or test of
endurance. It pays to be good--to your stomach, as well as in
other ways."
The following is guaranteed by a Russian physician to be an effective
cure and a means of avoiding sea-sickness when the symptoms first make
their appearance. Take long and deep inspirations. About twenty breaths
should be taken every minute, and they should be as deep as possible.
After thirty or forty inspirations the symptoms will be found to abate.
This is recommended for dyspepsia also.
SORE NIPPLES:--"Alum water, or tannin, used for several months
in advance will harden as effectually as brandy. If there is
soreness on commencing to nurse, put a pinch of alum into milk,
and apply the curd to the nipple."
SPASMS:--"These are caused by flatulence, as a result of
indigestion. A little hot ginger tea, or capsicum tea, may do
all that is required. If these are not at hand, loosen every
tight band, rub well the region of the heart and stomach, slap
the face with the corner of a wet towel, and give sips of cold
water."
SHOCK:--"In shock, or collapse, the state is similar in some
respects to that which is present in fainting. Every function is
almost at a standstill; absorption from the stomach and
elsewhere is at its lowest point, because the circulation of the
blood is so much interfered with. Hence much of the brandy which
is so often given, and to such a wonderful amount, with very
little apparent effect of intoxication, is really not absorbed
at all, and is very often rejected from the stomach by vomiting,
when reaction does occur, if not before.
"The patient should be wrapped up warmly, and put to bed as soon
as possible. The limbs may be rubbed with hot flannels, and hot
water bottles put to hands and feet. In some cases, also, towels
wrung out of hot water may be wrapped around the head. Hot milk
and water, hot water slightly sweetened, or with a little
peppermint water in it, should be given as soon as the patient
can swallow. Hot beverages will warm the skin more rapidly and
powerfully than any alcoholic liquor.
"If the patient cannot swallow, an enema of hot water, or hot,
thin gruel, should be administered, and may be of use in
addition to hot drinks. Beef extract may be added to the hot
water with advantage.
"In the vast majority of cases there need be no anxiety so far
as the shock is concerned; reaction will occur in due time if
ordinary care be taken, and will be more natural and steady if
the system is not embarrassed by the presence of the narcotic
alcohol. In the state of collapse the voluntary nervous system
is depressed; alcohol diminishes the power and activity of the
nervous centres of the brain, hence its action is undesirable in
shock or collapse."--DR. J. J. RIDGE, London.
"No procedure could be more senseless than the administering
alcohol in shock. A stimulant of some kind is necessary in such
cases, and alcohol, instead of being a stimulant is a narcotic.
* * * * * Alcohol causes a decrease of temperature, the very
thing to be avoided in cases of shock."--DR. J. H. KELLOGG.
"I am perfectly sure that a large dose of alcohol in shock puts
a nail in the coffin of the patient."--DR. H. C. WOOD of the
University of Pennsylvania.
SINKING SENSATIONS:--Many women have a feeling of weakness or "goneness"
at about eleven o'clock in the morning, and are led by it to the
injurious practice of eating between meals. It is often due to
indigestion, or to the use of beer or wine. A few sips of hot milk, of
fruit juice, or even of cold water will often relieve it, especially if
total abstinence is persevered in.
SUDDEN ILLNESS:--"Those taken suddenly ill are likely to fare
best if placed in a recumbent position, with head slightly
elevated, all tightness of garments about the neck or waist
relieved, and a little cold water given in case of ability to
swallow. A mustard plaster on the back of the neck, or over the
stomach, and hot water or hot bottles to the feet, are never out
of place, while vinegar, or smelling salts, or dilute ammonia to
the nostrils is reviving."--EZRA M. HUNT, M. D., late secretary
of New Jersey State Board of Health.
"Both the popular and professional beliefs in the efficacy of
alcoholic liquids for relieving exhaustion, faintness, shock,
etc. are equally fallacious. All these conditions are temporary,
and rapidly recovered from by simply the recumbent position, and
free access to fresh air. Ninety-nine out of every hundred of
such cases pass the crisis before the attendants have time to
apply any remedies, and when they do, the sprinkling of cold
water on the face, and the vapor of camphor or carbonate of
ammonia to the nostrils, are the most efficacious remedies, and
leave none of the secondary evil effects of brandy, whisky or
wine."--DR. N. S. DAVIS.
SUNSTROKE:--"There has lately been a correspondence in the
_Morning Post_ on the subject of 'Sunstroke and Alcohol.' We
quite agree with the statement that 'nothing predisposes people
to sunstroke so much as this pernicious habit of taking
stimulants (so-called) during the hot weather.' As far as this
country is concerned, nearly every case of sunstroke might be
more appropriately designated 'beerstroke.' One effect of
alcohol is to paralyze the heat-regulating mechanism; the blood
becomes overloaded with waste material, and the narcotism, and
vasomotor paralysis, produced by the alcohol, is added to that
produced by the heat. Abstainers, other things being equal, can
always endure extremes of temperature better than consumers of
alcohol."--_Medical Pioneer_, England.
"During the month of January, 1896, there occurred over three
hundred deaths from sunstroke in Australia. When called upon to
offer suggestions relative to its prevention, the medical board
promptly informed the Colonial government that, of all the
predisposing causes, none were so potent as indulgence in
intoxicating liquors, and in its treatment nothing seemed to
have a more disastrous effect than the administration of
alcoholic stimulants."--_Medical News._
The _Bulletin of the A. M. T. A._ for August, 1896, contained the
following:--
"Recently a leading medical man, a teacher in a college, warned
his student audience against the anti-alcoholic theories urged
by extremists and persons whose zeal was greater than their
intelligence. He affirmed positively that the value of alcohol
was well known in medicine, and established by long years of
experience.
"Not long afterward a man was brought into his office in a state
of collapse from sunstroke, and this physician and teacher
ordered large quantities of brandy to be administered; the
patient died soon after."
Dr. T. D. Crothers tells of a case where alcohol was administered to a
child for partial sunstroke, and says, "there were many reasons for
believing that the profound poisoning from alcohol gave a permanent bias
and tendency that developed into inebriety later."
"When a person falls with sunstroke (or heatstroke) he should at
once be carried to a cool, shady place. His clothing should be
removed, and cold applications made to the head, and over the
whole body. Pieces of ice may be packed around the head, or cold
water may be poured upon the body. Cold enema may also be
employed. In case the face is pale, hot applications should be
made to the head and over the heart and the body should be
rubbed vigorously."--DR. J. H. KELLOGG.
TYPHOID FEVER.
As many lives are lost by this disease, its treatment must ever be one
of intense interest, not only to physicians, but also to all humanity.
Since non-alcoholic treatment has reduced the death-rate in typhoid to
five per cent., the views regarding such treatment expressed by leading
practitioners will doubtless be read with eagerness.
The following is a paper by Dr. N. S. Davis taken from the _Medical
Temperance Quarterly_.
"ALLEGED INDICATIONS FOR THE USE OF ALCOHOL IN THE TREATMENT OF
TYPHOID FEVER:--On the first page of the first number of a new
medical journal bearing date July, 1895, may be found the
following statement: 'The question of administering alcohol
comes up in every case of typhoid fever. In mild cases,
especially when the patient is young, healthy and temperate,
stimulants are not needed so long as the disease follows the
typical course. Here, as elsewhere, alcohol should be avoided
when not absolutely demanded. There is, however, generally such
a dangerous tendency toward nervous exhaustion, that in a
majority of cases more or less alcohol is required. The
indication which calls for its use is an inability to administer
enough food. * * * * * Again, the existence of high temperature
nearly always makes it necessary to stimulate the patient, as
does threatened nervous exhaustion and heart failure, for
immediate effect; likewise a weak, small, compressible, rapid
pulse, with impaired cardiac impulse and systolic sound, is a
frequent indication; other remedies may be required, but alcohol
cannot be dispensed with.' The next paragraph continues: 'It is
necessary to give alcohol in serious complications of typhoid
fever, such as pneumonia, pleurisy, hemorrhage and severe
bronchitis or diarrhoea. It is best to begin giving it early
and in small quantities: two to six ounces is a moderate amount,
eight to twelve ounces daily is not too much for adynamic or
complicated cases.'
"The foregoing quotations purport to have been condensed from
one of our recent authoritative works on practical medicine, and
doubtless fairly represent the prevailing opinions concerning
the use of alcohol in the treatment of typhoid and other fevers,
both in and out of the profession. A careful reading will show
that the whole is founded on the following four assumptions:
"1. That alcohol when taken into the living body acts as a
general stimulant, and especially so to the cardiac and
vasomotor functions. 2. That in mild, uncomplicated cases of
typhoid fever in young and previously healthy subjects,
stimulants are not required and no alcohol should be given. 3.
That in a 'majority of cases' the tendency toward dangerous
'nervous exhaustion' and 'heart failure' is so great that the
giving of 'more or less alcohol is required.' 4. The amount
required may vary from two to twelve or more ounces per day.
"In the two preceding numbers of this journal, I have endeavored
to show that the chief causes of nervous exhaustion and heart
failure, in typhoid and other fevers were impairment of the
hemoglobin and corpuscular elements of the blood, deficient
reception and internal distribution of oxygen, and molecular
degeneration of the muscular structures of the heart itself.
These important pathological conditions are doubtless caused by
the specific toxic agent or agents giving rise to the fever.
Consequently the rational objects of treatment are to stop the
further action of the specific cause, either by neutralization,
or elimination, or both; to stop the further impairment of the
hemoglobin and other elements of the blood; and to increase the
reception and internal distribution of oxygen, by which we will
most effectually prevent further fatty or granular degeneration
of cardiac and other structures. The language of the paragraphs
I have quoted, fairly assumes that alcohol is a _stimulant_
capable of relieving nervous exhaustion and cardiac failures,
regardless of the causes producing those pathological
conditions, and consequently its use is necessary in the
'majority of cases' of typhoid fever.
"Can such an assumption be sustained by either established
facts, or correct reasoning? Can nervous and cardiac exhaustion,
induced by the presence of toxic agents in the blood, with
deficiency of both hemoglobin and oxygen, be relieved by a
simple _stimulant_, that neither neutralizes nor eliminates the
toxic agents, nor increases either the hemoglobin or oxygen?
That alcohol does not neutralize or destroy toxic ptomaines, or
tox-albumins, is proved by abundant clinical experience, and
also by the fact that chemists use it freely in the processes
for separating these substances from other organic matters for
experimental purposes. That its presence in the living body
retards metabolic changes generally, and thereby aids in
retaining instead of eliminating toxic agents of all kinds, has
been so fully shown in the pages of preceding numbers of the
_Medical Temperance Quarterly_, that the leading facts need not
be repeated here. That its presence does not increase the
hemoglobin, or favor oxy-hemoglobin or increased internal
distribution of oxygen, but decidedly the reverse, has been
equally well demonstrated by numerous and reliable experimental
researches in this and other countries.
"Then it must be conceded that alcohol is not capable of
fulfilling either of the important indications presented in the
treatment of typhoid fever as stated above. Nevertheless, the
advocates of its use apparently recognize but two ideas or
factors in these cases, namely, the popularly inherited
assumption that alcohol is a _stimulant_, and as the patient is
in danger from nervous and cardiac weakness, therefore the
alcohol must be given, _pro re nata_ without the slightest
regard to the existing causes of the weakness, or the _modus
operandi_ of the so-called stimulant.
"This is proved by the fact that they group together as
stimulants, and give to the same patient in alternate doses,
remedies of directly antagonistic action, as alcohol and
strychnine, or digitalis, etc.
"The accepted definition of a stimulant in medical literature,
is some agent capable of exciting or increasing _vital activity_
as a whole, or the natural activity of some one structure or
organ.
"For instance, both clinical and experimental observations show
that strychnine directly increases the functional activity of
the respiratory, cardiac and vasomotor nervous systems, and
thereby increases the internal distribution of oxygen, which is
nature's own special exciter of all vital action. Therefore it
is properly a direct respiratory, cardiac and vasomotor
stimulant and indirectly a stimulator of all vital processes.
But the same kind of clinical and experimental observations show
that alcohol directly diminishes the functional activity of all
nerve structures, pre-eminently those of respiration and
circulation, and also of all metabolic processes, whether
respirative, disintegrative or secretory. Consequently it not
only acts as directly antagonistic to strychnine, but equally so
to all true stimulants or remedies capable of increasing vital
activity. Instead, therefore, of meriting the name of
_stimulant_, alcohol should be designated and used only as an
anæsthetic and sedative, or depressor of vital activity.
"And a thorough and impartial investigation will show that its
use in the treatment of typhoid and other fevers, while
deceiving both physician and patient, by its anæsthetic effect
in diminishing restlessness, both prolongs the duration and
increases the ratio of mortality of the disease, by its
impairment of vital activity in the organizable elements of both
blood and tissues."
Equally interesting is the following outline of treatment pursued by
Dr. W. H. Riley, of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
"The purpose of the present paper is to give briefly an outline
of the method of treatment of typhoid fever as used by the
writer in a considerable number of cases.
"A consideration of the pathology of this disease does not
properly come under this head, but we wish simply to call
attention to the well-known fact that typhoid fever is a germ
disease. The germ which causes this fever has generally been
supposed to be the bacillus of Eberth. More recent
bacteriological studies rather indicate that the bacillus coli
may also cause the disease. These germs are usually carried into
the body in food or drink, and, lodging in the small intestines,
begin to grow and multiply, and by their life produce poisonous
ptomaines which are absorbed and carried by the circulation to
all the organs and tissues of the body.
"It is these ptomaines, thus carried to all parts of the body,
that are largely the immediate cause of the pyrexia and
attending symptoms. The organisms which produce these poisons
for the most part remain in the intestines, although they have
been found in the spleen.
"The indications for treatment are:--
"1. To remove or destroy the cause (to eliminate the germs and
ptomaines from the body).
"2. To sustain the vital and resisting powers of the patient.
"If the patient is seen early in the disease, it has been my
practice to immediately put him to bed and give a free dose of
magnesium sulphate. This is preferably given in the morning or
forenoon, and may be repeated once or twice on successive days.
Besides this the patient should have a large enema of water at a
temperature of from 75° to 80° F.; and this may be repeated
daily or even oftener, for some time, if necessary, to keep the
bowels empty of the poisonous substances.
"The salines and enemas thus used carry out bodily a large
number of germs and ptomaines that are present in the
intestines; and further, the salines, by producing an increased
secretion of the mucous membrane of the intestines, tend to
disentangle and set free many of the germs that have found a
lodging place in the walls of the intestines.
"For the elimination of the ptomaines which have been absorbed
into the circulation and carried to the tissues, nothing is
better than the internal use of water. From three to five pints
should be drunk during every twenty-four hours. It should be
taken in small quantities--six to eight ounces every hour or two
during waking hours, except when food is taken. I will refer to
this point more in detail later.
"A consideration of the general care of the patient properly
comes under the second head of the indications for treatment as
given above. The patient should be put to bed in a large, light,
well-ventilated room. At least two sides of the room should
communicate directly by windows with out-of-doors, in order that
the room may be properly ventilated.
"All unnecessary articles of furniture, such as carpets,
couches, upholstered chairs, pictures, etc. should be removed.
"The room should be thoroughly cleaned before the patient is put
into it.
"There should be two beds in the room for the use of the
patient. These should be, preferably, narrow and so placed in
the room that there is a free approach to both sides of the bed,
for the convenience of the nurse in giving treatment. Iron
bedsteads are preferable to wooden. The bedding should be firm,
yet soft and smoothly drawn. There should be just sufficient
covering to protect the body. The patient should be changed from
one bed to the other daily. This may be done by placing the two
beds side by side and carefully moving the patient from one to
the other. The sheets on the bed from which the patient has been
taken should be washed and disinfected at each change of the
beds, and all other bedding should be thoroughly aired and
exposed to the sunlight daily.
"The patient should have the care of a thoroughly educated,
careful and competent nurse, one who understands perfectly the
various methods of using water in the treatment of fevers.
"There is no other single remedy that I consider so valuable in
the treatment of fever as the internal use of water. As above
stated, the patient should drink six or eight ounces every hour
during the waking hours, except for about two hours after food
is taken. The water should be thoroughly sterilized, and as a
rule may be taken either cool or hot. Ice water is
objectionable. Hot water is often preferable. This is a simple
remedy, but nevertheless is efficacious. It should be given to
the patient whether he calls for it or not, and it should be
considered an important part of his treatment. When water is
taken into the stomach and absorbed into the circulation, it
throws into solution the ptomaines which have been absorbed from
the intestines and are present in the circulation and tissues,
and thereby puts them in a favorable condition for elimination.
It increases the activity of the kidneys, and thus hastens and
increases the elimination of the poisons in the system.
"In the early stage of the fever, when the pulse is full, and
the action of the heart increased, it is best to give the
patient cool water. Later in the disease, when the action of the
heart is weak, and the patient feeble, it is best to give the
water hot.
"Winternitz, many years ago, demonstrated that hot water taken
into the stomach acts as a cardiac stimulant, and the increased
heart's action is immediate, or at least before the water has
time to absorb, which indicates that the water in the stomach
acts reflexly as a cardiac stimulant. The water after absorption
also increases the circulation by filling the blood-vessels, and
increasing arterial pressure. The writer has frequently noticed
a decided increase in the fullness, and rapidity of the pulse,
after a patient has drunk a glassful of hot water.
"The external use of water also forms an important part of the
treatment. The patient should be sponged off with tepid water
every hour or two when the temperature is 103°, or above. When
the temperature is less than this, it is not necessary to sponge
the body so frequently. Sometimes a hot sponge bath is more
efficacious in reducing the temperature than the tepid or cool
bath. The sponge bath reduces the temperature, relieves many of
the distressing nervous symptoms, is refreshing to the patient,
and promotes sleep. The temperature of the body may also be
reduced by the use of cool compresses placed over the abdomen,
and changed frequently.
"The matter of diet is an important factor in the treatment of
typhoid fever. The diet should be aseptic, easily digested, and
should contain the necessary food elements. Probably no one
article of diet meets all these requirements as well as
sterilized milk. The patient should take from two to three pints
daily. The milk is best taken four times during the day at
intervals of four hours, taking eight to ten ounces at a time.
Should the patient become tired of the milk, gluten gruel may be
substituted for the milk.
"The diarrhoea and bowel symptoms, when present, may be
relieved by the application of hot fomentations to the abdomen,
warm or hot enemas and twenty grains of subnitrate of bismuth
given every four hours.
"The patient should be kept as quiet as possible, and should be
turned in bed at intervals, to prevent hypostatic congestion and
the formation of bed-sores. The bony prominences which are apt
to become eroded should be sponged frequently with a solution of
tannic acid in equal parts of alcohol and water; a dram of the
tannic acid to a pint of alcohol and water, is about the proper
strength to use.
"By the methods briefly outlined above--that is by the free use
of water internally and externally, by keeping the intestines
thoroughly emptied of poisonous material by the free and
frequent use of enemas, by proper feeding and the careful
attention of a good nurse to the patient and his
surroundings--the duration of the fever may be shortened and the
severity of the disease lessened; heart failure, and other
complications will seldom occur, and the patient will in nearly
every instance make a good recovery. The best method to pursue
to prevent heart failure is to keep the poisons which are
generated in the bowels and absorbed into the body, and which
are the direct cause of the heart failure, eliminated from the
body. Should the heart become weak, it may be effectually
stimulated by giving hot water to drink, applying heat to the
heart in the form of a fomentation, and the application of
fomentations to the upper spine.
"In the treatment of a large number of cases of typhoid fever,
extending over several years' practice, the writer has never
made use of alcohol internally to support the action of the
heart, or for any other purpose.
"The number of cases of death from typhoid fever coming under
the writer's observation, where the method of treatment pursued
has been similar to that briefly indicated above, have been very
few, a much smaller per cent. than in practice where alcohol has
been used as a 'cardiac stimulant.' I believe that the use of
alcohol in the treatment of typhoid fever is not only useless,
but absolutely harmful."
Dr. Kate Lindsay, of Battle Creek Sanitarium and Hospital, contributed
an article upon Typhoid Fever to the _Bulletin of the A. M. T. A._ for
January, 1896, from which a few notes are here taken:--
"The chief toxic centre is evidently the intestinal tract,
especially the termination of the ileum. The ulcerations,
necroses, perforations and hemorrhages are most frequently found
in the last twelve inches of the small intestine, and may extend
into the large intestine. The ulcerated surface and open vessels
increase the facility with which the poison finds entrance into
the circulation. The microbes, blood clots, necrosed tissue and
pus, furnish abundant supplies of toxic matter, which,
saturating the system, over-power and stop the activity of the
functions of all the organs of the body, causing degeneration of
tissues. Death is said to take place from heart, lung or brain
failure, but the failure involves every other organ as well.
"Regarding the intestinal tract as any other abscess at this
time, the physician should seek for methods of treatment or
remedies which will remove the morbid matters, and destroy, or
at least inhibit their action, thus decreasing the fever and
stimulating the circulation. Secondary toxic centres often
develop in the course of this disease, notably in the glands,
lungs and dependent organs, the hypostatic congestion resulting
from lying in one position, causing stasis of blood, death and
necrosis of tissue, both of the external and internal organs.
All vessels connected with the dying tissues carry toxins to
other parts of the body. Suppurating glands, and phlebitis of
the femoral veins are examples of this secondary infection, and
are accountable for the heart failure and collapse so often
fatal during the second, third and fourth weeks of typhoid
fever. * * * * *
"The old idea that in peristaltic action lay the great danger of
increase of the hemorrhage and perforation of the bowels, is
giving way to the more rational view that gaseous distention and
septic absorption, are what bring about fatal results from these
complications, and that the moderate peristalsis of the
intestinal walls lessens these dangers by closing the gaping
ends of the injured vessels, and expelling the septic matter and
foul gases. To meet these indications I have found lavage of the
bowels, even during hemorrhage, with water of 105° to 110° F. or
even hotter, given in moderate quantity of from one pint to
three, to give great relief by freeing the large intestines of
blood clots, fecal matter and other morbid matter. It also
increases peristaltic action in the small intestines, thus
favoring the expulsion of gas. The heat stimulates the
circulation in the peripheral vessels of the intestines, and
overcomes the tendency to blood stasis.
"In the cases cited, ice-bags, alternated with fomentations,
were used over the abdomen externally, and heat, or hot and
cold, to spine. The extremities were kept warm. From ten to
thirty minims of turpentine, in an ounce of gum acacia or starch
water, increased the efficiency of the enemata, and aided in
expelling the gas and checking hemorrhage.
"The tendency to hypostatic congestion and bed-sores, was
prevented by frequent change of position, and the use of hot and
cold to the spine by fomentations and compresses, or better
still, hot fine spraying, or the alternate hot and cold spray.
In one grave case, spraying was kept up for about twelve hours,
with only short intermissions. The heart was stimulated by heat
applied over it, whenever depression and collapse threatened,
and by hot and cold sponging of the spine."
Dr. Noble said some time ago in the _London Times_:--
"Although it is true that alcohol is an antipyretic, yet its
exhibition neither shortens nor modifies (favorably) the
diseases of which the fever is but a symptom. The paralysis of
the brain which is so frequent a cause of death in typhoid
fever, is more often brought about by alcohol than any other
cause, and more than one woman suffering from puerperal fever
has been done to death by the administration of this substance,
which, not being _convenienter naturæ, is contra naturam_."
J. S. Cain, M. D., in an able paper, read at the Nashville Academy of
Medicine, on "Rational Suggestions in the Treatment of Typhoid Fever,"
dissents from the practice, which still obtains largely in the medical
profession, of administering alcoholic liquors, in the belief that they
are "stimulants, conservators of force and even nutrients," and says:--
"After a careful and thoughtful study of this subject, I have
reluctantly, and against firm early convictions, been forced to
the conclusion that these theories with regard to the beneficial
effects of alcohol in disease are wholly fallacious. The only
rational conclusion at which I can arrive is that the agent is
ever, and under all circumstances, a depressor of temperature;
that it arrests the physiological interchange of carbonic acid
gas and oxygen in the tissues, as well as in the air vesicles of
the lungs; that it impedes the elimination of tissue waste, and
causes the accumulation of this refuse in the system; that it is
lethal anæsthetic in all quantities; that it is not stimulant in
the true sense, and never exerts that influence; and that it
supplies no element to the diseased and vitiated system
calculated to antagonize disease, repair waste, or invigorate
lowered vital forces, and therefore for these purposes is not
called for in the rational treatment of typhoid fever."
At the annual meeting of the American Medical Association held in
Atlanta, Georgia, in 1896, Dr. G. B. Garber, of Dunkirk, Ind., read a
paper upon "Alcohol in Typhoid Fever" from which a few points are here
taken:--
"The fact that the mortality from typhoid fever seems to be
gradually lowering is no doubt due in great measure to the
non-use of alcohol in the treatment of the disease. Hardly a
week passes that some of our journals do not report a series of
cases treated without the aid of alcohol in any form. I used
alcohol in the treatment of the disease until two years ago,
when I became alarmed at the mortality; so I changed my plan,
and in 1894 I treated thirty-seven well marked cases of varying
degrees of intensity. I had two fatal cases, and in both of them
I had used alcohol. In 1895 I treated thirty cases of about the
same type, with no death. I only used alcohol in one of them,
and it caused me more trouble than any of the others. As this
case was in the family of a saloon-keeper, I could not control
the matter, as they would give it during my absence. On my
return I would find the face flushed, the temperature high, the
pulse rapid and the patient nervous. By close inquiry I would
find that some of the family had given 'just a little good
whisky' which had been in the house for twenty years.
"In closing, I wish to state that I am well convinced that in
the treatment of typhoid fever our patients will do better and
stand a greater chance of recovery, if we abstain entirely from
the use of alcohol in the treatment of the disease."
Prof. J. Burney Yeo, of London, in a paper read before the International
Medical Congress held at Rome, Italy, said:--
"In order to maintain the intestinal antisepsis which forms an
essential part of this method of treatment, I insist on the
necessity of scrupulous attention and caution in feeding
patients suffering from enteric fever, great danger arising from
a failure to note the extremely limited digestive and absorptive
capacity exhibited by such patients.
"In conclusion, the use of alcoholic stimulants, and the common
employment of depressing antipyretic agents, must be condemned."
In a report of the treatment of typhoid fever by seventy-two physicians
of Connecticut, thirty-eight declared that they did not use alcohol in
any stage of this disease. The remainder used it sparingly in the last
stages, and only two considered it valuable from the beginning of the
disease.
In a discussion of typhoid fever by a medical society meeting in
Rochester, N. Y., recently, sixty physicians being present, only three
spoke in favor of using alcohol in this disease.
Hygienic physicians all insist upon a rigid fast as long as the high
temperature continues, or until the patient is sufficiently hungry to
eat a piece of plain, stale, graham bread, "dry upon the tongue." Dr.
Charles E. Page of Boston says there would be very few relapses if this
plan were carefully carried out. He contends that the whisky and milk
diet, together with the not over-fresh air of the average sick room is
enough to produce fever in a healthy person, hence is not likely to be
conducive to recovery in one already infected with the disease.
In an article in the _Arena_ of September, 1892, Dr. Page says:--
"In my fever practice I have frequently observed the effect of
fasts of six, eight, ten and twelve days to be in the highest
degree productive of the health and comfort of patients, as, on
the other hand I have, during the past twenty years observed the
deplorable effects of the almost universal plan of constant
feeding. In some of the most distressing cases that have
happened to be thrown in my way, when all hope in the minds of
friends had been abandoned, I have found that withdrawal of
food, drugs and stimulants, and the substitution of simple,
fresh, soft water, has produced results that seemed almost
miraculous."
Fruit juices are now permitted by many physicians in fever, a few drops
of lemon or orange juice, being a grateful addition to the water. Grape
juice, unfermented, is highly recommended by some.
A young minister of great promise died recently of typhoid fever. His
young wife, only one year married, is in settled melancholy, because she
cannot understand why "God took her husband." Inquiry developed the fact
that the physician in attendance was a believer in alcohol as a remedy,
and used it in this case. In view of the better chances of recovery
under non-alcoholic treatment shown by comparative death-rates, may it
not be that the alcohol was responsible for the young man's death,
instead of its being "God's will to take him?" The Author of all good
has too frequently been held responsible for the errors of physicians,
and the carelessness of nurses.
VOMITING:--"If the vomiting is due to undigested food, and the
sickness can be traced to excess, or to improper diet, draughts
of hot water should be taken in order to be rid of offending
matter in the stomach. After the stomach is empty bits of ice
may be sucked, or cold water sipped. A quarter of a Seidlitz
powder may be taken. A flannel, folded to four thicknesses,
dipped in hot water, and wrung dry in a towel, may be applied to
the pit of the stomach. Cover the flannel with a hot plate,
being careful to have the flannel large enough to prevent the
plate's burning the skin. Pin a dry towel over all, around the
body. This may be renewed every half-hour or hour, as required.
Sometimes a cold wet compress on the pit of the stomach, covered
with a dry towel is more efficacious, heat developing by
reaction. Fluid magnesia is often helpful."--DR. RIDGE.
CHAPTER IX.
ALCOHOL AND NURSING MOTHERS.
It frequently happens that the nursing mother is unable by reason of
defective digestive apparatus, or imperfect assimilative powers, to
supply sufficient nourishment for her babe. In such case she is often
advised to drink ale or beer. It is true that these liquors will excite
the secretions of the mammary gland, but it is increase in quantity, not
in quality, for the milk is impoverished by the added water and alcohol,
taken in the beer. Milkmen sometimes salt cows heavily so that they will
drink largely of water, and thus give more milk, but one quart of good,
rich milk is worth three quarts of the poor, thin stuff resulting from
such method. It is proper feeding, and care, that ensure good milk.
When women complain that they are unable to nurse their babies the cause
is often an error in diet. Too great reliance is put upon meat as
strength-giving. While meat, used in moderation, may be valuable to many
persons, the nursing mother should not depend upon it to any great
extent. She will find farinaceous foods, with plenty of warm milk, what
she most requires. At bedtime she should have a bowl of well-cooked
oatmeal gruel, diluted with rich milk, and sweetened, if she prefer it
so. The milk should be added to the gruel while it is boiling, as it
digests more readily if scalded. People who cannot, or think they
cannot, take milk of itself, often find it easy to digest it, after it
is scalded in the gruel. Anything that a mother can do in the way of
nourishing her babe will be done upon such a diet, that is, farinaceous
foods and milk. Sweet fruits are of course valuable also, as tending to
keep the system in good order.
It is well to bear in mind that it is not the quantity of food eaten,
but that which is digested, and assimilated, that goes to build up the
tissues of the body. So the habit of eating between meals is pernicious,
as it disturbs the digestive processes, and robs the stomach of
much-needed rest. This habit is the cause, in many cases, of the falling
off in the milk after the first month or two.
As nourishment for both mother and babe can come from food only, good
appetite, and good digestion are essential to health and strength. The
very best help towards gaining a good appetite is exercise in the open
air. All mothers recognize the need of keeping their little ones out of
doors a while every day, but all do not see the necessity of the same
mode of life for themselves. Dr. Nathan S. Davis has said: "I have
persuaded thousands of mothers to try fresh air, instead of wine or
beer, with gratifying results." The mother who takes her babe out,
herself, for its daily airing, is laying up stores of health and
vitality, to aid her in providing for the needs of the little one,
dependent upon her.
Good digestion is as essential as good appetite. Alcohol, whether in
beer, wine, whisky, or any other form, is injurious to the stomach, and
a hinderer of digestion, hence must do harm, rather than good, to the
mother in search of added nourishment for her babe.
Dr. Condi says:--
"The only drink of the nurse should be water or milk. All
fermented and distilled liquors, as well as strong tea and
coffee, she should strictly abstain from. Never was there a more
absurd or pernicious notion than that wine, ale or porter is
necessary to a nursing mother in order to keep up her strength,
or to increase the quantity, and improve the properties of her
milk. So far from producing these effects, such drinks, when
taken in any quantity, invariably disturb more or less the
health of the stomach, and tend to impair the quality, and
diminish the quantity, of nourishment furnished by her to her
infant."
Dr. William Hargreaves says:--
"Every farmer knows that all a healthy cow requires to give good
milk and butter is, to give her good feed, and pure water; and
he also knows that the way to make a cow give poor watery milk,
which they might churn until doomsday without obtaining butter,
is to feed her on distillery slops, or grains from the brewery.
It is also well known that cheese cannot be made from such milk,
it being deficient in curd, or casein.
"Alcohol is not only useless but injurious; for children whose
mothers try to keep themselves upon beer, etc., very frequently
suffer from vomiting and diarrhoea, and often from
convulsions. Sometimes a single glass of whisky, taken by the
mother, will produce sickness and indigestion in the child, for
twenty-four hours after.
"In the milk of a healthy woman the water ranges from 879 to 905
parts in 1,000. The oily substance ranges from 25 to 42; casein
from 15 to 39; sugar of milk from 31 to 45, and the salts from 1
to 4 parts in 1,000.
"Alcoholic drinks materially alter these proportions, for, on
the analysis of the milk of the same woman, a few hours before
and after the use of a pint of beer, it was found that the
alcohol increases the proportion of the water, and diminishes
that of casein; and that alcohol is very perceptible in it."
"The only rational way to be adopted by mothers to increase the
supply of nutrition for their infants, is to secure plenty of
suitable nutritious food, prepared in the way that will most fit
it for digestion, while they at the same time, avoid as far as
possible all fatigue, and mental excitement. It is impossible
that alcoholic beverages can add anything to the nutrition of
either the infant or mother."--Dr. Bussey, in _Stimulants for
Nursing Mothers_.
Dr. E. G. Figg, in _The Physiological Operation of Alcohol_, gives the
analyses of the milk of a temperate woman in good health, and of a
drinking woman as follows:--
Milk of temperate mother. Milk of drinking mother.
Salts, " " 8.50 Salts, " " 5.50
Casein, " " 3.0 Casein, " " 2.0
Oil, " " 7.50 Oil, " " 6.5
Water, " " 81.0 Water, " " 84.0
Alcohol, " " 2.0
------ ------
100.00 100.00
Dr. Edward Smith says in his _Practical Dietary_:--
"Alcoholics are largely used by many women in the belief that
they support the system, and maintain the supply of milk for the
infant; but I am convinced that this is a serious error, and is
not an infrequent cause of fits and emaciation in the child."
Dr. James Edmunds, of the Lying-In Hospital, London, Eng., says in _Diet
for Nursing Mothers_:--
"The nursing mother is peculiarly placed, in that she has to
provide a supply of nutriment for the child which is dependent
upon her, as well as for the ordinary requirements of her own
system. The nutrition of the child is to be provided for upon
the same principles, and by the same food-elements, as is the
nutrition of the mother, the only difference being that the
young child is possessed of less perfect masticatory and
digestive powers, and therefore requires food to be presented to
it in a state more simple, uniform, and readily assimilable than
the adult, who is furnished with strong teeth, and possessed of
a fully-grown stomach. The mastication, digestion, and primary
assimilation of the nursing infant's food is thrown upon the
mother's organs; but the tissues of the child are nourished
precisely as are the tissues of the mother, and a nursing mother
requires simply to digest a larger supply of wholesome, and
appropriate food. As a matter of course mothers with imperfect
teeth, or weak stomachs, cannot perform the digestion of extra
food for the infant so well as those mothers who have an
abundance of reserve power in their digestive apparatus; and
with such patients, the question arises, how are they to make up
for the deficiency which they soon experience in the supply of
milk? Such mothers appeal to their medical advisers to prescribe
some stimulant which will enable them to overcome the difficulty
which they experience, and often are greatly dissatisfied if
informed that there is no drug in the _materia medica_ which
will make up for structural weakness in the organs which
masticate, digest or assimilate the food. The proper course for
such women to adopt is a simple and rational one. They should
assist their digestive apparatus as much as possible by securing
an abundance of suitable and nutritious food, prepared in the
best way, and as is most digestible, while they should lessen
the demands of their own system by the avoidance of bodily
fatigue, and mental excitement. These means, aided by that
philosophical hygiene which is at all times essential to the
preservation of pure and perfect health, will enable them to
supply a maximum quantity of pure and wholesome milk; and
further calls by the child require proper artificial food.
Unfortunately such advice fails to satisfy many anxious mothers
who refuse to admit, or believe, that they are less robust, or
less capable, than other ladies of their acquaintance, and such
mothers fall easy victims to circulars vaunting the nourishing
properties of 'Hoare's Stout,' 'Tanqueray's Gin,' or Gilbey's
'strengthening Port,' circulars which are always backed up by
the example, and advice, of lady friends, who themselves have
acquired the habit of using these liquors, and who view as a
reproach to themselves the practice of any other lady who may
not keep them in countenance, as the perfection of all moral and
physical propriety. Unfortunately the pressure of such lady
friends is often so persistent as to paralyse the influence of a
conscientious and thoughtful medical adviser, while the
appetites and beliefs of such friends often throw them into
active antagonism to any medical adviser, who may not endorse
the habits in which, as they believe, and no doubt
conscientiously, duty to their child requires them to indulge.
The only course that a medical practitioner, whose family is
dependent upon his practice, can safely take with veteran
mothers on this question, is to let them have their own way
without reiterated admonition. When once they have acquired the
habit of depending upon large quantities of beer for nursing
their children, they become perfectly infatuated, and are
practically incapable of passing through the probationary
fortnight which takes place before the digestive apparatus can
work under its natural, but to them strange, conditions, while
the temporary longing for beer, and the sudden lessening of the
quantity of milk afforded by their strained and impoverished
systems, are at once set down as clear proofs that their medical
adviser is a crochetty, and dangerous person, who must be
superseded at the first convenient opportunity. Facts and
arguments have no more influence on such mothers than they have
upon opium-eaters, drunkards, or inveterate consumers of
tobacco; while the extreme propriety of conduct which these
ladies manifest, and the encouragement they receive from other
medical men, make the convictions based upon their own personal
sensations incontrovertible, and their position practically
unassailable. I think I might fairly say that among the
comfortable middle classes of society the views at present held
on this question are so deplorable that a large proportion of
children are never sober from the first moment of their
existence until they have been weaned; while often after a few
years the use of alcohol is again introduced to the children as
a 'medical comfort,' as a part of their regular diet, or as an
invariable accompaniment of all their juvenile visitation, and
company-keeping. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising
that temperance reformers appeal in vain on this question, and
that their facts and arguments are viewed with plausible
indifference, or insidious opposition, by persons whose
appetites and instincts have been undergoing debasement, and
perversion from the very dawn of their lives. My own deliberate
conviction is that nothing but harm comes to nursing mothers,
and to the infants who are dependent upon them, by the ordinary
use of alcoholic beverages of any kind.
"Infants nursed by mothers who drink much beer also become
fatter than usual, and to an untrained eye sometimes appear as
'magnificent children.' But the fatness of such children is not
a recommendation to the more knowing observer; they are
extremely prone to die of inflammation of the chest (bronchitis)
after a few days' illness from an ordinary cold. They die, very
much more frequently than other children, of convulsions and
diarrhoea, while cutting their teeth, and they are very liable
to die of scrofulous inflammation of the membranes of the brain,
commonly called 'water on the brain,' while their childhood
often presents a painful contrast--in the way of crooked legs,
and stunted or ill-shapen figure--to the 'magnificent,' and
promising appearance of their infancy.
"Those ladies who adopt the general views I have thus expressed
in relation to the nursing of their children, will want to know
what is the 'proper artificial food' with which to supplement
their milk when it is deficient in quantity. With some patients
the milk will fall off in quantity at the end of two or three
months. With others, although the quantity may not fall off, the
child seems unsatisfied; and there is a third class with whom a
profusion of milk is supplied, and the child thrives
exceedingly, but the mother gets flabby, weak, nervous, pale and
exhausted. In the last case, the mother is simply goaded on by
susceptibility of her nervous system, or by inordinate activity
of the breasts to yield an amount of milk which her digestive
powers are not equal to providing for. The treatment of such
cases should be simply repressive. The mother should separate
herself somewhat more from the child, and make a rule of only
nursing it from five to eight times in the twenty-four hours,
while the neck of the mother should be kept cool in regard to
dress, and cold sponging may be practiced carefully night and
morning. Her attention should be diverted by outdoor exercise on
foot, and additionally in a carriage if necessary. When the
mother's milk, though apparently not deficient in quantity,
proves unsatisfying to the child, great attention should be paid
to varying the diet of the mother, while such staple foods
should be taken as are most easily and thoroughly assimilated
into milk. The unsatisfying quality of the milk will generally
be remedied by taking a more varied diet, together with three or
four half pints of milk in the course of the day, accompanied
with farinaceous matter, as in the shape of well-made milk
gruel; and in case these measures fail, the only alternative is
to supplement the mother's milk by obtaining a wet-nurse to
suckle the child three or four times a day alternately with the
mother, or by feeding the child with proper artificial food. The
same measures may be resorted to where the milk, though
satisfying in character, is deficient in quantity; and in
preparing artificial food for the child it must always be
remembered that the food requires to be adapted to the stage of
development which is manifested by a young infant's digestive
organs. The infant's digestive apparatus is, in fact, designed
to digest milk, and to digest nothing else, but when the teeth
are cut farinaceous matter of a more or less solid character
should be gradually mixed with the milk. Almost all the
illnesses of infants under twelve months of age are caused by
some gross impropriety of diet, or otherwise, on the part of the
mother, for which the child suffers through the medium of the
milk, or they are caused by feeding the child with improper
artificial food. Thick sop, and many other articles often given
as food are as indigestible to an infant of three months old as
beefsteaks would be to a horse; and, until the child has cut its
teeth, it should have nothing but food resembling the mother's
milk as closely as possible.
"The proper way to feed an infant of three months old, whose
mother is only able to partially support it, is as follows: When
the child wakes in the morning it should not go to the mother,
but should be taken away by the nurse, and immediately fed from
the bottle, sucking its milk through a suitable teat. After the
mother has breakfasted the child may go to the breast, and
during the day it should be alternately fed from the bottle, and
nursed by the mother. At six o'clock the baby should invariably
be placed in its crib, by the side of the mother's bed, and fed
just before going to sleep, and the habit of going to bed at six
o'clock should be strictly and invariably enforced. If once the
child be allowed to come down to the family circle after dark,
the habit of going to sleep will be broken, and the child will
continuously cry to come down. In the course of the evening the
mother may nurse the child once, and at ten or eleven o'clock,
when the mother goes to bed, the child should be again fed from
the bottle, and the mother should have a basin of well-made
milk-gruel; and by her bedside should be placed, at the last
moment, as much gruel as she is likely to drink with relish
during the night. Whenever the child is restless it should be
taken out of its crib, gently, by the mother, and nursed, say
two or three times during the night, and put back again into its
crib, the child never being allowed to sleep with the mother.
When the night is fairly over, and the child awakens, it should
be fetched by the nurse, and have its first morning meal from
the bottle. This plan of feeding should be persisted in
continuously until the child has cut its teeth; and it is only
when every means have been taken to ensure the sweetness,
freshness and niceness, not only of the milk and water, but of
the bottle and of the teat, and the child still fails to get on,
that, in rare cases, I advise the admixture of a little
farinaceous matter, in the way of food containing one part milk,
and two parts of properly sweetened barley-water. As the milk
teeth come through, other farinaceous matter may be gradually
blended with the milk, and there is nothing better than to begin
at about eight months with a teaspoonful of baked flour, well
boiled in a pint of milk and water, or in the water, to be
afterwards cooled with milk. Oftentimes a little salt, as well
as sugar, will materially help its digestion. The child will do
well on that food--the quantity being duly increased--until it
has cut almost all its milk teeth, when it may eat bread and
butter, rice, and egg puddings, and occasionally eat a boiled
egg once a day. I believe that it is a great mistake to give red
flesh meat to children in their early years, unless there be
some very special reason for it, and then it should only be
temporarily used; but nice potatoes, flavored with fresh gravy
from a joint, may be given at dinner, as the child becomes able
to feed itself. * * * * *
"Bear in mind that when you take wine, beer or brandy, you are
distilling that wine, beer or brandy into your child's body.
Probably nothing could be worse than to have the very fabric of
the child's tissues laid down from alcoholized blood."
Another English physician deplores "the pernicious habit of drinking
large quantities of ale or stout by nursing mothers, under the idea that
they thereby increase and improve the secretion of milk, whereas they
are in reality deteriorating the quality of that upon which the infant
must depend for health and life."
Dr. Edis says:--
"Infant mortality is mainly due to two causes, the substitution
of farinaceous food for milk, and the delusion that ale or beer
is necessary as an article of diet for nursing mothers. * * * *
* Countless disorders among infants are due simply and solely to
the popular fallacy, that the nursing mother cannot properly
fulfil her duties, unless she resorts to the aid of alcoholics."
Dr. N. S. Davis says:--
"The opinion prevails quite extensively among certain classes of
people, and with some physicians, that a liberal use of beer is
beneficial to women while nursing their children. They drink it
under the impression that it will both strengthen them and make
their milk more abundant. But I have never seen a case in which
it had been used regularly for any considerable period of time,
where it did not result in more or less indigestion from gastric
irritation and disordered secretions, and an early failure in
the secretion of milk. It probably never increases the flow of
milk any more than would the drinking of the same quantity of
pure water; while the alcohol it contains, by daily repetition,
induces congestion of the gastric mucous membrane, with
disordered gastric and hepatic secretions.
"A case strikingly illustrating these results was examined by me
to-day. The patient was a young married woman who was nursing
her first child, now nine months old. At the time of her
confinement she was in fair health, rather nervous temperament,
weight 120 pounds. During the first few days her milk did not
flow very freely, and she says her physician advised her to
drink beer. Consequently she commenced to drink a glass of beer
at each mealtime, and a bottle during the night. During the
first six months she had sufficient milk for her baby; but
before the end of that time she had begun to suffer from
flatulency, constipation, gaseous and acid eructations, what she
calls 'heart-burn,' and sometimes vomiting. During the last
three months she has suffered, in addition to the preceding
symptoms, one or two attacks each week of extreme pain, from the
lower point of the sternum to the back between the scapula,
accompanied by retching, or severe efforts to vomit. To relieve
these attacks she has taken liberal doses of gin, in addition to
her regular supply of beer. Now at the end of nine months, her
milk has nearly ceased to flow, her bowels are costive, her
stomach tolerates only small quantities of the simplest
nourishment, her flesh and strength are very much reduced, her
weight being only 96 pounds; and yet she thinks both the beer
and gin make her feel better every time she takes them. Such is
the delusive power of the anæsthetic effect of alcohol. A
persistence in the same management would probably terminate
fatally in from six to twelve months more, from chronic
gastritis, and inanition. But if she will rigidly abstain from
all alcoholic remedies, and take only the most bland,
unirritating nourishment, aided by mildly soothing and
antiseptic remedies, and fresh air, she will slowly recover."
In a clinical lecture delivered before the Senior Class in the
Northwestern University Medical School, Dr. Davis told of a case similar
to the preceding:--
"The flow of milk in her breasts has also diminished to such a
degree that she does not have half enough for her baby. Yet she
says the _beer_ makes her feel better after each drink, and that
the _gin_ helps to relieve the severe attacks of pain, and
consequently she thinks she could not do without them. It is
undoubtedly true that the patient feels temporary relief from
the anæsthetic effect of the alcohol in her beer and gin, just
as she would from any anæsthetic or narcotic. And it is equally
true that so long as the alcohol is present in her blood it so
modifies the hemoglobin and albuminous constituents, as to
diminish the reception and internal distribution of oxygen, and
thereby retards metabolic changes. But the combined influence of
the alcohol in retarding the internal distribution of oxygen and
the drain upon the nutritive elements of her blood, in
furnishing milk for her baby, led to rapid impoverishment of the
blood and tissues, and the early establishment of a sufficient
grade of gastritis to cause indigestion, frequent vomiting, and,
later, paroxysms of severe gastralgia, with general emaciation,
and loss of strength.
"In accordance with the present popular ideas, both in and out
of the profession, this patient tells me she has tried a great
variety of foods, peptonized, sterilized, and predigested, but
all to no purpose. And why?--Simply because her troubles are not
in the kind of food she takes, but in the morbid condition of
her blood, and of the mucous membrane and nerves of her stomach.
Consequently the rational indications for treatment are: (_a_)
to get her stomach and blood free from the alcohol of beer and
gin; (_b_) to encourage the reception and internal distribution
of oxygen by plenty of fresh air; (_c_) to give her the most
bland, or unirritating food in small, and frequently repeated
doses, of which good milk with lime-water, and milk and
wheat-flour gruel are the best; (_d_) such medicines as possess
sufficient antiseptic, and anodyne properties to allay the
irritability of the gastric mucous membrane, and lessen
fermentation."
CHAPTER X.
COMPARATIVE DEATH-RATES WITH AND WITHOUT THE USE OF ALCOHOL AS A REMEDY.
A study of statistics relating to the difference in results of the
treatment of disease with and without the use of alcohol, cannot but be
of great interest to all students of the alcohol question. The appended
statistics are culled mainly from the _Medical Pioneer_ of England, now,
_Medical Temperance Review_, the journal of the British Medical
Temperance Association, and from the _Bulletin of the American Medical
Temperance Association_.
A paragraph in the _British Medical Journal_, for Dec. 2, 1893, says:--
"An interesting fact has been noted by Dr. Claye Shaw, at the
London County Asylum, Banstead, for the Insane. Since the
withdrawal of _beer_ from the dietary, the rate of recovery has
gone up. During the past year, for example, the recoveries
reached 46.97 per cent. Nearly one half of the patients had thus
recovered during the period stated. The inmates take their food
better without the liquor, and they are thus taught that
intoxicants are not a necessity of ordinary health."
In the _Medical Pioneer_ for January, 1894, Dr. John Mois, medical
superintendent of West Haven Infectious Diseases Hospital, states that
prior to 1885 he had treated 2,148 cases of smallpox "in the usual
routine method, with the use of alcohol when the heart's action seemed
to indicate it;" resulting in a mortality of 17 per cent. But since 1885
he has treated 700 additional cases under similar circumstances except
that the use of alcoholic preparations was entirely omitted, and the
resulting mortality was only 11 per cent.
In the same journal, Dr. J. J. Ridge states that he had treated the 200
cases of scarlet fever admitted into the Enfield Isolation Hospital
during the years 1892 and 1893, without alcohol in any form, with a
mortality of only 2.5 per cent.; while the mortality in the hospitals
under the Metropolitan Asylums Board in 1893, in which alcohol was used
in accordance with the usual practice in scarlet fever, was 6.3 per
cent.
Dr. J. J. Ridge says later:--
"In January, 1894, I published the result of the treatment of
the first 200 cases of scarlatina admitted into the temporary
wards of the Enfield Isolation Hospital during 1892 and 1893. I
stated that there had been five fatal cases, but that one was
dying when admitted and only lived a few hours. The mortality
was 2 per cent., or 2.5 if the later case is included.
"Since then 300 more cases have been admitted and discharged and
among these there have been 7 fatal. Hence there have been 14
deaths in 500 consecutive cases extending over a period of a
little more than four years. One of these ought to be excluded,
no time having been given for treatment. Hence the mortality
has been just 2.6 per cent. This, I think it will be admitted,
is a low mortality, although it is possible it may be even lower
when the cases are treated in a permanent hospital about to be
erected.
"It may be interesting to state that 4 of the cases died on the
third day after admission; 1 on the fourth; 1 on the sixth; 1 on
the tenth, with pneumonia; 1 on the thirteenth; 1 on the
fifteenth; 1 on the sixteenth; 1 on the eighteenth; 1 on the
thirty-sixth, with nephritis and pleuropneumonia; and 1 on the
forty-sixth, with otitis and meningitis.
"All the cases have been treated without alcohol either as food
or drug, although many have been of great severity with various
complications. It is certain that the absence of alcohol has not
been detrimental, since the mortality is less than three-fourths
of that of the mortality among all notified cases in England and
Wales. I am bound to say that it is my firm conviction that had
alcohol been given in the usual fashion, the death-rate would
have been higher. Cases have been admitted to which alcohol has
been given previous to admission, apparently with harm, as they
have improved without it. One case was particularly noticeable
in this respect. A child, aged 6, had had a good deal of whisky,
and was supposed to be dying when admitted on the fourth day of
the disease, so that the doctor who had seen it was surprised,
when he called the following day to inquire, to find it was
still alive. Without a drop of alcohol it began to improve and
made a good recovery. I may say that delirium is very rare, even
in the worst cases treated non-alcoholically."
Dr. Norman Kerr says:--
"In my paper on 'The Medical Administration of Alcohol,' read to
the section of medicine at the Sheffield meeting in 1876, I
cited several medical testimonies in favor of non-alcoholic
treatment of fevers, notably that of my friend, the late Dr.
Simon Nicolls, who had a mortality of less than 5 per cent. in
230 cases.
"The record of the results of a greatly lessened administration
of alcohol in the treatment of smallpox in the London hospital
ships, is of deep interest. Having been requested to inquire
into the effects of this diminished alcoholic stimulation on
mortality and convalescence, Dr. Birdwood stated that though the
gravity of the cases had increased, with a mortality of 15 per
100 in the metropolis, the ship's death-rate had remained at
less than 7 per 100. Convalescence had been more rapid, and
there had been fewer and less serious complications from
abscesses and inflammatory boils. Other causes had contributed
to this improvement, but the medical officers attributed a
considerable share in the amelioration to a greatly diminished
prescription of alcohol."
The _Medical Pioneer_ says:--
"In 1872 there appeared in the _Saturday Review_ an article in
which the medical practitioners of this country were accused of
inciting their patients to free drinking, and in the discussion
which this article called forth, Dr. Gairdner, of Glasgow, said
that fever patients in that city, when treated with milk and
without alcohol, did much better than those reported as having
been treated by Dr. Todd with large doses of alcohol; the latter
resulting in a mortality of about 25 per cent., while those
treated by Dr. Gairdner with milk had had a death-rate of only
12 per cent. About this time the British Medical Temperance
Association was founded, owing to the exertions of Dr. Ridge, of
Enfield, and in 1876 it was enrolled, under the presidency of
Sir B. W. Richardson. It now contains 269 members in England and
Wales, 53 in Scotland and 80 in Ireland, or more than 400
altogether, all professional men and women. This, I think, is
but a sign of the change of opinion on the use of alcoholic
fluids in medical practice, for all who remember what medical
practice was in London thirty years ago know that the use of
wine and brandy in hospital practice was so common that it was
quite a rarity in some hospitals to find a patient who was not
ordered, by some of the staff, from three to four ounces of
brandy or six to eight fluid ounces of wine. The expense caused
to the hospitals by this practice was, of course, great, and
increased notably between 1852 and 1872, owing to the prevalence
of the views of Liebig and his follower, Dr. Todd. The writings
of Parkes, Gairdner, Dr. Norman Kerr and of Sir B. Ward
Richardson, Dr. Morton and others, gradually lessened this
predilection for treating diseases by alcohol, and accordingly
between 1872 and 1882 a great change came over the practice of
London hospitals. Thus the sum paid for milk in 1852 in Saint
Bartholomew's Hospital was £684, and in 1882 it was £2,012;
whilst alcohol in that hospital cost in 1852, £406; in 1862,
£1,446; in 1872, £1,446; and in 1882 only £653. Westminster
Hospital in 1882 spent £137 on alcohol and £500 on milk. One
hospital, St. George's, long continued to use large quantities
of alcohol. That hospital in 1872 had the high mortality among
its typhoid fever patients of 24 per cent., which was twice as
high as that noted by Dr. Gairdner as occurring in Glasgow, when
alcohol was abandoned and milk used instead. Dr. Meyer, who
reported these cases of typhoid treated in Saint George's
Hospital at that time, mentioned that alcohol in large doses was
given to 87 per cent. of the patients. Three-fifths of these
patients took daily eight ounces of brandy when there was danger
of sinking from failure of the heart's action. One-fourth of the
number took sixteen fluid ounces of brandy in the 24 hours."
"In 230 typhoid cases in St. Mary's Hospital, Dr. Chambers
reduced the ratio of deaths from 1 in 5 with alcohol to 1 in 40
without it. Dr. Perry, of Glasgow, found that of 534 cases
treated with alcohol, 138 died, while of 491 treated without
alcohol, only 9 died."
In a recent text-book on medicine occurs the following:--
"English physicians use spirits in fevers, and all experience
sustains the conviction that no substitute has been found for
them."
In a late number of the _Temperance Record_, Dr. Smith gives a different
view of the experience of English physicians:--
"When Bentley Todd was at King's College, and leading his
profession, brandy was the rule in febrile cases. Then the
mortality varied from twenty-five to thirty-five per cent. That
the treatment was as fatal as the disease, experience
demonstrates:--
"1. Professor W. T. Gairdner, of Glasgow, writing to the Lancet
(1864), gave his experience as follows:--
Fever cases Average of
treated. wine and spirits. Mortality.
1,829 34 oz. to each 17.69 per cent.
595 2-1/2 oz. to each 11.93 per cent.
212 none 1 death only.
(young lives)
"These were mostly typhus cases, but the rationale, so far as
alcohol is concerned, is the same as in typhoid.
"2. At the British Medical Association in 1879, Professor H.
MacNaughton Jones gave particulars of 340 cases of typhus,
typhoid and simple fever. I append a summary:--
Cases. Deaths. Mortality
per cent.
Given brandy 58 19 32.7
Given claret 51 2 3.8
Given no alcohol 231 4 1.7
"3. Dr. J. C. Pearson writes to the _Lancet_ (Dec. 5 and 26,
1891), giving his experience of typhoid. He had treated several
hundreds of cases without a single death, and never prescribed
stimulants in any shape or form in the disease.
"4. Dr. Knox Bond writes to the _Lancet_ (Nov. 25, 1893), giving
his experience of typhoid at the Liverpool Fever Hospital. He
says: 'As a resident for some years in the fever hospitals, my
views of the value of alcohol in fever underwent, solely as a
result of the experience there gained, entire modification. The
conviction became forced upon my mind that in no case in which
it was used did benefit to the patient ensue; that in a
proportion of cases its use was distinctly hurtful; and that in
a small but appreciable number of cases the resultant harm was
sufficient to tilt the balance as against the recovery of the
patient.'
"In plain terms, alcohol tended to the destruction of the
patients. Dr. Bond's figures are:--
No. of cases. No. of deaths.
Given alcohol 71 18
Given no alcohol 309 15
--- ---
380 33
In May, 1890, Dr. Nathan S. Davis, read a paper before the American
Medical Association upon the use of certain drugs in disease. Among the
drugs mentioned was alcohol, and comparative death-rates were given in
typhoid fever and pneumonia, between Mercy Hospital, Chicago, during a
term of years when no alcohol was used in the medical wards, Dr. Davis
being in charge of them, and some of the large metropolitan hospitals
using alcohol. In Mercy Hospital without alcohol, the death-rate in
typhoid fever was only five per cent.; in pneumonia only twelve per
cent.
"Of 161 cases of typhoid fever treated in Cook County Hospital
during 1889, 27 died, or one in six--nearly 17 per cent.
"According to the annual report of the Cincinnati Hospital for
1886, 47 cases of typhoid fever were treated during that year,
with seven deaths, a mortality rate of 16 per cent.
"The Garfield Memorial Hospital, at Washington, reported for the
year 1889, 22 cases of typhoid fever, with 5 deaths--or 22 per
cent.
"In the Pennsylvania Hospital the mortality rate in pneumonia
for the years 1884-1886, was 34 per cent.
"The mortality of pneumonia in the Massachusetts General
Hospital, between the years 1822 and 1889, comprising 1,000
cases, was 25 per cent.; but a gradual increase in mortality had
been noted from 10 per cent. in the first decade of the seventy
years represented by this report, to 28 per cent. in the last
decade.
"According to the report of the Supervising Surgeon General of
the U.S. Marine Hospital Service for 1888, the number of cases
of pneumonia treated between 1880 and 1887 was 1,649, with 311
deaths--nearly 19 per cent.
"The Cincinnati Hospital reported for 1886 a mortality rate in
pneumonia of 38 per cent.
"The mortality rate in the Cook County Hospital, Chicago, for
1889, according to Dr. Heltoin, relating to 80 cases of
pneumonia, was 36 per cent."
Only a five per cent. death-rate in typhoid fever without alcohol, and
from sixteen to twenty-two per cent. with alcohol; only a twelve per
cent. death-rate in pneumonia without alcohol, and from 19 to as high as
38 per cent. with alcohol. Such are the comparative death-rates given by
Dr. Davis. They should be committed to memory by every opposer of the
use of alcohol, as they show clearly that people have many more chances
for recovery, other things being equal, in the diseases mentioned, if
alcohol is not used than if it is.
It is worthy of mention in this connection that Cook County Hospital
contains in its report for 1897 the following items: Number of patients
19,536; cost of liquors $80.00; per cent. of deaths from all causes,
5.7. The cost of liquors is only .004 for each patient. This shows a
decided advance in the disuse of alcohol, when so very little is used in
a great hospital, with so large a number of patients.
Dr. A. L. Loomis, in the treatment of 600 typhus fever cases on
Blackwell's Island in 1864, excluded alcoholics, with the result of
reducing the mortality rate to only six per cent. whereas it had
previously been twenty-two per cent., in Bellevue Hospital from which
the patients had been removed.
In Battle Creek Sanitarium no alcohol is used in any disease, simply
because the management believe better results are obtained by the use of
other agencies. In the October, (1893) number of the _American Medical
Temperance Quarterly_ now _Bulletin of the A. M. T. A._, Dr. J. H.
Kellogg gives statistics of deaths from various diseases in the Battle
Creek Sanitarium. The total of these statistics is as follows: la
grippe, 827 cases, 4 deaths--or two per cent.; scarlet fever, 83 cases,
2 deaths--less than three per cent.; 333 cases of typhoid fever, 9
deaths--or 2.7 per cent.; 82 cases of pneumonia, 4 deaths--or 4.9 per
cent. These exceptional results are not attributed solely to the non-use
of alcohol. The nursing and surroundings were of the best. But these
results certainly show that the use of alcohol as a remedy in acute
diseases is not necessary, and that patients have a much better chance
for life, other things being equal, where alcohol is not used than where
it is.
Dr. Kellogg says of the surgical cases:--
"In a hospital of 100 beds, connected with the institution, more
than 3,000 surgical cases have been treated, to whom alcohol has
never been administered except in connection with chloroform
anæsthesia; my uniform custom being to administer an ounce of
brandy or whisky five minutes before beginning the
administration of the anæsthetic, when chloroform is used.
"The surgical cases include more than 300 cases of ovariotomy,
and over 300 other cases involving the peritoneal cavity, such
as operations for strangulated hernia, the radical cure of
hernia, etc. The statistics of death and recoveries are
certainly as good as can be produced by any hospital in the
world, dealing with the same class of cases. The total mortality
from the operation of ovariotomy, including nearly 300 cases, is
less than three per cent., and for the last few years, in which
the antiseptic measures have been perfected, the record is still
better, showing a succession of 172 cases of laparotomy for the
removal of ovarian tumors, or diseased uterus and ovaries,
without a death. These cases include a number of hysterectomies,
and many cases so desperate that those who trust in alcohol as a
heart stimulant, and as a means of supporting the vital
energies, would certainly have considered it necessary to resort
to the use of this drug. Nevertheless, it was not administered
in a single case, and I have seen no reason to regret its
non-use in a single instance."
Dr. T. D. Crothers, of Hartford, Conn., tells the following:--
"In a large hospital a study of the mortality of pneumonia
indicated a greater fatality at intervals of six months. There
were five per cent. more deaths during periods of two months at
a time, twice during the year. This extended back for two years,
and was finally narrowed down to the service of an eminent
physician who gave spirits freely in all cases of pneumonia from
their entrance to the hospital. The other visiting physicians
gave very little spirits, and only in the later stages. The
physician was skeptical of these statistics, but finally
consented to test them by giving up spirits practically in all
cases of pneumonia. This was continued for a year, and the
mortality went back to the average statistics. That physician
has abandoned alcohol as a food and a medicine, only in very
limited degree. He writes, 'My stupidity in accepting theories
and statements of others, concerning spirits, which I could have
tested personally, is a source of deep sorrow, and I do not know
but it could be called criminal. I certainly feel that
punishment would be just.'"
Brandy has been considered the great necessity in cholera, yet the use
of it and other alcoholics are known to expose people to greater danger
when this disease prevails.
The _Bulletin of the A. M. T. A._ is authority for the following:--
"During the epidemic of 1832, Dr. Bronson said: 'In Montreal
1,000 persons have died of cholera, only two of whom were
teetotalers.' A Montreal paper said: 'Not a drunkard who has
been attacked has recovered from the disease, and almost all the
victims have been at least moderate drinkers.'
"In Albany, N. Y., the same year, cholera carried off 366
persons above sixteen years of age, all but four of whom
belonged to the drinking classes. Packer, Prentice & Co., large
furriers in Albany, employed 400 persons, none of whom used
ardent spirits, and there were only two cases of cholera among
them. Mr. Delevan, a contractor, said: 'I was engaged at the
time in erecting a large block of buildings. The laborers were
much alarmed, and were on the point of abandoning the work. They
were advised to stay and give up strong drink. They all
remained, and all quit the use of strong drink except one, and
he fell a victim to the disease.' He says also: 'I had a gang of
diggers in a clay bank, to whom the same proposition was made;
they all agreed to it, and not one died. On the opposite side of
the same clay bank were other diggers who continued their
regular rations of whisky, and one third of them died.'
"In New York City there were 204 cases in the park, only six of
whom were temperate, and these recovered, while 122 of the
others died. In many parts of the city the saloon keepers saw
and acknowledged the terrible connection between their business
and the spread of the disease, and, becoming alarmed for their
own safety, shut up their saloons and fled, saying: 'The way
from the saloon to hell is too short.'
"In Washington the Board of Health was so impressed with the
terrible facts that they declared the grog shops nuisances,
ordered them closed, and they remained closed for three months.
"A prominent physician of Glasgow reported: 'Only nineteen per
cent. of the temperate perished, while ninety-one and two-tenths
per cent. of the intemperate died.' One extensive liquor dealer
of Glasgow, said, 'Cholera has carried off half of my
customers.'
"In Warsaw ninety per cent. of those who died from cholera were
wine drinkers.
"At Tifels, Prussia, a town of 20,000 inhabitants, every
drunkard died of cholera."
The _St. Paul Medical Journal_, of September, 1899, gives the following
report of a railway surgeon, Dr. Kane:--
"From June 1, 1898, to June 1, 1899, the author performed a few
more than four hundred operations. Forty-nine abdominal
sections, fifty odd more operations of a graver sort, one
hundred miscellaneous of less gravity than above, over one
hundred operations upon female perineum and uterus. Of the four
hundred, more than three hundred demanded anæsthesia. There were
but three deaths, making the mortality a little less than one
per cent.
"The author does not claim a phenomenally low mortality, nor
does he claim specially brilliant results. He has to contend
with unreasoning fear on the part of the patients for hospital
surgeons, and also most of his cases had been in the hands of
quacks, and had subjected themselves to remedies prescribed by
old women. Many cases came after the family physician had
exhausted his resources. He thinks his results are considerably
better than the average in hospitals and in country districts.
Alcohol medication was dispensed with entirely after the
patients came under his care, and to this he attributes much of
his success. He does not believe that alcohol is a stimulant, or
a tonic. On the contrary, he believes that it retards digestion,
arrests secretion, and hinders excretion. The courage and
fortitude of his patients were lessened instead of increased by
the use of alcoholic medication.
"Pain is better borne, endured longer and more patiently when
alcohol is not used.
"He urges the practical surgeon to carefully weigh the subject
of alcohol, and verify for himself the expediency of its use."
Dr. B. W. Richardson in the report of his practice for 1895 in the
London Temperance Hospital refers to non-alcoholic treatment of
rheumatism. He said:--
"Out of seventy-one cases of acute or subacute rheumatism--the
large majority acute, and attended with temperatures moving up
to 104° F.--sixty-nine recovered, and two, although they were
discharged without being put on the recovery list, were so far
relieved that a few days' change in country air seemed all that
was required to induce full restoration. Comparing the
experience of the treatment of acute rheumatic disease without
alcohol with that which I have previously observed with alcohol,
I can have no hesitation in declaring that it is of the greatest
advantage to follow total abstinence absolutely in this disease.
The pain and swelling of joints is more quickly relieved under
abstinence, the fever falls more rapidly, there is less frequent
relapse, and there is quicker recovery. In brief, the experience
of treatment of rheumatic fever minus alcohol, presents to me as
much novelty as it does pleasure, and I am convinced that if any
candid member of the profession could have witnessed what I have
witnessed in this matter, he would agree with me that alcohol in
rheumatic fever, however acute, is altogether out of place. I am
also under the conviction, though I express it with great
reserve, that in acute rheumatism, treated without alcohol, the
cardiac complications, endocardial and pericardial, are much
less frequently developed than where alcohol is supplied."
Dr. Pechuman in _Alcohol--Is It a Medicine_, published in 1891, says:--
"There is no disputing that many deaths occur each day as the
result of the administration of alcohol in acute diseases, to
say nothing of the deaths caused by its habitual use; and those
who give it ignore the very fundamental principles of physiology
and the many published statistics. The Boston Hospital report
tells a sad story in this connection; it shows that out of 1,042
cases treated with alcoholics 386 died, while out of the same
number treated without alcohol only 81 died. Using plain English
305 were actually killed by it."
Dr. T. D. Crothers, in the January, 1899, _Bulletin of the American
Medical Temperance Association_, gave the following Hospital Statistics,
showing a decline in the use of spirits in hospitals:--
"Evidently a great change is going on in the use of alcohol as a
remedy in large hospitals. The annual reports of ten hospitals
in the New England and the Middle States show the following
widely varying figures. The spirits used include beers, wines,
whiskies and brandies, and vary from eleven to sixty-one cents a
person for all the cases treated. These hospitals treat from
eighty to seven hundred cases a year, both surgical and medical,
and the medical staff are the leading physicians of the towns
and cities where they are located. The hospital where the
largest amount of spirits was used is not different from others,
nor is the one where the lowest amount is reported. The
conclusion is that this difference is due entirely to the
judgment of the medical men. The lowest rate (eleven cents each)
was in a hospital where one hundred and twenty-one cases had
been under treatment. The highest rate (sixty-one cents) was in
a hospital of five hundred and forty cases. The mortality from
typhoid fever and pneumonia was eight per cent. higher in this
hospital than in the one where only eleven cents a head had been
expended for spirits. The general mortality did not vary greatly
in any of these hospitals, and the records of one year could not
be expected to show this. In the remaining hospitals the
mortality of the fever and the septic cases was about the same.
The free use of spirits did not show any improvement, but rather
an increase of the death-rate, while the same amount of spirits
used showed but little change, and that in the line of
improvement of death-rate. These are only the figures of one
year, but they indicate a change of practice, and show the
passing of alcohol as a remedy."
CHAPTER XI.
REASONS WHY ALCOHOL IS DANGEROUS AS MEDICINE.
In the chapter upon "The Effects of Alcohol upon the Human Body" are
cited some of the reasons assigned by scientific investigators for their
disuse of alcohol as a remedy in disease. In this chapter the same may
be briefly hinted at, while others, some the results of quite recent
research, will be added.
In the _Bulletin of the A. M. T. A._, for January 1898, Dr. N. S. Davis
says:--
"The supposed effects of alcohol as a medicine were originally
based solely on the sensations and actions of the patients
taking it. The first appreciable effect of the alcohol after
entering the blood is that of an anæsthetic; that is, it
diminishes the sensibility of the brain and nerve structures, in
the same direction as ether and chloroform. And, as the brain is
the material seat of man's consciousness, the alcohol renders
him less conscious of cold or heat, of weariness or pain, and
less conscious of his own weight or of any external resistance.
Consequently, when under the influence of small doses, he feels
lighter and less conscious of any external impressions, and
thinks he could do more than without it. It was these effects
that led both the patient and his physician to regard the
alcohol as a general stimulant or tonic, notwithstanding the
fact that by simply increasing the doses of alcohol the
sensibility soon became entirely suspended, and the patient
helpless and altogether unconscious. * * * * *
"Simple increased frequency of the heart action is no evidence
of either increased force or efficiency in promoting the
circulation of the blood. Indeed, it may be stated as a
physiological law, that the more frequent the heart action above
the normal standard, the less efficiently does it promote the
circulation and strength of the living system. But the effect of
a moderate dose of alcohol in increasing the frequency of the
heart-beat and of blood pressure is so temporary that the doses
must be repeated so often that the alcohol accumulates in the
blood and tissues, and extends its paralyzing effects to all the
vasomotor, cardiac and respiratory nerves. Indeed, all the
investigators agree that alcohol in any dose capable of
producing an appreciable effect, diminishes the function of the
lungs in direct proportion to the quantity taken; and as the
lungs are the only channel through which free oxygen reaches the
blood, and such oxygen is the natural exciter of all vital
activities in the living body, it is not possible to explain how
alcohol, or any other drug that diminishes the function of the
lungs can, at the same time, act as a cardiac, or any other kind
of tonic.
"The truth is that all intelligent physicians and writers on
therapeutics of the present day agree in stating that alcohol in
large doses directly diminishes all the vital processes in the
living body, and in still larger doses suspends the life of the
individual by paralyzing the cerebral, vasomotor, respiratory
and cardiac functions, generally in the order named. If large
doses produce such effects, we must logically claim that small
doses act in the same direction, but in less degree. In other
words, alcohol is as truly and exclusively an anæsthetic as is
ether or chloroform, and, like them, is to be used as a medicine
only temporarily to relieve pain, or suspend nerve sensibility.
But as for these purposes it is less efficient than either ether
or chloroform, and other narcotics, there is no necessity for
using it as a remedy in the treatment of disease. And in health
its use in any dose can be productive of nothing but injury. The
only legitimate fields for the uses of alcohol are in chemistry,
pharmacy and the arts."
In another issue of the same magazine, Dr. Davis writes of the
investigations pursued by M. Robin of France in regard to the chemistry
of respiration. These investigations, he says, afford conclusive proof
that the acts of oxidation are defensive processes of the organism in
its struggle with bacteria, and therefore that the physician should
favor in every possible way the absorption of oxygen in every infection,
especially when there are typhoid complications.
He then speaks of the researches of other scientists in the same line,
concluding thus:--
"If we add to the foregoing investigations the results obtained
by Dr. A. C. Abbott, demonstrating that the presence of alcohol
directly diminished the vital resistance to infections, we
cannot fail to see that the administration of alcohol in
diphtheria, typhoid fever, pneumonia and other infectious
diseases, is directly contraindicated. If, as shown by M. Robin,
'the acts of oxidation are defensive processes' against
bacterial infections, then certainly the administration of
alcohol to patients with such infections is in the highest
degree illogical and injurious. The oxygen being obtained for
oxidation purposes in the blood and tissues, through the
respiratory process, it would be equally absurd to administer
alcohol in all cases in which it is desirable to increase the
processes of oxidation, as a long series of experiments has
shown that the presence of alcohol diminishes the efficiency of
the respiratory process in direct proportion to the quantity
used.
"How much longer will practical writers continue to recommend
for the same patient on the same day, fresh air, sponge baths,
and vasomotor and respiratory tonics to increase the absorption
of oxygen and oxidation processes, and alcohol in the form of
wine, whisky and brandy to directly diminish the respiratory
function and all the oxidations of the living system?"
In his address before the Medical Congress for the Study of Alcohol,
held at Prohibition Park, Staten Island, July 15, 1891, Dr. Davis
said:--
"If the foregoing views regarding the effects of alcoholic
liquids on the human system in health, are correct, what can we
say concerning their value as remedies for the treatment of
disease? If it be true that the alcohol they contain acts
directly upon the corpuscular elements of the blood, and so far
diminishes the metabolic processes of nutrition and
disintegration as to lessen nerve sensibility and heat
production, and favor tissue degenerations, their rational
application in the treatment of any form of disease must be very
limited. And yet the same errors and delusions concerning their
use in the treatment of diseases and accidents are entertained
and daily acted upon by a large majority of medical men as are
entertained by the non-professional part of the public.
Throughout the greater part of our medical literature they are
represented as stimulating and restorative, capable of
increasing the force and efficiency of the circulation, and of
conserving the normal living tissues by diminishing their waste;
and hence they are the first to be resorted to in all cases of
sudden exhaustion, faintness or shock; the last to be given to
the dying; and the most constant remedies through the most
important and protracted acute general diseases. Indeed, it is
this position and practice of the profession that constitutes,
at the present time, the strongest influence in support of all
the popular though erroneous and destructive drinking customs of
the people.
"The same anæsthetic properties of the alcohol that render the
laboring man less _conscious_ of the cold or heat or weariness,
also render the sick man less conscious of suffering, either
mental or physical, and thereby deceive both him and his
physician by the appearance, temporarily, of more comfort. But
if administered during the progress of fevers or acute general
disease, while it thus quiets the patient's restlessness and
lessens his consciousness of suffering, it also directly
diminishes the vasomotor and excito-motor nerve forces with
slight reduction of temperature, and steadily diminishes both
the tissue metabolism and the excretory products, thereby
favoring the retention in the system of both the specific causes
of disease and the natural excretory materials which should have
been eliminated through the skin, lungs, kidneys and other
glandular organs. Although the immediate effect of the remedy is
thus to give the patient an appearance of more comfort, the
continued dulling or anæsthetic effect on the nervous centres,
the diminished oxygenation of the blood, and the continued
retention of morbitic and excretory products, all serve to
protract the disease, increase molecular degeneration, and add
to the number of fatal results.
"I am well aware that the foregoing views, founded on the
results of numerous and varied experimental researches and
well-known physiological laws, and corroborated by a wide
clinical experience, are in direct conflict with the very
generally accepted doctrine that alcohol is a cardiac tonic,
capable of increasing the force and efficiency of the
circulation, and therefore of great value in the treatment of
the lower grades of general fevers. But there have been many
generally accepted doctrines in the history of medicine that
have been proved fallacious. And the more recent experiments of
Professors Martin, Sidney Ringer, and Sainsbury, Reichert, H. C.
Wood and others, have clearly demonstrated that the presence of
alcohol in the blood as certainly diminishes the sensibility of
the vasomotor and cardiac nerves in proportion to its quantity
until the heart stops, paralyzed, as that two and two make
four.
"After an ample clinical field of observation in both hospital
and private practice for more than fifty years, and a continuous
study of our medical literature, I am prepared to maintain the
position that the ratio of mortality from all the acute general
diseases has increased in direct proportion to the quantity of
alcoholic remedies administered during their treatment. How can
we reasonably expect any other result from the use of an agent
that so directly and uniformly diminishes the cerebral
respiratory, cardiac and metabolic functions of the living human
body?"
The _Medical Pioneer_ of January, 1896, contained a very interesting
article by Dr. J. H. Kellogg upon "The Influence of Alcohol upon Urinary
Toxicity, and its Relation to the Medical Use of Alcohol." He gives the
results of many of his own experiments to determine the effects of
alcohol in hindering the elimination of poisonous matter by the kidneys.
The subject of one experiment was a healthy man of 30 years, weighing 66
kilos. For fifty days prior to the experiment he had taken a carefully
regulated diet, and the urotoxic coefficient had remained very nearly
uniform. The urine carefully collected for the first eight hours after
the administration of 8 ounces of brandy diluted with water, showed an
enormous diminution in the urotoxic coefficient, which was, in fact,
scarcely more than half the normal coefficient for the individual in
question. The urine collected for the second period of eight hours
showed an increase of toxicity, and that for the third period of eight
hours showed still further increase of toxicity, the coefficient having
nearly returned to its normal standard.
Of this Dr. Kellogg says:--
"The bearing of this experiment upon the use of alcohol in
pneumonia, typhoid fever, erysipelas, cholera and other
infectious diseases, will be clearly seen. In all the maladies
named, and in nearly all other infectious diseases, which
include the greater number of acute maladies, the symptoms which
give the patient the greatest inconvenience, and those which
have a fatal termination, when such is the result, are directly
attributable to the influence of the toxic substances generated
within the system of the patient as the result of the specific
microbes to which the disease owes its origin. The activity of
the liver in destroying these poisons, and of the kidneys in
eliminating them, are the physiologic processes which stand
between the patient and death. In a very grave case of
infectious disease, without this destructive and eliminative
activity the accumulation of poison within the system would
quickly reach a fatal point. The symptoms of the patient vary
for better or worse in relation to the augmentation or
diminution of the quantity of toxic substances within the body.
"In view of these facts, is it not a pertinent question to ask
how alcohol can be of service in the treatment of such disorders
as pneumonia, typhoid fever, cholera, erysipelas and other
infections, since it acts in such a decided and powerful manner
in diminishing urinary toxicity--in other words, in lessening
the ability of the kidney to eliminate toxic substances? In
infectious diseases of every sort, the body is struggling under
the influence of toxic agents, the result of the action of
microbes. Alcohol is another toxic agent of precisely the same
origin. Like other toxins resulting from like processes of
bacterial growth, its influence upon the human organism is
unfriendly; it disturbs the vital processes; it disturbs every
vital function, and, as we have shown, in a most marked degree
diminishes the efficiency of the kidneys in the removal of the
toxins which constitute the most active factor in the diseases
named, and in others of analogous character. If a patient is
struggling under the influence of the pneumococcus, Eberth's
bacillus, Koch's cholera microbe or the pus-producing germs
which give rise to erysipelatous inflammation, his kidneys
laboring to undo, so far as possible, the mischief done by the
invading parasites, by eliminating the poisons formed by them,
what good could possibly be accomplished by the administration
of a drug, one of the characteristic effects of which is to
diminish renal activity, thereby diminishing also the quantity
of poisons eliminated through this channel? Is not such a course
in the highest degree calculated to add fuel to the flame? Is it
not placing obstacles in the way of the vital forces which are
already hampered in their work by the powerfully toxic agents to
the influence of which they are subjected?
"In his address before the American Medical Association at
Milwaukee, Dr. Ernest Hart, editor of the _British Medical
Journal_, very aptly suggested in relation to the treatment of
cholera, the inutility of alcohol, basing his suggestion upon
the fact that in a case of cholera, the system of the patient is
combating the specific poison which is the product of the
microbe of this disease, and hence is not likely to be aided by
the introduction of a poison produced by another microbe;
namely, alcohol. This logic seems very sound, and the facts in
relation to the influence of alcohol upon urinary toxicity or
renal activity, which are elucidated by our experiment, fully
sustain this observation of Mr. Hart.
"In a recent number of the _British Medical Journal_, Dr. Lauder
Brunton, the eminent English physiologist and neurologist, in
mentioning the fact that death from chloroform anæsthesia rarely
occurs in India, but is not infrequent in England, attributed
the fact to the meat-eating habits of the English people, the
natives of India being almost strictly vegetarian in diet,
partly from force of circumstances doubtless, but largely also,
no doubt, as the result of their religious belief, the larger
proportion of the population being more or less strict adherents
to the doctrines of Buddha, which strictly prohibit the use of
flesh foods.
"The theory advanced by Dr. Lauder Brunton in relation to death
from chloroform poisoning, is that the patient does not die
directly from the influence of chloroform upon the nerve
centres, but that death is due to the influence of chloroform
upon the kidneys, whereby the elimination of the ptomaines and
leucomaines naturally produced within the body, ceases, their
destruction by the liver also ceasing, so that the system is
suddenly overwhelmed by a great quantity of poison, and succumbs
to its influence, its power of resistance being lessened by the
inhalation of the chloroform.
"The affinity between alcohol and chloroform is very great. Both
are anæsthetics. Both chloroform and alcohol are simply
different compounds of the same radical, and the results of our
experiment certainly suggest the same thought as that expressed
by Dr. Brunton. How absurd, then, is the administration of
alcohol in conditions in which the highest degree of kidney
activity is required for the elimination of toxic agents!
"In a certain proportion of chronic cases there is a tendency to
tissue degeneration. Modern investigations have given good
ground for the belief that these degenerations are the result of
the influence of ptomaines, leucomaines and other poisons
produced within the body, upon the tissues. It is well known
that many of these toxic agents, even in very small quantity
give rise to degenerations of the kidney. It is this fact which
explains the occurrence of nephritis in connection with
diphtheria, scarlet fever and other infectious maladies. Dana
has called attention to the probable role played by ptomaines
produced in the alimentary canal in the development of organic
disease of the central nervous system.
"It is thus apparent that the integrity of the renal functions
is a matter of as great importance in chronic as in acute
disease, hence any agent which diminishes the efficiency of
these organs in ridding the system of poisons, either those
normally and regularly produced, or those of an accidental or
unusual character, must be pernicious and dangerous in use."
Among the more recent findings of science in regard to the effects of
alcohol are the action of this drug upon the leucocytes or "guardian
cells" of the body. Leucocytes are defined to be "minute, nucleated,
colorless masses of protoplasm, capable of ameboid movements, found
swimming freely in blood and lymph, in the reticulum of lymphatic
glands, and in bone-marrow and other connective tissue." The white
corpuscles of the blood are leucocytes. "The work of these cells is to
prey upon and take into their substance bacteria and other
micro-organisms within the blood and tissues. This destruction of
bacteria, and other noxious organisms, has the biological name of
phagocytosis."
Dr. Alonzo Brown in _Physician and Surgeon_ says of phagocytosis:--
"Recently a brilliant theory has been projected into the
histological world. It is the principle of phagocytosis. The
beauty of it is so great that we are attracted by it, and its
reasonings have riveted general attention. It is said that
certain cells have the power to absorb and so destroy other
cells. This is phagocytosis. It is said that 'the cells which
are known to possess phagocytocic properties are the leucocytes,
mucous corpuscles, connective tissue cells, endothelia of blood
vessels and lymphatic vessels, alveolar eypithelium of the
lungs, and the cells of the spleen, bone, marrow and lymphatic
glands.' (Senn). This is a very significant array of colloid
matter; and it has been repeatedly affirmed by the highest
authorities that alcohol is poisonous to the colloid element.
"Now, among the most important of the phagocytes just enumerated
are the leucocytes. They embrace and enfold the pathogenic germs
with which they come in contact by what is known as an ameboid
force. They enclose, disintegrate and absorb the enemy. It is
well known that the moment the leucocytes are submitted to an
alcoholic solution, their ameboid movements cease, and their
function is arrested. It is plain that their phagocytocic power
is immediately destroyed. It is possible, also, that the fixed
tissue-cells are likewise impaired or killed by alcoholic
imbibition. How deleterious, and even deadly, must the internal
administration of alcoholic liquors then be in the treatment of
diphtheria, and of other diseases having a germinal origin? It
therefore follows, to my mind, that all the diseases which are
the result of germinal infection, are most badly treated when
alcohol is used in their therapy.
"With extreme brevity I advert to another view in the field. It
is that of adynamic disease. It has been conclusively proven
that alcohol decreases the muscular power. It decreases (from
the minimum dose to the maximum) the power of the heart as well
as that of all other muscles. I say this has been absolutely
demonstrated by Richardson and others. In death from adynamia it
is through failure of muscle, that is, of the heart, of the
scaleni and intercostals, of the diaphragm, and of the laryngeal
muscles, et cetera. All of the muscles may gradually fail,
become wearied unto death. How pernicious then must alcohol be
in adding its influence to bring about the tragic end!
"It is my belief that it is in diphtheria that the most dire
results are to be observed. In that disease the vast majority of
cases die by asthenia, or else by sudden failure of the heart.
To what is this sudden cardiac paralysis due? The elucidation is
as follows. In the grave cases there is almost invariably a
subnormal temperature, together with great muscular
prostration. Also it is a physiological fact that a decrease of
the temperature slows nervous conduction. As the system is made
colder, the nervous force flows slower and slower. In diphtheria
the heart muscle is very weak, the temperature falls, the
lessened nervous energy but feebly animates the muscular fibres,
and so actual paralysis ensues, death closing the scene almost
instantaneously. Now, in such a state of imminent danger,
brought about by such causes, what could be worse than to
administer an agent which notably reduces temperature, and at
the same time enfeebles muscular power? May I add, what could be
the remedy in such a condition? and I answer, _External heat
freely applied to the whole surface of the body_. This will
prevent the cardiac paralysis whenever it is preventable."
The _Medical Pioneer_ of Dec., 1892, contained an editorial article upon
"The Toxine Alcohol," which deals with leucocytes and their functions.
The following is the article:--
"Dr. Broadbent's introductory address at the opening of the
session at Owen's College, Manchester, deserves more attention
than most of these formal deliveries. He dwelt on the
intellectual interest which attaches to the study of medical
science, and illustrated it, among other ways, by the interest
excited by recent observations on the action of bacilli and the
combat which goes on between these invading hosts and the
guardian cells or leucocytes of the living body. Inflammation
surrounding a wound is regarded as caused by the influx and
multiplication of leucocytes to engulf and destroy septic
bacilli which have gained entrance from the air, a 'local war'
of defence. The issue of this pitched battle will depend on the
relative number and activity of the respective hosts.
Inflammation round a poisoned wound is an evidence of vital
power and a means of protecting the system at large from
invasion and devastation. If this first line of defence is
broken through, the bacilli pass through the lymphatic spaces
and ducts to the glands, and another battle ensues which
produces glandular swelling and inflammation and possibly
abscess. This second line of defence may be insufficient and
then we get general septicæmia. It is now well proven that the
injury is done, not by the bacilli themselves but by the toxines
which they secrete or excrete. Dr. Broadbent very properly
points out that the action of the bacilli of fever in the body
is strictly comparable to the action of yeast in a fermentable
liquid. The yeast cells grow and multiply at the expense of the
sugar, in destroying which they produce alcohol, carbonic
dioxide and other substances. When the alcohol amounts to some
17 per cent. of the liquid the process is stopped by the
poisonous action of the alcohol on the yeast cells. In just the
same way the toxines produced by the bacilli at length stop
their further multiplication and put an end to the disease.
Alcohol is in fact, the toxine produced by yeast, and, like many
other toxines, it is not only poisonous to cells which produce
it, but to any animal into whose veins it may happen to get.
"There can be little doubt that the state of immunity which one
attack of certain fevers confers against future attacks depends
partly upon what is called the phagocytic action of leucocytes.
These have been actually observed to draw into their interior
and destroy bacilli which would otherwise have multiplied and
produced their special effects. There can be little doubt,
either, that we are continually taking into our systems bacilli
of all sorts, and that, again, disease is averted by the
activity of the germ-devouring leucocytes. Dr. Broadbent
describes an experiment which proves that power of resisting
disease is largely dependent on the activity of these cells. A
rabbit, having had a certain quantity of bacilli injected under
its skin, suffers from inflammation at the spot, and perhaps
abscess, but recovers. At the same time, another rabbit is
treated in precisely the same way, but, simultaneously, a dose
of chloral is injected into another part of the body. The
chloral, circulating in the blood, is known to paralyze
leucocytes, and, as a result of this, they do not collect and
wage war on the bacilli injected under the skin; there is very
little local reaction, the bacilli get free course into the
lymph and blood, and the animal dies. But, in the words of Dr.
Broadbent, 'alcohol in excess has a similar action on the
leucocytes, and this, as well as the deteriorating influence of
chronic alcoholism on the tissues, predisposes to septic
infection. A single debauch, therefore, may open the door to
fever or erysipelas.' A similar experiment of Doyen confirms
this. He found that guinea pigs can be killed by the cholera
microbe, when introduced by the mouth, if a dose of alcohol has
been previously administered. It has been the general testimony
of observers in cholera epidemics that those addicted to much
alcohol are far more liable to fatal attacks. But while large
doses of alcohol are, of course, more obviously injurious, it
would be absurd to imagine that lesser quantities are entirely
without influence in the same direction. It has, indeed, been
shown by Dr. Ridge, that even infinitesimal quantities of
alcohol, such as one part in 5,000, cause a more rapid
multiplication of the _bacillus subtilis_ and other bacilli of
decomposition, while, by the same quantities, the growth of both
animal and vegetable protoplasm is retarded. Hence there can be
no longer any question that alcohol renders the body more liable
to conquest by invading microbes, less able to resist and
destroy them. Alcohol, a toxine injurious to living cells, is
destroyed or removed from the body as fast as nature can effect
it, but while it remains, and while able to affect the cells at
all, its action is detrimental to healthy growth and healthy
life, and the less we take of such an agent the better for us.
This is a dictum which it becomes the profession to enunciate
far and wide. 'The less, the better' is a watchword which all
may use, and the wise will interpret it in a way which will
infallibly preserve them altogether from all possible danger
from such a source."
On the sixteenth of December, 1897, Dr. Sims Woodhead, president of the
British Medical Temperance Association, gave a masterly address in
London upon "Recent Researches on the Action of Alcohol." The lecture
was illustrated by lantern slides. From the report given in _The Medical
Temperance Review_ of Jan., 1898, the following is culled:--
"In a series of drawings of kidney you will notice first that
there is a condition known as cloudy swelling; this is one of
the first changes that can be observed. Notice the
characteristic features of this cloudy swelling in the cells of
all these specimens. The large swollen cells are granular, and
very frequently there is a granular mass in the lumen of the
tubule. In some cases the cells are so much swollen that the
lumen of the tubule is represented merely by a 'star-shaped'
radiating chink. The nucleus is usually somewhat obscured, that
this alcoholic cloudy swelling (similar to that met with as the
result of the administration of certain poisons) is the first
change observed in the parenchymatous cells of the organs of
animals that have died of acute alcoholic poisoning. This
condition, unless the cause is removed, goes on to a condition
of fatty-degeneration, as shown in the next specimen in which we
have, in addition to the granular appearance of the protoplasm
of the cell, a deposition of masses of fat in and at the expense
of this protoplasm.
"There is another series of changes to which I wish to draw your
attention. In the tubules of the kidney we have, in addition to
the granular appearance of the protoplasm of the cells, an
increase in the number of leucocytes, and connective tissue
cells between the tubules around the glomeruli and along the
course of the blood-vessels. This condition of small cell
infiltration, we know, is constantly associated with
inflammatory conditions of the kidney as in other organs. Here
then are the changes in the epithelium plus increase in the
number of leucocytes.
"I show you too a specimen of heart muscle, in which the
granular degeneration, or cloudy swelling is well marked whilst
here and there the process is going on to fatty degeneration,
similar to that seen in the kidney. Here again, then, the active
elements of the organ are becoming broken down, or, at any rate,
losing their normal structure and affording evidence of
fundamental changes in these cells. Such changes are set up, not
by any one poison alone, or by any single disease toxin, but by
members of many groups of poisons, by alcohols, ethers, etc.
indeed by very various poisons--animal, vegetable and mineral.
"Now, it is a peculiar fact, as shown by Massart, Bordet and
others, in researches on chemiotaxis, that nearly all these
poisons have the power of repelling leucocytes, and of seriously
interfering with them in the performance of their functions, and
this power assumes a special significance in connection with our
subject this afternoon.
"Now, two of the great functions of leucocytes under ordinary
conditions are those of policing and scavenging. Massart and
Bordet showed, under the action of certain substances, alcohol
amongst others, these functions are lost, but following up
Metchnikoff and others they observed that after a time these
same leucocytes became accustomed to the presence of these
poisons, gradually becoming 'acclimatized' as it were. At first
paralyzed or repelled, they after a time pluck up courage to
attack the invading substances and carry on or renew their
accustomed work of scavenging; they try to get rid of both
poisons and poison-producers, and even acquire the power of
forming substances (anti-toxins) which can neutralize the poison
and allow the cells to devote their energy to doing their own
proper work.
"Here are drawings of minute abscesses that have formed in the
wall of the heart. We see at once the part that the leucocytes
play in attacking micro-organisms, and of localizing their
action. Look at the blood-vessel in the wall of the heart with
its plug of micro-organism (staphylococci) in the centre of a
clear space; here the leucocytes are not numerous, indeed they
are very sparsely scattered, and appear to have been driven back
by the organisms or their toxics. Then a little distance away
from the toxin and toxin-forming organisms, the leucocytes are
coming up in large numbers, forming a sort of protecting army,
as it were. This is known as leucocytosis. In the small patent
vessels around this commencing abscess numerous leucocytes, far
in excess of the usual proportion, may be seen--the nearer the
abscess, the more numerous they become. Thus the leucocytes make
their way to what is to become the wall of the abscess, and form
a layer around a mass of micro-organisms, localizing, or
attempting to localize, such mass. So long as the leucocytes can
make their way to this mass, and shut it off from the
surrounding tissue, so long we shall have no extension of the
abscess.
"Now, if you add something--alcohol in the case we are
considering--which not only exerts a negative chemiotaxic
action--i. e., which drives the leucocyte away--but which, as we
have seen, also causes degeneration of nerve, muscle and
epithelial cells, shall we not injure the infected patient both
directly and indirectly by interfering with the return of the
leucocytes driven away, by diminishing or altering the
functional activity of these cells, and indirectly by
interfering with the excretion of the poisons (owing, as we have
seen, to a degenerated condition of the secretory epithelium)?
Have we not, in fact, a cumulative action of two substances,
either of which alone would do damage, but not in the same
proportion as do the two when acting together.
"Now let us see what we may learn from a series of experiments
carried out by Dr. Abbott, working in the Laboratory of Hygiene
of the University of Pennsylvania, under the auspices of the
committee of fifty, to investigate the Alcohol Question.
"These are his conclusions:--
1. "That the normal vital resistance of rabbits to infection by
streptococcus pyogenes is markedly diminished through the
influence of alcohol when given daily to the stage of acute
intoxication. 2. That a similar, though by no means so
conspicuous, diminution of resistance to infection and
intoxication by the bacillus coli communis also occurs in
rabbits subjected to the same influences.
"Throughout these experiments, with few exceptions, it will be
seen that the alcoholized animals not only showed the effects of
the inoculations earlier than did the non-alcoholized rabbits,
but in the case of the streptococcus inoculations, the lesions
produced (formation of miliary abscesses) were much more
pronounced than are those that usually follow inoculations with
this organism.
"With regard to the predisposing influence of the alcohol, one
is constrained to believe that it is in most cases the result of
structural alterations consequent upon its direct action on the
tissues, though in a number of animals no such alterations could
be made out by microscopic examinations. I am inclined, however,
to the belief, in the light of the work of Berkley and
Friedenwald, done under the direction of Professor Welch, in the
pathological laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University, that a
closer study of the tissues of these animals would have revealed
in all of them structural changes of such a nature as to
indicate disturbances of important vital functions of sufficient
gravity fully to account for the loss of normal resistance.
"Following up Dr. Abbott's experiments, Dr. Deléarde, working in
Calmette's laboratory in the _Institut Pasteur_ at Lille, made a
series of observations which are, from many points of view, of
very great interest and importance as he attacks it from an
entirely new standpoint, one that will, I hope, ere long, be
taken up by those working in this country. It has already been
demonstrated that 'alcoholics' suffer far more seriously from
microbic affections than do those of sober life, and it is now
accepted that amongst them the mortality from this class of
disease is higher than amongst those who are not accustomed to
take alcohol regularly or to excess.
"It is pointed out, as most of us have from time to time had the
opportunity of observing, that, taking pneumonia as an example
of this class of disease, there can be no doubt that the
alcoholic patient has not merely an appreciably smaller chance
for recovery, but an apparently slight attack becomes one in
which the chances of recovery come to be against the patient
rather than in his favor. I well remember when I was House
Physician in the Royal Infirmary at Edinburgh that Dr. Muirhead,
who almost invariably treated his pneumonic patients without
alcohol, used to say that an ordinary case of acute pneumonia
should always recover under careful treatment, but that cases of
pneumonia in 'alcoholics' were always most anxious cases and in
every way unsatisfactory. (Slides were shown on screen to
illustrate the changes taking place in pneumonia, the conditions
of leucocytosis, and the very important part which leucocytes
play in the process of 'clearing up' during the course of the
patient's recovery). Dr. Deléarde in an admirable summary gives
the principal features of pneumonia in alcoholics. He describes
it as running a comparatively prolonged course, as being often
accompanied by a violent delirium, following which is a period
of prostration or of coma; even in those who recover, abscesses
frequently occur in the liver, or in other organs. He also
points out that there may be a similar chain of events in other
infective conditions such as erysipelas and typhoid fever, but
as he insists that, until Abbott's experiments on the
streptococcus,[A] staphylococcus[A] and bacterium coli,[A] in
alcoholized and non-alcoholized animals, little attempt has
been made to indicate the mechanism, or, at any rate, the
process by which alcoholized individuals are rendered more
susceptible to the invasion and action of micro-organisms.
[Footnote A: Microbes or bacteria of different kinds.]
"As we have already seen, Abbott's experiments prove beyond
doubt that attenuated disease-producing organisms, which in
healthy animals do not kill immediately, bring about a fatal
result when the animal has previously been treated with alcohol.
In order to determine which was the most important factor in the
destruction or weakening of the resisting agents in the body,
Dr. Deléarde conceived the idea of experimenting with those
diseases in which it has been found possible to produce,
artificially, as it were, and under controlled conditions, an
immunity or insusceptibility in healthy animals. He carried out
a series of experiments on rabbits, immunizing against and
infecting with the virus of hydrophobia, tetanus and anthrax.[B]
To these rabbits he first administered a quantity of alcohol,
from 6 to 8 c.c. at first, and gradually rises to 10 c.c. doses
per diem.
[Footnote B: Carbuncle.]
"There is in the first instance a slight falling off in weight
of the animal, but after a time this ceases, and the animal may
again become heavier, until the original weight is reached. He
then took a series of animals and vaccinated them against
hydrophobia. In one set the animals were afterwards alcoholized
and then injected with a considerable quantity of virulent rabic
cord. It was here found that immunity against rabies had not
been lost.
"In a second set the vaccination and alcoholization were carried
on simultaneously, a fatal dose (as proved by control
experiment) of rabic cord was then injected, when it was found
that little or no immunity had been acquired. In a third series
the alcohol was stopped before the immunizing process was
commenced. In this case marked immunity was acquired.
"As regards rabies, then, acute alcoholism, especially when
continued for comparatively short periods, simply has the
effect of preventing the acquisition of immunity when alcohol is
administered during the period when the immunizing process ought
to be going on. This indicates that the action of the alcohol in
acute alcoholism is direct, and that although its administration
prevents the acquisition of immunity it does not alter the cells
so materially that they cannot regain some of their original
powers, whilst once the immunity has been gained by the cells,
alcohol cannot, immediately, so fundamentally alter them that
they lose the immunity they have already acquired. When we come
to the consideration of the case of tetanus, however, we are
carried a step further. Dr. Deléarde repeating his immunizing
and alcoholizing experiments, but now working with tetanus virus
in place of rabic virus, found--and, perhaps, here it may be as
well to give his own words:--
(1) "'That animals vaccinated against tetanus and afterwards
alcoholized lose their immunity against tetanus;
(2) "'That animals vaccinated against tetanus and at the same
time alcoholized do not readily acquire immunity;
(3) "'That animals first alcoholized and then vaccinated may
acquire immunity against tetanus if alcohol is suppressed from
the commencement of the process of vaccination.'
"In the case of anthrax too, as we gather from another series of
experiments, it is almost impossible to confer immunity, if the
animal is alcoholized during the time that it is being
vaccinated, and although the animals, first alcoholized and then
vaccinated, may acquire a certain amount of immunity, they
rapidly lose condition and are certainly more ill than
non-alcoholized animals vaccinated simultaneously.
"We have already mentioned that Massart and Bordet some years
ago pointed out that alcohol, even in very dilute solutions,
exerts a very active negative chemiotaxis, i. e., it appears to
have properties by which leucocytes are repelled or driven away
from its neighborhood and actions. Alcohol thus prevents the
cells from attacking invading bodies or of reacting in the
presence of the toxins which also, as is well known, exert a
more or less marked negative chemiotaxis, i.e., the cells appear
to be paralyzed. In all diseases, then, in which the leucocytes
help to remove an invading organism or in which they have the
power of reacting or of carrying on their functions in the
presence of a toxin, we should expect that alcohol would to a
certain extent deprive them of this power or interfere with
their capacity for acquiring a greater resisting power or of
reinforcing the powers of resistance. It appears indeed to
reinforce the poison formed by pathogenic organisms. Dr.
Deléarde maintains moreover that chronic alcoholism increases
enormously the difficulty of rendering an animal immune to
anthrax, whilst as those who have had any experience of cases of
anthrax know full well alcoholics, whether acute or chronic,
manifest a remarkable susceptibility both as regards attacks of
anthrax and the fatality of the disease when once contracted.
Further as clinical proof of the correctness of another of these
sets of experiments, Dr. Deléarde instances two cases of rabies
which have come under observation in the Institut Pasteur--one,
a man of 30 years of age, of intemperate habits who after a
complete treatment of 18 days after a bite in the hand died of
hydrophobia; the other, a child of 13 years who was bitten on
the face by the same dog that had attacked the other patient,
and on the same day--who underwent the same treatment remained
perfectly well. In this case the more severe bite (the face
being the most serious position in which a person can be bitten)
was received by the child; indeed the intemperate habits of the
man, who even took alcohol during treatment, appear to have been
the only more serious factor in his case as compared with that
of the child.
"From all this Dr. Deléarde draws the practical conclusion that
patients who have been bitten by a mad dog should as far as
possible abstain from the use of alcohol not only during the
process of treatment, but also for some time afterwards, even
for a period of eight months, during which period, apparently,
increase of immunity may be going on. Beyond this he maintains
that doctors often commit a grave error in administering strong
doses of alcohol to patients suffering from certain infectious
diseases such as pneumonia, or from certain intoxications such
as those produced by snake-bite, during which an increase in the
number of leucocytes appear to be a necessary part of any
process that leads to the cure of the patient. Finally, he
points out how necessary it is that we should respect the
integrity of the leucocytes in the presence of microbic
infections or intoxications. We may accept these statements all
the more readily as Dr. Deléarde states that 'although we must
recognize that small doses of dilute alcoholic beverages are
indicated in certain cases where it is necessary to stimulate
the nervous system, one must guard oneself against an abuse
which may certainly be prejudicial to the putting into operation
of the mechanism of defence against the organisms of disease.'
"In so far as these conclusions rest on a series of exact
experiments we are justified in accepting them as being a most
valuable contribution to the question; where there is no
experimental basis, we must exercise our own judgment. To show
the very strong impression that exists that there is some
connection between severe cases of pneumonia and alcohol I may
mention that the other day I heard a gentleman (not a medical
man) say, 'It is well known that most men (of a certain
profession) die from alcoholism.' When asked to explain he said,
'They all die from cirrhosis or pneumonia, and if those
conditions are not due to alcoholism, what is?'
"There can be no doubt that in addition to its specific action,
alcohol has a general action--the mal-nutrition, which is
usually associated with the use of alcohol, especially as a
result of its action on the mucous membranes of the stomach,
etc."
That the "guardian cells" of the body play a part in a considerable
number of diseases was illustrated by Dr. Woodhead by drawings and
photographs, shown on the lantern screen. The photographs included cells
containing anthrax, typhoid and tubercle bacilli, the spirilla of
relapsing fever, specimens from cases of anthrax. Specimens were shown
in which the cells were actually ingesting and digesting the specific
micro-organisms. In a case of typhoid, showing large masses of typhoid
bacilli in one of Peyer's patches, there were seen certain of the cells
which contained the typhoid bacilli, some of them undergoing
degenerative changes, and showing unequal standing.
Of the researches made by Dr. Abbott referred to in the foregoing
lecture Dr. N. S. Davis says:--
"Thus we have another and direct positive demonstration of the
fact that the presence of alcohol in living bodies not only
impairs all the physiological processes, but also impairs their
vital resistance to the effects of all other poisons. It was
hardly necessary, however, to trouble the rabbits to obtain
proof of this; for such evidence may be found in abundance by
examining the vital statistics of every civilized country. The
late Frank H. Hamilton, in his valuable work on military
hygiene, gives an interesting account of an experiment executed,
not on a few rabbits, but on whole regiments of human beings,
who were being exposed to the inhibition, not of the
streptococcus pyogenes, but to the infections of malarial and
typho-malaria fever. And, as many were attacked with sickness,
it was thought by some of those in authority that if the
soldiers were given a specified ration of alcoholic liquor two
or three times a day, it might enable them to resist the morbid
influences to which they were exposed. The proposed ration was
accordingly ordered, and Dr. Hamilton informs us that the
soldiers taking the liquor ration succumbed to the morbific
influences surrounding them so much more rapidly than before,
that in less than sixty days the order was countermanded, and
the liquor ration stopped. And that eminent surgeon and
sanitarian added, with peculiar emphasis, that he wished never
to see the same experiment tried again."
Dr. J. J. Ridge, of London, has learned through his experiments that
alcohol not only hinders the leucocytes in their war upon disease germs,
but also tends to the multiplication of germs. Of this he says:--
"The antagonism of alcohol to the fundamental functions of life
is further exhibited by its action on the cellular elements of
living tissues and the free cells or leucocytes of the blood.
Dr. Lionel Beale long ago pointed out how it affected the
protoplasm of cells, and diminished the movements of amoebae,
to which leucocytes are apparently analogous.
"But while alcohol is thus injurious to living protoplasm, or
_constructive protoplasm_ as it may be called, that which builds
up, and forms all kinds of structures, and living beings of all
higher types, I accidentally discovered that in minute
quantities, under about one per cent., and even in such almost
incredible amounts as 1 part in 100,000, (1/10 millilitre in 10
litres) it favors the growth and multiplication of many microbes
whose function is antagonistic to the protoplasm of organized
beings, and which may therefore be called _destructive
protoplasm_. We know that these microbes are kept at bay by the
vitality of the tissues; if this vitality is lowered they may
prevail: as soon as life departs they set to work, and
decomposition is the result. It is, therefore, not very
surprising that an agent, like alcohol, which, we have seen,
lowers the vitality of constructive protoplasm, should, on the
other hand increase the vitality of destructive protoplasm. At
any rate such is the fact. In the presence of these minute
quantities of alcohol, decomposition goes on more rapidly, and
the micrococci and bacilli, thrive and swarm more abundantly.
This is easily demonstrable by the more rapid, and thicker,
cloudiness of any clear decomposable liquor in the course of a
day or two, or in a few days, according to circumstances. But I
have demonstrated the more rapid multiplication of some forms by
means of plate cultivations, of which I show specimens. It is
true of the bacteria of decomposition, of the streptococci, and
staphylococci of pus, and of diphtheria. Time alone has been
wanting to demonstrate this in other cases, which I hope to do."
The _Medical Week_ some time ago contained this paragraph:--
"Dr. Viala, in collaboration with Dr. Charrin, says: 'I have
carried out a series of researches on the toxicity of various
alcoholic beverages in common use, such as wines and brandies of
all brands, from those which are reputed the best to those of
very inferior quality. All these products have been analyzed
with the greatest care. Our experiments were carried out on
fifty animals. Intravenous injections confirm Dr. Daremberg's
statement that liquors considered as the best are the most
toxic, more particularly as regards their immediate effects.'"
Although the foregoing statement directs the reader's attention to the
comparative effects of different alcoholic liquors, it also plainly
implies several facts of great importance. The first is, that all
alcoholic liquors, fermented or distilled, are toxic or poisonous; and
the more pure alcohol they contain, the more poisonous are they, the
qualities of liquor differing only in the rapidity of their injurious
effects.
In the same number of the _Medical Week_, Professor Gréhant states that
after injecting a quantity of alcohol into the venous circulation of a
dog equal to one twenty-fifth, or four per cent., of the estimated
weight of the blood of the animal, he found by several analyses at
different times that it required "a little over twenty-three hours for
complete elimination of the alcohol from the blood." If we consider
these results obtained by Viala, Charrin, Daremberg and Gréhant, with
those obtained by Dr. A. C. Abbott, showing the direct effect of alcohol
in diminishing the normal vital resistance of the living body to
infection, we see excellent reasons why the liberal use of alcohol in
the treatment of such infectious diseases as diphtheria, typhoid fever
and pneumonia, under the supposition that it was a cardiac tonic, has
resulted in so great a mortality as from thirty to sixty per cent.
Dr. A. Pearce Gould, a London hospital surgeon of the first rank, has
made special study of the surgery of the blood-vessels, and of the
chest. He was one of the earliest to practice and advocate the careful
removal of the axillary glands in all operations for cancer of the
breast.
He is a strong believer in the value of total abstinence as promoting
robust health of body and mind. He regards the value of alcohol in
disease as exceedingly small, and prescribes it only very rarely. He
thinks that alcohol increases the activity of cancer and other malignant
growths, an opinion which is of great importance from one with such
exceptional opportunities for observation in these complaints.
Dr. N. S. Davis in the _American Medical Temperance Quarterly_ of
January, 1895, gives reports of cases which came under his observation
as a consulting physician, where the use of alcoholics throughout an
extended illness favored the continuance of delirium, or mild mental
disorder, after convalescence was established. In each case the
withdrawal of the alcohol was followed by a cessation of the mental
delusion.
One of these cases may be taken as an example:--
"The third case was that of a woman over sixty years of age, who
had suffered from a mild grade of fever and protracted
diarrhoea, somewhat resembling a mild grade of enteric typhoid
fever.
"As she became much reduced in strength during the latter part
of her diarrhoea, her friends began to give her wine, and
sometimes stronger alcoholic drink, under the popular delusion
that these could strengthen her. Her mind soon became wandering,
and she was troubled with illusions, which were attributed to
her weakness, and the so-called stimulants were increased. But
the mental disorder increased also, and continued after the
fever and diarrhoea had ceased, until the question was raised
concerning the propriety of her removal to an asylum for the
insane.
"Being consulted at that time, and listening to an accurate
history of the case, I suggested that the anæsthetic effect of
the alcohol on the cerebral hemispheres, in connection with its
effect on the hemoglobin, and other elements of the blood, in
lessening the reception and internal distribution of oxygen,
might be the cause of both the perpetuation of her weakness, and
her mental disorder. I advised a trial of its entire omission,
and the giving of only simple nourishment, and moderate doses of
strychnine and digitalis, as nerve tonics. My advice was
followed, though not without much hesitation on the part of her
friends. The result, however, was entire recovery from the
mental disorder, and some improvement in her general health."
Puerperal mania resulted in one case cited, from the use of a moderate
amount of wine at mealtimes; when the wine was abandoned the mania
subsided.
CHAPTER XII.
WHY DOCTORS STILL PRESCRIBE ALCOHOLICS.
Workers in the department of Medical Temperance of the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union are told repeatedly by the better class of physicians
that they would be glad often not to prescribe alcohol if patients and
their friends would not insist upon its use. There is a deep-rooted
prejudice in favor of alcohol as a remedy in the minds of the great
multitude of people, and they are ready to distrust as fanatical, or
incompetent, any physician who does not use it. Dr. Norman Kerr, a
well-known physician of England, says, that during a ten years'
residence in America, he found people unwilling to pay him as much for
his services as they were willing to pay one who prescribed alcoholics.
Even those who were abstainers from liquors as beverages distrusted him
for not using these things as medicines. Indeed, this prejudice goes so
far with many that they will refuse to employ a non-alcoholic physician,
if they know him to be such. In consequence of this latter fact, there
are great numbers of skilful physicians who say nothing about alcohol
lest they be considered "faddists," and lose practice, but who never
prescribe it unless it is asked for by the patient or his friends.
Again, consulting physicians will sometimes insist upon the use of
alcohol, and thus seeds of distrust of the non-alcoholic physician will
be sown.
Dr. J. J. Ridge says of medical prescriptions:--
"Hundreds of medical men order alcoholic liquors from habit,
from ignorance of their real effect, from fashion, or from a
desire to please, or not to offend, their patients. Port-wine is
constantly being ordered when persons are recovering from
various diseases; day by day they regain their strength, and the
port-wine gets all the credit of it, especially since each glass
seems to diffuse a comfortable glow over the whole body. They
forget that the process of recovery would have gone on without
the port, and that hundreds and thousands of people do get well
without it. They often ignore the fact that they are taking real
tonics in addition. They are misled by the sensations which the
alcohol causes; they do not know that it relaxes the
blood-vessels instead of improving their tone; that it exhausts
the heart by making it beat away more rapidly to no profit.
Hence the convalescence is actually more prolonged than it would
otherwise be. Gentle exercise, regulated baths, good food, balmy
sleep, these are the true restoratives of the exhausted system,
and no jugglery with sedatives, such as alcohol, can produce the
desired result.
"It is by its sedative action that alcohol has obtained its
position in public opinion. It will render persons insensible to
various uneasy sensations, and the majority prefer to continue
the bad habits which produce the uneasy sensations, and then to
take them away by a dose or two of some alcoholic liquor, or,
indeed, to take this before the uneasy sensations come on. In
this way they do themselves injury and make themselves
unconscious of it. Dr. Beaumont, who had the opportunity of
examining the interior of Alexis St. Martin's stomach, and of
seeing how digestion went on, was astonished to see how inflamed
the mucous membrane could be without any consciousness of it. He
observed, as a matter of fact, that alcoholic drinks of all
kinds hindered the process of digestion, and produced this
morbid condition of the mucous membrane. The relief, therefore,
which can be obtained by alcohol is delusive and dangerous.
"But some persons say they are afraid to abandon the use of
alcohol because they have been in the habit of taking it for a
long period. This fear is entirely groundless. The alcohol will
be missed for a time, just as a person who has been using
crutches would miss them if thrown away; but they will do better
without both after a little while. There is no kind of
constitution which renders a person unable to do without
alcohol. The prisoners in all our jails have to leave off their
drink at once, and altogether, on entering there, and no harm
ever ensues in consequence. But some say that this is because
their diet is so carefully arranged, and the hygienic condition
of the prison so perfect. Quite so. This shows us clearly that
when total abstainers become ill outside the prison, their
illness is to be attributed to some error in diet or hygiene, or
to some accidental circumstance. It is absurd to think that the
infraction of one law of health can be nullified by breaking
another; that if you eat too much, or too fast, or too often, or
what is not good for you, you can escape the consequences by
injuring yourself with alcohol."
Dr. N. S. Davis was for many years openly sneered at by many of his
professional brethren as "a cold-water fanatic." Since his views are now
being rapidly adopted by progressive medical men all over the civilized
world, it may be that soon those physicians who cling to alcohol will
deserve the soubriquet of "alcohol fanatics." Dr. Davis said:--
"If I am asked why the profession continues to prescribe these
drinks, I answer; simply from the force of habit and traditional
education, coupled with a reluctance to risk the experiment of
omitting them while the general popular notions sanction their
use. Nothing is easier than self-deception in this matter. A
patient is suddenly taken with syncope, or nervous weakness,
from which abundant experience has shown that a speedy recovery
would take place by simple rest and fresh air. But in the alarm
of friends something must be done. A little wine or brandy is
given, and as it is not sufficient to positively prevent, the
patient in due time revives just as would have been the case if
neither wine nor brandy had been used.
"Of course both doctor and friends will regard the so-called
stimulant as the cause of the recovery. So, too, when patients
are getting weak, in the advanced stage of fever, or some other
self-limited disease, an abundance of nourishment is regularly
administered, in the greater part of which is mixed some kind of
alcoholic drink. The latter will always occupy the chief
attention, and if, after a severe run, the fever, or disease,
finally disappears, it will be said that the patient was
sustained or 'kept alive' for over two or three weeks, as the
case may be, 'solely by the stimulants,' when, in fact, if the
same nourishment and care had been given without a drop of
alcohol, he would have convalesced sooner, and more perfectly,
as I have seen demonstrated a thousand times in my experience."
Dr. Casgrau, of Dublin, says that physicians who make personal use of
alcohol are not able to give an unbiased opinion about its action, as
one of its most marked effects is that of a narcotic to the mental
powers; such physicians are not so acute to observe the action of this,
or any drug.
Sir B. W. Richardson, M. D., in an address upon the reasons why
physicians still prescribe alcoholics, says that the magnetism of public
opinion has great weight with professional men.
"All professions are under that subtle influence. All
professions whatever their duties, whatever their learning may
be, are sensitive and obedient to that influence. In their pride
they think they lead public opinion; it is a mistake, they
always follow it on every question in which the people, at
large, have a voice. They can assist in influencing the public
voice, and sometimes, to quote the words of Abbé Purcelle,
spoken in the dawn of the great French Revolution, they may
prove that 'respect for sovereign power sometimes consists in
transgressing its orders,' but as a general rule not merely the
orders but the inclinations are obeyed. We have to wait on, and
for, public opinion, and in nothing so much as on the subject of
alcohol. The use of alcoholic beverages rests not on argument
but on habit, custom. To those whom it affects personally it is
an absolute monarch. It makes its own empire. By the very action
which it has upon the body of those who receive it into
themselves it rules and governs. The joke of the inebriate man
that when he had taken his potation he was quite another man and
that then he felt it his duty to treat that other man, is
literally true, a terse and faithful expression of a natural
fact. The man or woman born and bred under the influence of
alcohol is of the race of alcohol, and as distinct a person as
any racial peculiarity can supply. The reason, the judgment, the
temper, the senses are attuned by it. It is loved by its lovers
like life. The grape to them is no longer a luscious fruit; it
is 'the mother of mighty wine,' and he who is bold enough to
disown that motherhood must stand apart. How can a profession
however strong, march all at once against such an overwhelming
influence? Itself born, perchance, under the influence bred
under it, how shall it immediately be transformed? Why disobey
the influence? It is in the _interest_ of the doctor to obey, in
a worldly sense of view; but more--it is in his _nature_ to
obey. The strong bands of nature and interest go hand in hand.
Is it wonderful that the genius of a professional man so
situated should, according to the quality of his genius, uphold,
root and branch, the rôle of his nativity? On the contrary the
wonder is that he has ever done anything else. It is most
natural that he should be amongst the last to take up what
revolutionizes all the manners, and customs, and faiths, of
society. A lady will ask her physician the question, May I take
wine, Sir? As much as you like Madam; it is very bad for you and
I take none, but that is your business entirely. Henceforth that
gentleman is said to be one who prescribes alcohol in any
quantity. In fact, he never prescribes it, for although when
forbidding is hopeless, there is all the difference in the world
between prescribing and permitting, permitting goes down as if
it were prescribing. Often a patient will try to compromise. On
an ocean of whisky and water, brandy and soda, or other
poisonous mixture, he is floating into fatal paralysis. You tell
him so faithfully, and he says he knows it and will drop down to
claret. If you assent, he tells his friends you have changed his
brandy or whisky to wine; if you dissent, he says you have left
your duty as a doctor undone, in order to become an advocate for
abstaining temperance, about which he is as competent a judge as
you are, and he won't pay fees for that advice. He pays to be
cured of his disease, not to be dragooned into a system peculiar
in its tenets. In an alcoholic world there is a strong argument
in this decision. It rolls splendidly, especially down hill."
After speaking of non-alcoholic physicians, and their opinions of the
harmfulness of alcohol, he adds:--
"On the other side, there are practitioners who, under the
magnetism of public opinion, as earnestly believe the opposite
in relation to alcohol, who declare they could not,
conscientiously, practice their profession if they were
debarred the use of alcohol, and who look on the advance and the
growth of scientific abstaining principles--which they cannot
avoid recognizing--with positive dread. The extremists on this
side are indeed extreme in their fanaticism. They shut their
eyes to the most obvious facts, and do not hesitate in their
blindness to misrepresent the most obvious truths. They affirm
that under the influence of total abstinence and, by inference,
because of total abstinence, the yearly decreasing death-rate of
the population is accompanied by reduction of vitality; that
people who live long are more enfeebled than those who live
short lives and merry; that under abstinence from alcohol
fearful diseases are being developed; that the total abstainers
have less power for resisting disease than the moderate
temperate; and that under the current system of advance towards
total abstinence, a very small advance yet by the way, diseases
of a low type have developed and extended their ravages."
It is only physicians of large conscientiousness, or of great
independence of character, who will dare to go counter to the prejudices
of the people.
Consequently, it is necessary to educate _the people_ in the teachings
of those physicians, whose eminence in the profession has permitted
them, or whose conscientiousness has driven them, to expose the
delusions concerning the medical value of alcoholic beverages. When the
people cease to believe in alcoholic remedies, physicians will no longer
prescribe them. But while the majority desire the "physicians'
prescription" as a cover for indulgence, there will be found physicians
willing to give such prescriptions.
That the prescription of alcohol by physicians is largely a matter of
routine may be seen from the following two cases, reported to the writer
by county superintendents of the department of Medical Temperance.
In the first case, the physician said to the nurse, "If the patient's
heart becomes weak, you might give a little brandy or whisky." Seeing
reluctance expressed upon the nurse's countenance, he added hastily, "Or
coffee, strong coffee will do just as well." The nurse in reporting this
to the writer, said, "Why couldn't he have ordered coffee in the first
place if he thought it equally good?"
The second case was that of an aged woman whose physician ordered whisky
as a tonic. Her granddaughter ventured to ask, "Would not whisky have a
narcotic rather than a tonic effect?" He replied thoughtfully, "Well,
tell the truth, I suppose it would."
CHAPTER XIII.
ALCOHOLIC PROPRIETARY OR 'PATENT' MEDICINES.
America has been called the Paradise of Quacks, and with good reason.
For years patent medicine manufacturers had such complete control of the
American press, both secular and religious, that it was almost
impossible to reach the public with information as to the real nature of
these concoctions. Consequently the people accepted with amazing
credulity the startling claims to miraculous cures of various pills and
potions as set forth under glaring headlines in the daily papers. The
publicity of the last few years has hurt the traffic seriously, but it
still has a great hold upon the ignorant and credulous part of the
population, and there is still a very large number of these preparations
upon the market. Many persons think that the Pure Food Law guarantees
every drug preparation now sold to be perfectly safe for use. This is a
great error. The guarantee means simply that the manufacturer guarantees
that his preparation is as he states upon the label; the government
guarantees nothing concerning the matter. That the guarantee of the
manufacturer is not always truthful has been shown by analyses of some
preparations made by state and national chemists. All the advantage that
the public has through the Pure Food Law, so far as drug preparations
are concerned, is that the percentage of alcohol must be printed upon
the label, and the presence of certain dangerous drugs, such as
morphine, cocaine, and acetanilid must be indicated. Thus persons
intelligent as to the nature of these drugs will avoid medicines which
the label says contains them. The ignorant are not protected. It was
difficult to secure even this small restriction upon the sale of
proprietary medicines because of the opposition of a large number of
newspaper publishers who were sharing the ill-gotten gains of the
medical fakirs.
A careful compilation of manufacturers' announcements list 1,806
so-called patent medicines sold in open markets, in which alcohol, opium
or other toxic drugs form constituent parts. 675 of the preparations are
known as "bitters," stomachics, or cordials, and alcohol enters into
their composition in quantities varying from fifteen to fifty per cent.;
390 are recommended for coughs and colds, nearly all of which contain
opium. Sixty remedies are sold for the relief of pain, and no other
purpose. 120 are for nervous troubles, and of this number, sixty-five
have entering into their composition coca leaves, or kola nut, or both,
or are represented by their respective active principles, cocaine or
caffeine. 129 are offered for headaches, and kindred ailments, and
usually with a guarantee to give immediate relief. In these are
generally compounded phenacetine, caffeine, antipyrine, acetanilid, or
morphine, diluted with soda, or sugar of milk. Dysentery, diarrhoea,
cholera morbus, cramp in bowels, etc., have 185 quick reliefs or
"cures" to their credit, nearly all of which contain opium, many of them
in addition, alcohol, ginger, capsicum or myrrh in various combinations,
and there are numerous cases on record where children and adults have
been narcotized by their excessive use. Some manufacturers print on the
labels covering these goods, words of caution limiting the amount to be
taken. Forty-eight compounds for asthma contain caffeine and morphine.
Sufferers from toothache have their choice from thirty-eight remedies,
and thirty-six soothing, or teething, syrups are provided for infants.
Many people have ignorantly and innocently formed an alcohol, morphine,
or cocaine habit through the use of patent medicines. Many deaths have
occurred from headache powders of which acetanilid is the chief
ingredient. Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, says
of these headache powders:--
"A woman has a headache and she uses one of these remedies. It
relieves the pain. When she has another attack she uses it again
and again with the same result. After a while she finds the
usual amount of the remedy does not cure the pain. She uses two
portions, and so the habit is formed until absolute danger is
confronted. For one thing must not be forgotten: these remedies
are powerful, for if they were not they would be of no effect.
They are in certain doses deadly; they depress the nervous
system; they disturb the digestion; they interfere with natural
sleep; they require to be used in increasingly larger quantities
as the system becomes accustomed to their use; they are almost
without exception excreted by the kidneys, thus adding an
additional burden to organs already badly overworked. They
produce a habit of gaining relief which becomes an obsession and
incapable of being resisted."
It may be asked, "How is it if these mixtures are harmful only, that so
many people profess to have received benefit from them?" There are
different reasons for this.
1. The nature of such drugs as alcohol, opium and cocaine is to benumb
sensation, so that pain is stilled, and the pain, or functional
disturbance forgotten for the time, because the nerves are drugged into
insensibility. The person _feels_ better while under the influence of
the drug, so thinks it is benefiting him.
2. There are people who imagine they have diseases which they do not
have; since trained physicians occasionally err in diagnosis, it is not
strange if the laity should do likewise. Such persons are always ready
to aver that a certain medicine "cured" them.
A ludicrous example of this is a woman out West, whose picture graces
the advertisements of a certain nostrum, accompanied by a testimonial
that said nostrum cured her of a "polypus"! Upon being written to as to
how such a preparation could effect such a cure, she answered that,
after giving the testimonial, she found that she had not had a polypus!
3. Some of the cures attributed to drugs, are doubtless due to Nature.
It is estimated that from 30 to 90 per cent. of ailments are cured by
Nature, unassisted, and often in spite of, the drugs swallowed. Many of
the books advertising these remedies (?) give excellent rules of health,
which, if followed, would restore persons to vigor more speedily
without the accompanying medicine, than they can be restored while the
system has the poisonous drugs to throw off. It may be reasonably
assumed that a goodly number of recoveries ascribed to drug treatments
are due, in reality, to the resisting force of a good constitution, or
to obedience to the laws of health given in the circular.
4. It is not uncommon for people suffering from certain diseases to have
temporary remissions in the course of the disease. No doubt, some of the
cases reported as cures are such spontaneous remissions, which are
followed, after the testimonials have been written, by relapse. The
majority of people are ignorant of the natural course of diseases--of
what happens when no treatment is taken. They do not know that a great
many affections are characterized by periods of apparent recovery. For
instance in some varieties of paralysis, as well as in consumption, the
sufferer may to appearance recover completely for a few months or
longer; if a remedy was being used at the time, it would naturally get
the credit of causing the favorable change.
However, all of the glowing testimonials of wonderful benefits accruing
from patent medicines are not what they seem to be. Dr. J. H. Kellogg
says in his _Monitor of Health_:--
"The average manufacturer of patent medicines regularly employs
a person of some literary attainment whose duty it is to invent
vigorous testimonials of sufferings relieved by Dr. Charlatan's
universal panacea. In many instances persons are hired to give
testimonials, and answer letters of inquiry in such a way as to
encourage business. The shameless dishonesty and ingenious
villainy exhibited are beyond description."
Recently an advertisement of one of these nostrums stated in the
headlines that said nostrum was used in the Frances Willard Temperance
Hospital, Chicago. The testimonial appended purported to be from a nurse
in that hospital, _but the testimonial did not state, as did the
headlines_, that the preparation was ever used in that hospital. The
president of the hospital board of trustees states that the nurse
positively denies having given any testimonial to the company thus
advertising. She did give one to another patent medicine concern, but
not to this, and never said either was used in the hospital, nor have
they been. Suit could be brought for damages, but unfortunately the
patent medicine people have unlimited money, and the hospital has not.
Early in the present year there appeared in many daily papers a large
advertising picture of a man whose name was appended as a professional
nurse of a western city.
The following testimonial accompanied the picture:--
"Mr. ---- of ----, who is a professional nurse of experience,
writes,--'My friend is improving, thanks to ----, and you. I am
called on to nurse the sick of all classes. I recommend ---- to
such an extent that I am nicknamed ---- (giving name of nostrum)
by nearly everybody.'"
As the writer of this book was acquainted with a physician residing in
the small city mentioned in the advertisement, she wrote to him,
requesting that he investigate this testimonial.
He replied that he found the chief part of the advertisement, namely,
that Mr. ---- was a professional nurse, false; "First, by his own
statement as he told me this morning that he never claimed to be a
professional nurse. And my personal acquaintance with him, as well as
that of a number of other physicians in our little city, and reliable
men and women of this community who are acquainted with him, all testify
to the same thing, namely; that he is not a professional nurse, neither
is he a nurse, or even a reliable man. He is an innocent, ignorant man,
very close to the pauper class. He told me when I read the commendation
to which his name is affixed, that it was all true except the
professional nurse part, and that was entirely false, as stated above."
As the picture was of a fine-looking, intelligent-appearing man it
probably was as _genuine_ as the testimonial.
The following was clipped from a copy of _Merck's Report_, April, 1899,
a druggists' paper published in New York city:--
MANY DRUGGISTS INDIGNANT.
A PATENT-MEDICINE ADVERTISEMENT CONTAINS UNAUTHORIZED
ENDORSEMENTS.
"Fully a score of East-side druggists are up in arms over the
unauthorized use of their names in a full-page newspaper
advertisement of a widely-known specific. This advertisement
appeared recently in certain New York daily papers, and retail
druggists who have made it a rule of their business never to
recommend any particular proprietary article, found themselves
quoted in unqualified laudation of the article so liberally
advertised. The names and addresses of the druggists were given
in full, and when several of the men quoted conferred together
they found that the most barefaced misrepresentation had been
resorted to.
"One of the pharmacists thus misrepresented, happened to be
Sidney Faber, the secretary of the Board of Pharmacy. He was not
selling this particular specific, and had never said a word for
or against it, nevertheless, six or eight lines of endorsement
of the article were directly attributed to him. He called on
some of his druggist neighbors whose names he saw in the
advertisement, and ascertained that they, too, had been falsely
and unwarrantably quoted. Mr. Faber promptly wrote to the
proprietors of the specific in question, and denounced the
published endorsements bearing his name, as a forgery. His
indignation was by no means appeased when he received a letter
from the proprietary concern, couched in the following language:
'We regret to learn that you have been annoyed by any statements
that have appeared in New York city papers. We will forward your
letter to them.'
"Within the past few days several of the druggists whose names
were used in this advertisement without authority, have been
considering the advisability of taking legal proceedings in
order to ascertain their rights in the matter. It is contrary to
pharmaceutical ethics for a pharmacist to specially endorse any
proprietary article, or patent medicine. Some of the offended
druggists propose to contribute to a fund for the purpose of
publicly, and widely, advertising this unwarranted use of their
names."
When patent medicine advertisers would dare to resort to such a
wholesale fraud as this, what may they be expected to refrain from?
As an illustration of how commendations from notable persons are
sometimes obtained, the following is cited: In the winter of 1899,
appeared an advertising picture of the lovely Christian lady from
Denmark, the Countess Schimmelmann, who was spending some time in
Chicago. Below her picture were the words:--
"Adeline, Countess Schimmelmann, whose portrait is here given,
in a recent letter to the ---- company, (mentioning proprietors
of nostrum) speaks of friends of hers who have been benefited by
---- (mentioning nostrum), and who first advised her to
recommend it to her sick friends.
"The Countess, as is well known, is a prominent member of the
Danish court. Her coming to this country has been much talked
of. Her real object is one of charity. She is stopping in
Chicago, _and from there writes her straightforward endorsement
of_ ---- (mentioning nostrum)."
The italics are the writer's. The picture and the testimonial were cut
from the paper, and sent to the countess, asking if she had so spoken of
this medicine, and, if so, did she, a strong total abstinence woman,
know that this mixture contains a large percentage of alcohol.
She responded as follows:--
"Thank you for asking me about the enclosed. A white-ribbon lady
came and asked me if I would do her the great kindness to
recommend ---- compound (made up of the juice of celery). I said
I could not personally recommend it as I neither use, nor want,
medicine. But some very reliable friends of mine (_temperance
people_, and _true Christians_) told me I would do a good thing
in recommending it as they used it, and found it excellent. Then
I wrote the following: 'I myself cannot recommend ---- compound
as I do not suffer from any of the ailments it is said to be
good for, but reliable friends of mine tell me that it is
excellent, and I would do a good thing in recommending it to my
friends. Adeline, Countess Schimmelmann.'
"I will only consent to the publishing of this letter if you
publish the _whole_ letter, and no extract from it, as the
white-ribbon lady did for the ---- compound."
If a white-ribboner played this mean trick upon this distinguished
Christian worker she is unworthy of membership in the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union. It is more than likely that the "white-ribbon lady,"
was a paid advertising agent of the patent medicine manufacturer, and
wore a white-ribbon to gain the confidence of the Countess.
Whether patent medicine manufacturers know how to doctor all ills to
which human flesh is heir may be doubted, but that their advertising
agents are skilful "doctors" of testimonials is very evident to any one
acquainted with the facts.
The Department of Public Charities of New York city in a "Report on the
use of so-called Proprietary Medicines as Therapeutic Agents," says:--
"In connection with this subject it might be mentioned that, for
years past, the name of Bellevue Hospital has been taken in vain
by a number of persons and firms, without any authority
whatever. It is a common occurrence that samples of proprietary
medicines, foods, mineral waters, plasters, etc., etc. are sent
to the hospital, or to members of the house-staff for 'trial,'
whereupon the subsequent advertisements of the articles in
question often assert that the latter are 'used in Bellevue
Hospital,' leaving the impression upon the mind of the reader
that the article, or articles, have been used with the sanction
of some member of the Medical Board. It is probably impossible
to find a remedy for this evil, from which many other
institutions of repute likewise suffer. To publish a denial of
such false assertions would only aggravate the evil. The utmost
that can be done appears to be, to caution the medical staff
against any entanglements with, or encouragement of, the agents
of the interested parties."
This report, which was adopted by the Medical Board of Bellevue
Hospital, classifies proprietary preparations as "Objectionable" or
"Unobjectionable" according to the following rules:--
"Unobjectionable preparations are those, the origin and
composition of which is not kept secret, and which are known to
serve a useful and legitimate purpose. Malted Milk is an
example. Objectionable proprietary preparations, by far the
largest group of the whole class, comprise all those which are
aimed at under the medical code of ethics under the term 'secret
nostrum,' which term may be more closely defined thus:
"A secret nostrum is a preparation, the origin or composition of
which is kept secret, the therapeutic claims for which are
unreasonable or unscientific, or which is not intended for a
legitimate purpose.
"Examples: The various 'Soothing Syrups,' 'Female Regulators,'
'Blood Purifiers,' and thousands of others."
Dr. A. Emil Hiss, Ph. G., says of the secrecy of these preparations:--
"A secret compound with a meaningless title is presumptively a
fraud. Why a secret if not to permit extravagant, or fraudulent,
claims as to therapeutic merit? * * * * * The ruling motive of
the secret being essentially false and dishonest, its employment
in the interest of any remedy is clearly a sufficient cause for
its condemnation and ostracism."
Mothers sometimes wonder why their boys take so readily to cigarettes,
or their daughters to cocaine, never thinking that the soothing syrup,
or cough mixture given freely by themselves to their children developed
a craving for something stronger later on. Mrs. Winslow's Soothing
Syrup, advertised for years in church as well as secular papers as
"invaluable for children," is cited in the report for 1888 of the
Massachusetts State Board of Health as containing opium; also Ayer's
Cherry Pectoral, Dr. Bull's Cough Syrup, Jayne's Expectorant, Hooker's
Cough and Croup Syrup, Moore's Essence of Life, Mother Bailey's Quieting
Syrup, and others too numerous to mention. The report says:--
"The sale of soothing syrups, and all medicines designed for the
use of children, which contain opium and its preparations should
be prohibited. Many would be deterred from using a preparation
known to contain opium, who would use without question a
soothing syrup recommended for teething children."
Again, on page 149 the following is quoted from a prominent physician:--
"Among infants, and in the early years of life, soothing syrups
are the cause of untold misery; for seeds are doubtlessly sown
in infancy only to bear the most pernicious fruit in adult life.
It is said that one of the best known soothing syrups contains
from one to three grains of morphia to the ounce of syrup. I
believe that stringent legal measures should immediately be
taken to stop the sale of so-called soothing syrups containing
opium, morphia or codeine."
The writer has known mothers so ignorant of the nature of these soothing
syrups as to deliberately put the baby to sleep upon them in order to
insure relief from care for some hours.
Prof. J. Redding, M. D., says on this point:--
"While it may be true that an adult, of his own free will, and
without incentive, or predisposing causes, does occasionally
become a drunkard, I am convinced that nine hundred and
ninety-nine out of every one thousand individuals who become
drunkards are made so in embryo, infancy, or childhood, by the
use of alcoholic decoctions, soothing syrups, opiates, calomel,
etc. which are given as medicines to allay pain, obtund nerve
sensibility, to cure the little sufferer of his _vital
manifestations_, of his _mental discomforts_, but leave the
actual disease and its, perhaps, putrid causation to time and
debilitated vitality to remove."
Of the danger and harmfulness of patent cough mixtures _The American
Therapist_ says:--
"Cough mixtures as a rule, do more harm than good. Nine times
out of ten the principal ingredient is opium. It is true that
opium may lessen the tendency to cough, but it does great damage
by arresting the normal secretions, and the system becomes
affected by the poisons from the kidneys, skin, stomach,
intestines and the mucous membrane lining the upper air
passages. Not only do these mixtures arrest every secretion in
the body, but they also show their deteriorating and degrading
effect through the stomach. They contain substances which tend
to disorder and derange digestion."
Several years ago the Post-Office Department at Washington was led to
take an interest in the question of fraudulent "patent" medicines, and
an examination of many of these nostrums was undertaken by government
chemists. Fraud orders were issued against some of the most flagrant
offenders, forbidding them the use of the mails. This has not done away
with the evil, however, for they usually move to another city, and begin
business again under another name.
The examinations made for the Post Office Department revealed the fact
that a great many of the so-called medicines on the market were
intoxicating beverages in disguise. The Internal Revenue Department then
took up the matter and a long list of these beverage medicines was sent
out to internal revenue agents with instructions that these must not be
sold henceforth unless by persons paying a special tax for the sale of
alcoholic beverages.
Some of the manufacturers of these nostrums availed themselves of
opportunity given to add a recognized medicinal agent to their flavored
alcohol and water and such preparations were stricken from the list of
those requiring a whisky license for their sale. Peruna and Hostetter's
Bitters were the best-known of these. Peruna had been up to this time
what government chemists called "a cheap cocktail." The report of the
pure food commissioner of North Dakota for 1906 gives on page 157 an
analysis of it as now upon the market: "Alcohol by volume, 21.25 per
cent.; total solids, 3.846 per cent.; ash, .158 per cent." The report
says:--
"The only thing of a medicinal nature that we could find in this
preparation appeared to be a small amount of senna combined with
a bitters of some kind."
Proprietary "Foods" have not escaped attention from chemists. Dr.
Charles Harrington, for several years secretary of Massachusetts Board
of Health, was the first to publish an analysis of these preparations
showing their alcoholic strength and their small nutritive content. He
lists "foods" examined by him as follows:--
"Liquid Peptonoids 23.03 alcohol; maximum amount recommended
will yield less than one ounce of nutriment per day, and the
equivalent of 3.50 oz. of whisky. Hemapeptone 10.60 alcohol;
Hemaboloids 15.81 alcohol; the maximum dose recommended yields
about 1/4 oz. of nutriment, and the equivalent of about 1-1/2
oz. of whisky daily. Tonic Beef 15.58 alcohol; doses recommended
yield about 1/2 oz. nutriment daily, and the equivalent of one
ounce of whiskey. Mulford's Predigested Beef 19.72 alcohol;
doses recommended yield about 1-1/4 oz. nutriment daily, and the
alcoholic equivalent of about 6 oz. of whisky. There were
"Foods" for the sick examined which were non-alcoholic, but
their nutritive value was about nothing in comparison to their
cost."
The Committee on Pharmacy of the American Medical Association reports on
the following foods thus:--
Carpanutrine 17.3 alcohol; Liquid Peptones (Lilly & Co.) 22.0;
Nutrient Wine of Beef Peptone (Armour) 21.5; Nutritive Liquid
Peptone 23.0; Panopepton 18.5; Peptonic Elixir 18.8; Tonic Beef
16.1. The report on these says: "There are no fatty substances
present in these products; their food value from this point of
view is, therefore, _nil_."
A prominent physician of Philadelphia said of these "Foods" in the
Journal of the A. M. A.:--
"I have long been convinced that many a patient has suffered
severely when preparations such as these were being used, and
that not a few of them have died, chiefly of starvation. * * * A
very important disadvantage of these foods is their alcoholic
content. Even in the small doses customarily used, the quantity
of alcohol is often irritating to the stomach, and may be
disadvantageous in other ways."
The Committee on Pharmacy also reported on cod-liver oil preparations.
They said: "A preparation claiming to represent cod-liver oil which does
not contain oil in some form is fraudulent. Waterbury's Metabolized
Cod-Liver Oil and Hagee's Cordial of Cod-Liver Oil are cited as
examples. It is claimed by the manufacturers that the latter represents
33 per cent. of pure Norwegian cod-liver oil, but in neither of these
preparations did the tests made by the committee show any oil. Analysis
revealed sugar, alcohol, and glycerine, none of which is contained in
cod-liver oil."
Vinol is advertised as Wine of Cod-Liver Oil, but is admittedly without
oil, and according to analysis contains 18.8 per cent. alcohol.
Wampole's Tasteless Preparation of Cod-Liver Oil showed 20.05 per cent.
of alcohol.
Cod-Liver Oil is considerably out of date now as a prescribed remedy
because physicians have found that it impairs appetite. Cream and fresh
butter and olive oil are advised instead.
Australia has been such a harvest field for patent medicine
manufacturers that a government commission was appointed to study the
subject. This commission presented a voluminous report to the
parliament of 1907. This report gives an analysis of most of the
extensively advertised medicines. Doan's Backache Kidney Pills are said
to be made of oil of juniper 1 drop, hemlock pitch 10 grains, potassium
nitrate 5 grains, powdered fenugreek (Greek hay) 4 grains, wheat flour 4
grains, maize starch 2 grains. The report says: "The stuff is the
cheapest kind of skin-plaster made up into pills." The seeds of
fenugreek are used mainly for poultices. Doan's Dinner Pills contain two
drastic purgatives, podophyllin and aloin. Both of these are dangerous
drugs. Aloin frequently produces hemorrhoids (piles). The _British
Medical Journal_ says that the material in forty of the Kidney Pills and
four Dinner Pills would cost one English halfpenny (one cent).
Vitae-Ore is given as consisting of ordinary sulphate of iron (green
vitriol) to which a little Epsom salts has been added. Munyon's Kidney
Cure, which claims to cure Bright's disease, gravel, and all urinary
diseases, is given as composed entirely of sugar. Dr. Williams' Pink
Pills are said to be an iron pill much the same as the ordinary Blaud's
Pills which are sold in drug-stores for half, or less than half, the
price of the proprietary article. (Iron is said by recent investigators
to be very injurious to the stomach.)
The Committee on Pharmacy of the American Medical Association has
analyzed many proprietary medicines; from their reports the following
analyses are taken. "Health Grains," which are claimed to be a remedy
for "Dyspepsia, Indigestion, Nervousness, etc.," were found to consist
of 87.50 per cent. of coarse quartz sand, and 12.50 per cent. of rock
candy and syrup.
"Hoff's Consumption Cure consists essentially of sodium
cinnamate and extract of opium, a mixture at one time suggested
for the treatment of tuberculosis, but which has been discarded
by physicians. A medicine which depends on opium for whatever
therapeutic effect it may have is, when sold indiscriminately to
the laity, inherently vicious."
Sartoin Skin Food for "sunburn, and all skin blemishes" was made of
Epsom salts colored with a pink dye. The government prosecuted the
company sending out Epsom salts as a "food," and they were fined $20 for
thus seeking to dupe silly women.
Malt extracts are very extensively used at the present time, under the
popular notion that they are an aid to starch digestion. That they are a
product of the brewery has caused them to be looked upon with suspicion
by cautious people, but the multitude has apparently given no thought,
or care, as to whether or not they may be alcoholic. Dr. Charles
Harrington presented the results of an examination of these preparations
at a meeting of the Boston Society of Medical Sciences, held Nov. 17,
1896. The following is quoted from the journal of the society for
November, 1896:--
"Twenty-one different brands of liquid malt extract were
obtained and analyzed. That they were not true malt extracts is
shown by the fact that in no one was there the slightest
diastatic power; all were alcoholic, some being stronger than
beer, ale, or even porter. In a number of specimens a large
amount of salicylic acid was detected."
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, in commenting upon this report, said in the Dec.,
1896, _Bulletin of the A. M. T. A._:--
"In the light of these facts, it is apparent that ale or lager
beer might as well be prescribed for a patient as these
so-called malt extracts, which are practically nothing more than
concentrated ale or lager."
There are malt extracts, made up like honey, or syrup, in consistency,
which are valuable.
The following list of malt extracts, with accompanying letter from Prof.
Sharples, is taken from a paper published by Hon. Henry H. Faxon, of
Quincy, Mass.:--
"Boston, Mass., March 20, 1897.
"I enclose a list of the malt extracts examined in this office
during the past year or two. These samples were all in original
packages, obtained by officers in various parts of Eastern
Massachusetts. They probably very fairly represent the various
malt extracts on the market. I have added two samples of Porter
and one of Old Brown Stout for purposes of comparison.
"Yours respectfully,
"S. P. SHARPLES.
"State Assayer."
Name. Solids. Alcohol.
5193 English Malt Extract 9.70 5.63
5214 Old Grist Mill Malt Extract 10.57 5.54
5418 Old Grist Mill Malt Extract 9.98 5.63
5490 Old Grist Mill Malt Extract 12.28 5.86
5626 Old Grist Mill Malt Extract 9.63 5.00
5207 Liquid Food, a Malt Extract 10.47 4.27
5225 Pure Malt, a Liquid Food, a Tonic 9.71 5.00
5416 Pure Malt, a Liquid Food, a Tonic 10.76 6.32
5619 King's Pure Malt[C] 9.52 6.60
[Footnote C: The label on King's Malt states that
for a strong, healthy person, with a good appetite,
a pint with each meal and another on retiring at
night will not be too much.]
5421 A Nutritious Tonic, Pure Malt Extract 10.88 6.24
5226 Noris' Extract of Malt 11.57 5.94
5258 Noris' Extract of Malt 9.31 6.55
5397 Noris' Extract of Malt 10.63 6.24
5485 Noris' Extract of Malt 10.50 6.63
5620 Noris' Extract of Malt 12.55 5.90
5229 Pabst Malt Extract, The Best Tonic 10.43 5.16
5230 Hoff's Malt Extract (Tarrant's) 11.33 8.88
5489 Hoff's Malt Extract (Tarrant's) 12.25 7.17
5231 Johann Hoff'sches Malz-Extract, Gesundheit's Beir 11.31 4.34
5491 Johann Hoff'sches Malz-Extract, Gesundheit's Beir 11.02 4.85
5621 Johann Hoff'sches Malz-Extract, Gesundheit's Beir 10.49 4.50
5408 Johann Hoff'sches Malz-Extract, Gesundheit's Beir 11.47 4.78
5340 Haffenreffer & Co. Malt Wine 11.02 6.65
5423 Haffenreffer & Co. Malt Wine 11.71 5.63
Liquid Bread, A Pure Extract of Malt 6.78 6.63
5395 Durgin's Malt, Liquid Extract of Malt 7.12 5.94
5433 Durgin's Liquid Extract of Malt 6.49 5.55
5396 Wyeth's Liquid Malt Extract 14.80 3.35
5488 Wyeth's Liquid Malt Extract 15.50 2.86
5622 Wyeth's Liquid Malt Extract 15.73 2.35
5406 Wampole's Concentrated Extract of Malt 9.84 9.86
5407 Anheuser-Busch's Malt Nutrine 15.98 3.00
5600 Anheuser-Busch's Malt Nutrine 15.82 2.25
5417 Malt Extract (Sterilized), John L. Gleeson 7.97 4.71
5422 Malt Extract (Sterilized), Charles C. Hearn 8.58 5.00
5436 Burkhart Brewing Co.'s Malt Extract 10.73 7.01
5486 Menzel's Extract of Malt 5.90 5.24
5625 Menzel's Extract of Malt 6.75 4.35
5623 King of Malt Tonics, Lion Tonic 10.95 7.05
5624 Teutonic, "A concentrated Extract
of Malt and Hops" 9.95 7.45
5409 Van Nostrand's Old Stout Porter,
"a pure malt extract" 7.97 6.55
5233 Philadelphia Porter 5.34 6.63
5232 Burke's Guiness Stout 6.66 7.17
The alcohol in the above table represents the cubic centimeters
of alcohol in a 100 cubic centimeters of the liquid. The solids
are the number of grams of solid extract in each 100 centimeters
of the liquid.
S. P. SHARPLES.
The _British Medical Journal_, and the _British Medical Temperance
Review_ have been calling attention to the danger in coca wines.
Intemperance among invalids is said to be greatly on the increase from
the use of these wines. In every case the basis of these preparations is
strongly alcoholic wine, ranging from 18 to 20 per cent. The coca added
is either the leaves, or liquid extract of coca, or hydrochlorate of
cocaine.
Dr. Frederic Coley says in the _British Medical Journal_:--
"Coca, and its chief alkaloid, cocaine, are drugs which possess
some power of removing the sense of fatigue, just as analgesics
remove the consciousness of pain. But they no more remove the
physical condition of muscles, and nerve centres, of which the
sense of pain gives us warning, than a dose of morphine, which
removes the pain of toothache, removes the offending tooth, or
even arrests the caries in it. The truth of this will be obvious
to any one who remembers enough of physiology to know what
fatigue really means. A muscle which is tired out is different
chemically from the same muscle in its more normal condition,
when it is ready to respond vigorously to ordinary stimuli. It
has lost something, and is, besides, overcharged (poisoned, in
fact) with the products of its own activity, and it can only be
restored by a fresh supply of the material which it requires,
and the carrying away of the poisonous waste products. Fatigue
of nerve centres is no doubt strictly analogous to fatigue of
muscles.
"It is practically impossible for us, by voluntary exertion, to
reach the degree of absolute fatigue, which the physiologist
produces by electric stimulation of a nerve-muscle preparation.
The sense of fatigue becomes so intense that voluntary effort
cannot overcome it. So no man can produce asphyxia by simply
holding his breath, because the _besoin de respirer_ becomes
irresistible; but it is quite possible for a narcotic to so dull
the sensory part of the respiratory reflex mechanism as to
permit asphyxia to take place.
"The sense of fatigue, and the _besoin de respirer_ are both
Nature's danger signals. Drugs which hide such signals from us
are a more than doubtful benefit. If it were possible for us to
suppose that a fraction of a grain of cocaine could afford to
exhausted nerve centres, and muscles, the nutriment which they
require for their restoration, and at the same time eliminate
the poisonous waste products, then it would be reasonable to
prescribe the drug for use by all who are overworked, and
perhaps suffering from the malnutrition consequent upon,
'nervous dyspepsia,' as well as mere want of rest.
"In this go-ahead century it is no wonder that many are but too
ready to experiment with a drug which professes to be able to
remove fatigue, and to enable a man to go on working when,
without its aid, weariness had become unendurable. Cocaine
claims all this; and it is most dangerous just because, for a
time, it seems able to keep its promise. That is how victims to
cocainism are made. Let us be honest with our overworked
patients, who want us to help them with drugs; let us tell them
that rest is the only safe remedy for weariness.
"To combine such a drug as coca, or cocaine, with an alcoholic
stimulant, is to multiply the dangers of cocainism by those of
alcoholism. It would be impossible to find terms sufficiently
severe in which to condemn the recklessness of those who
promiscuously recommend such a compound for all who are
overworked or debilitated. One firm actually has the assurance
to advertise a preparation of this kind as a remedy for
dipsomania. Truly this is casting out devils by Beelzebub, with
a vengeance. Invoking Beelzebub for such a purpose has never
been a success. And I suspect that any form of coca wine will
make a great many more dipsomaniacs than it will cure."
Dr. Walter N. Edwards, F. C. S., says of coca wines:--
"These wines are sold as being useful in an immense variety of
ailments. The following are a few of the many that are named
upon the bottles or in the circulars accompanying them:--
"Weakness after illness,
"Nervous disorders,
"Sleeplessness,
"Influenza,
"Whooping cough,
"Exhaustion of mind and body,
"Allays thirst,
"Restores digestive function,
"Enables great physical toil to be undergone,
"Great value in excesses of all kinds,
"General debility,
"Prevents colds and chills,
"Makes pure, rich blood,
"Anæmia,
"Invaluable after pleurisy, pneumonia, etc.,
"Aid to the vocal organs.
"This is a fairly respectable list of complaints, and the very
fact that these preparations of coca wine are put forward as a
cure for so wide a range of various complaints is in itself a
condemnation of them.
"When any particular remedy is said to be of universal
application for a large number of different complaints it may be
looked upon with great suspicion.
"It must always be remembered that there is the commercial side
to this question. The proprietors have no particular regard for
the welfare of the people; their business is to make a profit,
and many of them gain enormous fortunes. By skilful and lavish
advertisements, and by carefully worded testimonials, they
appeal to the credulity of the public, and often deceive even
those who regard themselves as belonging to the thinking
classes.
"There are two specific dangers in regard to these wines. They
are ordinary wines, either port or sherry for the most part, and
therefore strongly alcoholic. The user of them is in
considerable danger of cultivating a taste for alcohol, and
certainly, there is the greatest possible danger to any one
having had the appetite, of reviving it.
"The dose is an elastic one, it can be repeated with
considerable frequency three or four times a day.
"What would be said of growing girls or youths having recourse
three or four times a day to the wine bottle? This is exactly
what they are doing when coca, and the so-called food wines are
placed in their hands as medicine. They like the pleasant taste,
there is the call of habit and appetite, and so there arises the
greatest possible danger of a general liking for alcoholic
liquors being set up. The ailing man or woman of set years is in
similar danger, for they are having recourse to alcohol when
their powers of mind and body are to some extent exhausted, and
they are thus less able to resist the fascination for alcohol
that may so quickly be brought into existence.
"Another element of danger is that the recourse to coca and kola
is an attempt to get more out of the body, and the mind, than
nature intended. Overwork, overstrain, worry, all produce
exhaustion of physical and nervous power. Nature pulls us up by
asserting herself, and we feel run down and seedy, and, perhaps,
quite unwell. What is wanted is rest, proper diet, and change.
These would quickly be restorative, and once again we should be
fit for the duties of life.
"In a busy age there is the strongest possible temptation to
seek a restorative by some occult method, rather than to give
the rest and refreshment that nature demands. It is upon this
that the whole trade in these so-called restoratives depends.
"There is no food quality in alcohol, cocaine or kola, but there
is in them all a narcotizing influence that in its lesser stages
is hurtful, and in its greater stages disastrous.
"The cocaine habit may be cultivated as easily as the alcohol
habit, and the two forms of disease, alcoholism and cocainism,
are by no means rare. The great factor in each of them is the
loss of will power, and when that is accomplished the descent to
complete moral and physical ruin is quite easy.
"A pure and simple life, in accord with the laws of health and
hygiene, is the panacea both for the maintenance, and the
restoration of health, and that is what we should strive to aim
at, rather than having recourse to drugs that are not only
ineffective, but positively dangerous."--_United Temperance
Gazette._
In Dr. Milner Fothergill's _Practioners' Hand-book of Treatment_, fourth
edition, the following statement is made:--
"Coca wine, and other medicated wines are largely sold to people
who are considered, and consider themselves, to be total
abstainers. It is not uncommon to hear the mother of a family
say, 'I never allow my girls to touch stimulants of any kind,
but I give them each a glass of coca wine at 11 in the morning,
and again at bedtime.' Originally coca wine was made from coca
leaves, but it is now commonly a solution of the alkaloid, in a
sweet and strongly alcoholic wine. This is really the gist of
the whole matter; coca wine is largely consumed by people who
fondly believe themselves to be total abstainers, and who are
active enough in denouncing those who take a little wine, or a
glass of beer at their meals. The sooner their delusion is
dispelled the better for themselves, and for the unfortunate
children over whom they exercise supervision."
Another physician tells of seeing a distinguished ecclesiastical
dignitary, a sworn foe of alcohol and its congeners, giving his young
child a generous daily allowance of one of these wines.
The user of coca wines runs a double risk--an alcohol craving may be
revived, or created; and, at the same time, cocainism may be set up, and
nothing but physical, mental and moral ruin follow.
The _British Medical Journal_ of January 23rd, 1897, says:--
"There can be no doubt that in many parts of the world cocaine
inebriety is largely on the increase. The greatest number of
victims is to be found among society women, and among women who
have adopted literature as a profession; and there is no doubt
that a considerable proportion of chronic cocainists have fallen
under the dominion of the drug from a desire to stimulate their
powers of imagination. Others have acquired that habit quite
innocently from taking coca wines. The symptoms experienced by
the victims of the cocaine habit are illusions of sight and
hearing, neuromuscular irritability, and localized anæsthesia.
After a time insomnia supervenes, and the patient displays a
curious hesitancy, and an inability to arrive at a decision on
even the most trivial subjects."
Dr. F. Coley says later on in the article before referred to:--
"There is another combination which, though utterly absurd from
a therapeutical point of view, is not in itself quite so
dangerous as coca wine. It will probably do a larger amount of
mischief, however, because more people take it. I refer to the
various preparations, so largely advertised, which profess to be
compounded of port wine, extract of malt, and extract of meat.
To the medically uneducated public this doubtless seems a most
promising combination: extract of meat for food, extract of malt
to aid digestion, port wine to make blood. Surely the very thing
to strengthen all who are weak, and to hasten the restoration of
convalescents. Unfortunately what the advertisements say--that
this stuff is largely prescribed by medical men--is not wholly
untrue.
"I do not suppose that any physician of anything like front rank
would make such a mistake. But busy general practitioners may be
excused if they prove to be a bit oblivious of physiology, and
so become attracted by a formula which is more plausible than
sound. In the first place, we all know that extract of meat is
not food at all. From the manner of its production, it cannot
contain an appreciable quantity of proteid material. It consists
mainly of creatin, and creatinin, and salts. These are, it is
needless to say, incapable of acting as food. Extract of meat,
and similar preparations, have their uses however; made into
'beef-tea,' their meaty flavor often enables patients to take a
quantity of bread, which would otherwise be refused; or lentil
flour, or some other matter may be added. In this way, though
not food itself, it becomes a most useful aid to feeding. It is
besides, a harmless stimulant, especially when taken, as it
always should be, hot. It should be needless to add that to
combine extract of meat with port wine is simply to ignore its
real use. The only intelligible basis for such an invention must
be the wholly erroneous notion that extract of meat is a food."
The prices asked for "secret nostrums" are said by chemists to be
ofttimes far beyond the value of the materials. Of one article the _New
Idea_, a druggists' paper, says:--
"It retails at $1.50 per bottle. Such an article could be put up
for less than fifteen cents, including bottle, leaving by no
means a small margin for the profit of its manufacturers."
The same paper says of a cure for catarrh, neuralgia, etc. sold in the
form of a small ball:--
"This cure costs $2.50 per ball. A handsome profit could be made
upon it at 5 cents a ball."
Some proprietary preparations are not harmful, but are positively inert.
The Mass. State Board of Health in report of 1896 gives _Kaskine_ as an
example of these. Although sold at a dollar an ounce it was found to
consist of nothing but granulated sugar of the fine grade used in
homeopathic pharmacy, without any medication or flavoring whatever.
Dr. Edward Von Adelung in an article in _Life and Health_, Dec., 1897,
tells of a well advertised cure for consumption, the analysis of which
showed it to be composed of water, slightly colored by the addition of a
very small quantity of red wine, and two mineral acids, muriatic and
impure sulphuric, in quantities just sufficient to lend it a taste! He
says:--
"Fortuitously I had the opportunity of observing the influence
of this remedy on a consumptive who took it regularly, and who
was so enamored of its favorable action that he gave up his
business to conduct an agency for its sale. It was not long
after he had entered upon his new vocation that I received word
of his death, due to pulmonary hemorrhage."
The "returned missionary" fraud has been exposed by different druggists'
papers, among them the _New Idea_. The "missionary" would advertise a
"free cure," if people would send to him. The "cure" would be in the
form of a prescription. There being no drugs in any drugstore bearing
the names given in the prescription, the dupe was expected to pay an
exorbitant price for them to the philanthropic "missionary." In one case
of this kind the "medicinal plants brought from South America, the only
place where they grew," were upon examination by chemists of the _New
Idea_ found to be ordinary drugs, not one of which comes from South
America.
The same paper tells of another "South American" fraud, 60,000 bottles
of which were said to be sold in Detroit in a few weeks, by an
itinerating vendor.
A certain liver, and kidney, and constipation cure, sold in the form of
herbs, is said by _New Idea_ to be chiefly couch grass, and senna
leaves. Yet it sells for 25 cents for a small package.
To this paper the public is also indebted for the information that a
kind of wafer advertised to "cure in a few days all coughs, colds,
irritation of the uvula and tonsils, influenza, bronchitis, asthma, sore
throat, consumption, and all diseases of the lungs and chest" was found
to consist wholly of sugar and corn starch!
_Medical World_ recently told of the investigation of "H----" by Prof.
John Uri Lloyd of Cincinnati. It was advertised as a plant discovered by
a doctor traveling in Florida. Its juices were said to be antidotal to
snake poisoning, and would also cure the opium habit. Prof. Lloyd found
it to be a liquid consisting of a solution of sulphate of morphine and
salicylic acid, in alcohol and glycerine, with suitable coloring matter.
Another fraud exposed by _New Idea_ was a "cure" for the peculiar ills
of women. The cure is put up in the form of little oblong blocks about a
half inch in length.
"A circular accompanies them, and is well calculated to produce
alarm in the young. It is another sample of the demoralizing
documents which unscrupulous quacks are continually circulating
among the laity, in order to create alarm, and profit by this
alarm."
After giving a description of the diseases peculiar to the sex it is
stated that all of these are curable by using eight dollars worth of
this wonderful medicine.
_New Idea_ continues:--
"The _cure_ consists, according to our examination, of nothing
but flour, made into a paste and allowed to harden in the form
of small oblong blocks. Evidently the quack relied upon the
faith-cure principle, and his auxiliary treatment, as set forth
in the rules of living given in the circular."
While these inert preparations are of the nature of frauds, they will
not injure the health, nor make drunkards, or opium fiends, as the
disguised preparations of whisky and morphine are likely to do.
That the use of patent medicines has made many drunkards is a fact well
attested. The American Association for the Study of Inebriety appointed
a committee several years ago to investigate the various nostrums
advertised especially for the benefit of alcohol and opium inebriates.
The report of this committee, prepared by Dr. N. Roe Bradner, late of
the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, in speaking of the marvelous
cures advertised in connection with the use of these mixtures, calls
them "volumes of gilded falsehood, designed for an innocent,
unsuspecting public," and adds:--
"The use of such nostrums would do more toward confirming than
eradicating the habit, if it existed, and would invite and
create addiction to an almost hopeless fatality, where the habit
had not previously existed. Insanity, palsy, idiocy, and many
forms of physical, moral and mental ruin have followed the sale
of these nostrums throughout our land."
Dr. E. A. Craighill, President of the Virginia State Pharmaceutical
Association, is quoted in the July (1897) _Journal of Inebriety_, as
saying:--
"In my experience I have known of men filling drunkards' graves
who learned to drink taking some advertised bitters as
legitimate medicine. It would be hard to estimate the number of
young brains ruined, and the maturer opium wrecks from nostrums
of this nature. I could write a volume on the mischief that is
being done every day to body, mind and soul, all over the land,
by the thousands of miserable frauds that are being poured down
the throats of not only ignorant people, but, alas, intelligent
ones, too."
A lady informed the writer recently that her brother had taken forty
bottles of one of these preparations, and had become a drunkard through
it.
Many seem unaware that the ethics of the medical profession restrain
reputable physicians from advertising themselves or their remedies, so
that these much-lauded patent medicines are put upon the market by
quacks, never by physicians of good standing. It is purely a
money-making enterprise, without consideration of the health or
destruction of the people. It is popularly supposed that physicians
decry these things from fear that their sale will injure regular
practice. This is another error as they increase work for the doctor by
aggravating existing trouble, as well as causing disease where there was
only slight disturbance.
Dr. F. E. Stewart, Ph. G., of Detroit, Mich., says in the October, 1897,
_Life and Health_:--
"Taking all these facts into consideration, it is apparent that
the patent, trade-mark and copyright laws should be so
interpreted and administered by the court that they will secure
the greatest good to the greatest number, and aid in attaining
the end of government, viz., 'moral, intellectual and physical
perfection.' It is not the object of these laws to create odious
monopolies, to throw a mantle of protection over fraud, to
enable quacks and charlatans to encroach on the domain of
legitimate medical and pharmacal practice, or to support an
advertising business designed to mislead the public in regard to
the nature and value of medicines as curative agents. The morals
of the community are injured by some of this advertising,
intellectual vigor is impaired by the use of many things
advertised, and physical, as well as moral, degradation
frequently results. Crime is often inculcated--even the crime of
murder, that the nostrum manufacturer may profit thereby. Cures
for incurable diseases are promised, and guaranteed. Every
scheme that human and devilish ingenuity can devise to wring
money from its victim is resorted to, which can be employed
without actually bringing the advertisers into court. All this
wicked quackery parades under the guise of 'patent' medicines,
and asks the protection of our courts. It is time for the
medical and pharmaceutic professions to unite, and unmask this
monster, and show the public its true nature. And this can be
accomplished in no better way than through a study of the object
of the laws which the secret nostrum manufacturers are now
endeavoring to prostitute for their own advantage, and the
teaching of the public what these laws were enacted for.
"The secret nostrum business in some of its phases has
assiduously found its way into the medical arts, and physicians,
pharmacists, and manufacturing houses, seem to have forgotten,
to a certain extent, the obligations which they owe to the
public. Medicine, in all its departments, must be practiced in
accord with scientific, and professional requirement, or it will
sink to the level of a commercial business. _The end of medical
practice is service to suffering humanity, not the acquisition
of money._ Money making is a necessary part of the practice of
medical arts, not, however, its chief object. This fact must be
kept in view always. Once lost sight of, and trade competition
substituted for competition in serving the interests of the
sick, medical and pharmacal practice will become an ignoble
scrabble for wealth, in which the sick become victims of
avarice and greed. Better set free a pack of ravening wolves in
a community than to change the end of medical practice to a
commercial one, for physicians and pharmacists would soon
degenerate into quacks and charlatans, and take shameful
advantage of the community for gain."
Where Dr. Stewart speaks of murder he probably refers to the sale of
_abortofacients_.
Dr. Roe Bradner, of Philadelphia, in his report upon alleged cures for
drunkenness before the Society for the Study of Inebriety several years
ago, said:--
"There is a certain other class of so-called remedies, prepared
sometimes by physicians and pharmacists, that do a great deal of
harm. I allude to the 'non-secret proprietaries' that claim to
publish their formulas, _but do not_. One in particular has made
thousands, and likely tens of thousands, of _chloral drunkards_,
dethroned the reason of as many more, besides having killed
outright very many. It is impossible for any one to estimate the
mischief that is being done by such remedies, and the physicians
who recommend them."
Advertising is still the great hindrance in protecting the people from
medical imposters. Professor E. W. Ladd, Pure Food Commissioner of North
Dakota, says on this point:--
"These patent medicines, some of which are of merit, and others
are only 'dopes,' or preparations intended to defraud the
public, have been altogether too generally advertised and sold
to the public. In many ways it seems a deplorable fact that by
an unfair method of advertising the American people have come to
be consumers to such an extent of a class of medicines, which,
at times, are positively detrimental to health. In other
instances the continued use of the product is liable to result
in the formation of a drug habit which may lead to serious
consequences.
"It should not be understood that this department condemns the
use of legitimate proprietary or patent medicines, but it
insists that there is a need for wiping out of existence about
half of the products now generally sold, and with regard to the
others the public have a right to know what is contained in
them, and not be misled by false statements, or by statements so
cunningly worded as to positively mislead the unwary reader. * *
* In view of the fact that about 90 per cent. of the nostrums on
the market are sold by newspaper and magazine advertising and
not by the customer seeing the package, it would seem advisable
to amend the law so as to cover this point."
There is no doubt that it is the advertising which makes the patent
medicine business so tremendously profitable. One firm boasted, prior to
the exposure of the fraud nature of their preparation, that they spent
$5,000 a day in advertising. What must have been made on the nostrum to
allow such expenditure? It is said on good authority that the cost of
these nostrums does not exceed fifteen to sixteen cents a bottle, and
they sell for a dollar a bottle. Such profits make it easy to buy up
newspapers that are conscienceless as to the robbery of the unfortunate
sick.
The only effectual way of putting an end to the sale of nostrums is to
make illegal the advertising of such preparations in the public press.
Norway has safeguarded her people thus. The difficulty in gaining such a
law in America will be the opposition of the newspapers, the large
majority of which still cling to this selfish method of adding to their
gains. Even the so-called religious press is not all clean yet in this
respect. Once they could be excused because of lack of knowledge. Now
there is no excuse.
During the debate in Congress upon the patent-medicine clause of the
Pure Food Bill, Senator Heyburn said:--
"I have always been aggressively against the advertisements of
nostrums. Some time ago a friend of mine, a very old fellow,
that I had taken a special interest in securing a pension for,
had reached the age and condition of dependency. I succeeded in
getting him a comfortable pension that would pay his bills for
household provisions. Once, when I found he was very poor, I
said to his wife, 'What are you doing with your pension?' She
said, 'Don't you know, Mr. Heyburn, that it takes at least
one-half of that pension for patent medicine?' Then she
enumerated the patent medicines they were taking. It was being
suggested to them through advertisements that they were the
victims of ills that they were not troubled with, and that they
could find relief through these different medicines.
"I am in favor of stopping the advertisements of these nostrums
in every paper in the country."
It may well be asked, Would any one of these well-to-do newspaper owners
entrust himself, or any of his family, in time of sickness to the
cure-all imposters whose nostrums they advertise? If one of their
children had anæmia would they rely on Pink Pills for a cure? If they
had a genuine catarrh would they expect it to be cured by Peruna? Never!
They would seek the very best medical advice obtainable. Yet, for the
ignorant, credulous, sick and suffering poor they allow traps to be laid
to rob of both money and such chances of recovery as might come from
proper medical attendance.
CHAPTER XIV.
"DRUGGING."
The main reason why so many people use patent medicines is the popular
supposition that drugs cure disease. This is a great error. _Drugs never
cure disease._ Nature alone has power to heal. There are agents, which
in the hands of a trained and painstaking physician may assist nature,
but the physician needs to understand something of the idiosyncrasies of
his patient's system, or the use of these agents may do great harm
instead of good. Those medical men who have made the most diligent study
of health and disease assert as their deliberate opinion that excessive
professional drugging has been decidedly destructive of human life.
Dr. Jacob Bigelow, professor in the medical department of Harvard
University, in a work published a few years ago stated as his belief
that the unbiased opinion of most medical men of sound judgment, and
long experience, is that the amount of death and disaster in the world
would be less, if all diseases were left to themselves, than it now is
under the multiform, reckless, and contradictory modes of practice, with
which practitioners of diverse denominations carry on their
differences, at the expense of the patient.
Sir John Forbes, M. D., F. R. S., said:--
"Some patients get well with the aid of medicine, more without
it, and still more in spite of it."
Dr. Bostwick, author of _The History of Medicine_, said:--
"Every dose of medicine given is a blind experiment upon the
vitality of the patient."
Dr. James Johnson, editor of the _Medico-Chirurgical Review_, says:--
"I declare as my conscientious conviction founded on long
experience and reflection, that if there were not a single
physician, surgeon, man-midwife, chemist, apothecary, druggist
nor drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness
and less mortality than now prevail."
Prof. J. W. Carson, of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons,
says:--
"We do not know whether our patients recover because we give
them medicine, or because nature cures them. Perhaps bread-pills
would cure as many as medicine."
Prof. Alonzo Clark, of the same college, has said:--
"In their zeal to do good physicians have done much harm; they
have hurried many to the grave who would have recovered if left
to nature."
Prof. Martin Paine, of the New York University Medical College, said:--
"Drug medicines do but cure one disease by producing another."
Dr. Marshall Hall, F. R. S.:--
"Thousands are annually slaughtered in the quiet sick-room."
Dr. Adam Smith:--
"The chief cause of quackery _outside_ the profession is the
_real_ quackery _in_ the profession."
Prof. Gilman:--
"The things that are administered for the cure of _scarlet
fever_ and _measles_ kill far more than those diseases kill."
Prof. Barker, of New York Medical College:--
"The drugs that are administered for the cure of _scarlet fever_
kill far more patients than the disease does."
Prof. Parker:--
"As we place more confidence in nature, and less in preparations
of the apothecary, mortality diminishes."
The examining physician of a large insurance company in New York said to
a _Mercury_ reporter:--
"The primary cause of so many cases of _la grippe_ in this and
other cities is the almost universal habit of drug taking from
the milder tonics to patent medicines. Whenever the average man
or woman feels depressed or slightly ill, resort is made at once
to medicine, more or less strong. If they would try to find out
the cause of the trouble, and seek to obviate it by regulating
their mode of living, the general health of the community would
be better. The drug habit tends continually to lower the tone of
the system. The more it is indulged in the more apparent becomes
the necessity of continuing the downhill course. The majority of
persons do not look beyond the fact that they seem to feel
better after the use of a stimulating drug, or patent medicine.
This feeling comes from a benumbing action of the drug, because
it has no uplifting action. With the system in such a weakened
state, the microbes of the disease find excellent ground to
grow."
Dr. J. H. Kellogg says in the April, 1899, _Bulletin of the
A. M. T. A._:--
"Every drug capable of producing an artificial exhilaration of
spirits, a pleasure which is not the result of the natural play
of the vital functions, is necessarily mischievous in its
tendencies, and its use is intemperance, whether its name be
alcohol, tobacco, opium, cocaine, coca, kola, hashish, Siberian
mushroom, caffeine, betel-nuts, maté or any other of the score
or more enslaving drugs known to pharmacology. As the result of
the depression which follows the unnatural elevation of
sensation resulting from the use of one of these drugs, the
second application finds the subject on a little lower level
than the first, so that an increased dose is necessary to
produce the same intensity of pleasure or the same degree of
artificial felicity as the first. The larger dose is followed by
still greater depression which demands a still larger dose as
its antidote, and thus there is started a series of
ever-increasing doses, and ever-increasing baneful
after-affects, which work the ultimate ruin of the drug victim.
All drugs which enslave are alike in this regard, however much
they may differ otherwise in their physiological effects.
Alcohol is universally recognized as only one member of a large
family of intoxicating drugs, each of which is capable of
producing specific functional and organic mischief, besides the
vital deterioration common to the use of so-called
felicity-producing drugs.
"Is it not evident, then, that in combating the use of alcohol
we are attacking only one member of a numerous family of enemies
to human life and happiness, every one of which must be
exterminated before the evil of intemperance will be up-rooted?"
Among the most popular drugs for self-prescription at the present time
are the coal-tar products. Of these Dr. N. S. Davis has said:--
"Only a few years since, the profession were taught to regard
the degree of pyrexia, or heat, as the chief element of danger
in all the acute general diseases. Consequently, to control the
pyrexia became the leading object of treatment; and whatever
would do this promptly, and at the same time allay pain and
promote rest, found favor at the bedside of the patient.
"It was soon ascertained that antipyrin, antifebrin, phenacetin
and other analogous products, if given in sufficient doses,
would reduce the heat, and allay the pains with great certainty
and promptness, not only in continued fevers, but also in
rheumatism, influenza, or la grippe, etc.; and thus their use
soon became popular with both the profession and the public. No
one, however, undertook to first ascertain by strictly
scientific appliances the actual pathological processes causing
the pyrexia in each form of disease, or even to determine
whether in any given case the increased heat was the result of
increased heat production, or diminished heat dissipation.
Neither were any of the remedies subjected to such experimental
investigation as to determine their influence on the elements of
the blood, the internal distribution of oxygen, the metabolism
of the tissues, or on the activity of the eliminations.
Consequently their exhibition was wholly empirical, and the one
that subdued the pyrexia most promptly was given the preference.
Yet we all know that the pyrexia invariably returned as soon as
the effects of each dose were exhausted, and in a few years the
results showed that while the antipyretics served to keep down
the pyrexia, and give each case the appearance of doing well,
the average duration of the cases, and their mortality, were
both increased.
"Step by step experimental therapeutic investigations have
proved that the whole class of coal-tar antipyretics reduce
animal heat by impairing the capacity of the hemoglobin and
corpuscular elements of the blood to receive and distribute free
oxygen, and thereby reduce temperature by diminishing heat
production, nerve sensibility and tissue metabolism. Therefore,
while each dose temporarily reduces the fever, it retards the
most important physiological processes on which the living
system depends for resisting the effects of toxic agents;
namely, oxidation and elimination. This not only encourages the
retention of toxic agents and natural excretory materials by
which specific fevers are protracted, but it greatly increases
the number of cases of pneumonia that complicate the epidemic
influenza, or la grippe, as it has occurred since 1888-89.
"The bad work that people make in dosing themselves with patent
medicines, without a physician's prescription is not
unfrequently punctuated with a sudden death from overdosing with
antipyrin, sulphonal, or some other coal-tar preparation."
Dr. C. H. Shepard, Brooklyn, N. Y., says:--
"Quinine is a most fatal drug. Of course, it is the orthodox
treatment for malarial conditions, but quinine never did nor
never can cure malaria or any other disease. The action brought
about by its use is simply to benumb the nervous activity and
interfere with the natural action of the system to throw off the
poison, which is expressed by the chill. Because of this
interference with the manifestation or symptom of the disease,
many imagine that the disease is being cured, but there never
was a greater mistake. A drug disease is added to the original
disease. This is shown by the invariable depression that follows
the administration of the drug, and the length of time required
to recuperate, which imperils restoration, and sometimes hastens
the final results. This is ordinarily met by the use of what are
called stimulants, that is, more drugs, and the last state is
worst than the first; the poor patient is thus made the victim
of a triple wrong, which only a most vigorous constitution can
pass through and live, and even then he is crippled and made
more liable to whatever disease may come along ever afterward.
"Disease is not entity to be killed by a shot from a
professional gun, but a condition, an effort of outraged nature
to free itself from an incumbrance, and should be aided rather
than hindered by the administration of any nerve irritant. There
never will come a time when the laws of health can be evaded.
Nor is there any vicarious atonement. The full penalty of
disobedience will invariably be exacted. The hunt for a panacea
is as sure to be disappointing in the future as it has been in
the past."
A writer in the _Brooklyn Citizen_ says:--
"Few people are aware of the extent of a peculiar kind of
dissipation known as ginger-drinking. The article used is the
essence of ginger, such as is put up in the several proprietary
preparations known to the trade, or the alcohol extract
ordinarily sold over the druggist's counter. Having once
acquired a liking for it, the victim becomes as much a slave to
his appetite as the opium eater or the votary of cocaine. In its
effect it is much the most injurious of all such practices, for
in the course of time it destroys the coating of the stomach,
and dooms its victim to a slow and agonizing death.
"The druggist who told me about the thing says that as ginger
essence contains about one hundred per cent. alcohol, and whisky
less than fifty per cent., the former is therefore twice as
intoxicating. In fact, this is the reason why it is used by
hardened old topers whose stomachs are no longer capable of
intoxicating stimulation from whisky. They need the more
powerful agency of the pure alcohol in the ginger extract. He
told me that he had two regular customers, one a woman, who had
ginger on several occasions for stomachic pains. The relief it
afforded her was so grateful that she took it upon any
recurrence of her trouble. She found, too, that the slight
exhilaration of the alcohol banished mental depression. In this
way she got to using it regularly, and finally to such excess
that she was often grossly intoxicated. Large doses produce a
quiet stupor; additional doses induce a profound lethargic
slumber, which lasts in some cases for twenty-four hours. His
other customer was a peddler, who came at a certain hour every
morning, bought a four-ounce bottle and drank its contents by
noon. The man craved the stuff so ardently that he was unable to
go about his business until he set the machinery of his stomach
in operation, and started the circulation of the blood by means
of the fiery draught. He says that the habit is well known to
the drug trade."
"The morphia habit, the cocaine habit, the chloral habit, and
other poison habits which are prevalent in this and other
countries, are only different manifestations of a wide-spread
and apparently increasing love for drugs which benumb or excite
the nerves, which seems to characterize our modern civilization.
Indeed, there appears to be, at the present time, almost a mania
for the discovery of some new nerve-tickle, or some novel means
of fuddling the senses. It is indeed high time that the medical
profession raised, with one accord, its voice in solemn protest
against the use of all nerve-obtunding and felicity-producing
drugs, which are all, without exception, toxic agents, working
mischief and only mischief in the human body."--DR. J. H.
KELLOGG.
Much discussion upon careless drug-taking has resulted from remarks made
recently in London by Sir Frederick Treves, the King's surgeon, at the
opening of a hospital. He said that the time is fast approaching when
physicians will give very little medicine, but will instead teach the
people right methods of living so that sickness may be avoided.
Although there are some physicians who appear to enjoy the old routine
of giving heroic doses of ill-tasting liquids, there are others who
agree with Sir Frederick, and admit that they would often be glad to
give no medicine if their patients would be satisfied without it. But
the great mass of people are unwilling to take a physician's advice as
to proper clothing, suitable diet, and regular habits of living. They do
not seek his advice upon those points; what they want is a drug that
will benumb uneasy sensations while they live as they please.
Not long ago a business man of intelligence was heard to complain
because he had tried several physicians and all had failed to cure his
sciatica. He said they all told him he must live differently; several
said he must quit smoking and lay aside wine and beer or he could not be
cured. With scorn he said, "What are physicians good for if they don't
know a drug that will cure as simple a thing as rheumatism?" He could
not and would not believe that rheumatism might be the result of his
wrong habits.
Akin to him in thought is a woman, much above the average in
intelligence, who a few months ago had an operation performed upon her
stomach. The stomach was enlarged so that the food did not pass through
the pylorus, the opening into the intestines. The operation consisted in
making a new opening and connecting it with an intestine. This bright
woman now complains that the operation was not a success, because she
still has times of great distress with indigestion. Upon being asked
what she eats, she laughed and said, "Everything, peanuts, mince-pie,
sauer-kraut, frankforts; whatever is going. I have a vigorous appetite,
and keep peanuts and figs in my room, for I often have to eat in the
night."
Until multitudes of people like that business man, and that bright
woman, are educated in matters of health, it will not be easy for
physicians to bring Sir Frederick's prediction to fulfilment.
The popular supposition is that drugs _cure_ disease, and all that the
medical adviser is for is to choose the drug that will produce the
desired effect with the greatest speed. Consequently the physician is in
many cases driven to prescribe drugs that simply allay pain without
removing the cause of the pain. He cannot remove the cause without the
patient's co-operation, and as that would require the abandonment of
wrong habits few are willing to accept health at such a price. What man
will abandon beer to escape rheumatism, or smoking to save his eyesight
if he has weakness there? Or, what woman will cease tea-drinking if she
has neuralgia?
The _Journal of the American Medical Association_ for November 16, 1907,
contained an editorial article in which, after reference to drugs
necessary in the practice of a physician or surgeon, this is said:--
"The remark of Holmes years ago that it would be better for the
patients, but worse for the fish, if most of the drugs were
thrown into the sea, is probably even more true to-day. The vast
majority of these drugs have not the slightest excuse for
existence."
Dr. T. D. Crothers, in his valuable book upon Morphinism and other drug
addictions, reports a case of murder where it was shown that the
assailant was delirious from large doses of quinine. He says assaults
are often clearly traced to the drug taking of the assailant. A surgeon
from a New York hospital, in speaking of drug habits before an audience
at Chautauqua, New York, said that some of the ovarian difficulties
which demand operations are the result of over-dosing with quinine.
There are people who keep morphine in the house all the time lest some
little pain or ache should find them unprepared.
Dr. Crothers, who has perhaps made more of a study of the evil results
of drug taking than any other man in America, says of this:--
"Morphine as a common remedy, taken for pains and aches, may
suddenly develop into an incurable craze for its continuous use.
* * * The early relief which morphine brings to the sufferer is
often the beginning of an unknown journey ending in disease and
death."
Cases are on record where morphine given to mothers soon after the birth
of children to allay pain, has resulted in the death of the infant, the
morphine having poisoned the milk.
Cocaine is possibly the most insidious of all drugs yet known. Few of
those who become enslaved to it ever are able to lay it aside. It leads
to hallucinations of sight and hearing. Many persons have become
enslaved to cocaine unwittingly through its use in catarrh snuffs,
asthma "cures," and other proprietary preparations, the composition of
which was secret. Some states now have strict laws regulating the sale
of this dangerous drug.
It is not only the enslaving drugs which are injurious to the body, but
even such apparently simple agents as liver pills and pills for the
relief of constipation may do more harm than good if resorted to
frequently. Some of the ingredients used in the pills for the relief of
constipation are said to be injurious to the liver.
Dr. Nathan S. Davis, late dean of the Northwestern University Medical
School, Chicago, said of the coal-tar remedies, such as phenacetin and
antipyrin, in the treatment of influenza and _la grippe_:--"While each
dose temporarily reduces the fever it retards the most important
physiological processes on which the living system depends for resisting
the effects of toxic agents, namely, oxidation and elimination. This not
only encourages the retention of poisonous agents by which fevers are
protracted, but it greatly increases the number of cases of pneumonia
that complicate _la grippe_. The bad work that people make in dosing
themselves with patent medicines is not infrequently punctuated with a
sudden death from overdosing with antipyrin, sulphonal, or some other
coal-tar preparation."
Deaths from acetanilid are becoming more and more frequent. The presence
of acetanilid in headache powders "guaranteed to be harmless" and thrown
upon the door-steps as samples has led many persons into grave danger,
and not a few to death. Bromo-Seltzer, Orangeine, Antikamnia, Taylor's
Headache Powders, and various other preparations have all contained this
drug.
The use of cocaine is advancing rapidly in this country.[TN: see Errata
at end of text] The following article is taken from _The Banner of
Gold_, of Feb., 1899:--
"Value of cocaine leaves imported at the port
of New York in 1894 $14,284
Imported in 1897 54,122
Indicated value of imports for 1898 75,000
"In these simple figures are contained the elements of a warning
sermon that would startle all America. We seem to be rapidly
becoming a nation of cocaine fiends. If the number of those
addicted to the use of the dreadful drug continues to increase
at the present rate, the importation of what was originally
regarded as a blessed alleviation of pain, will have to be
classed with opium, and its use prohibited by law, except for
medicinal purposes.
"At present the cocaine fiend can purchase the drug without
trouble, and the ease with which it is taken is a fatal
recommendation to those who crave a nerve-deadener. No laborious
cooking of pills over a lamp, cleaning of implements, or
troublesome necessity for secrecy, as with the use of opium.
Cocaine can be taken at any time, with scarcely any trouble, and
without a soul besides the user being aware of his being in the
toils.
"At first, that is. It will not be long before every intimate
friend will observe a change, a gradual and scarcely perceptible
change, come over the appearance and general conduct of the
cocaine fiend.
"Begun in many cases in a legitimate way, as an anæsthetic, the
surprisingly pleasant effect is sought for again by the one who
has had a glimpse at the portals of the elysium. This is the
beginning of the terrible habit. The effect is a sense of
exhilaration followed by a quiet, dreamy state that causes the
worried man to forget his troubles, and the sufferer his pain.
Once this freedom from physical and mental sickness has been
experienced, the cocaine fiend will rob or kill to get the drug.
Enforced non-use of it will not cure the victim. Sentence him to
a term of imprisonment, and he will go straight from the jail
door to the nearest drug store to secure cocaine before he eats
or sleeps.
"From an occasional use of the drug to insatiable craving is the
rational course of the cocaine fiend. From thence to the insane
asylum and the grave is a swift and easy descent.
"In his fall from health to physical and mental disintegration,
the cocaine fiend undergoes a terrible experience. When not in
the temporary heaven that the drug provides, the victim is in
the lowest depths of an _inferno_. He suffers from insomnia,
anorexia, and gastralgic pains, dyspepsia, chronic palpitations,
and will-paresis. He is a terror both to himself and others. The
life of the man is a living death. He knows it, and with this
knowledge staring him in the face, he rushes for the drug, and
is happy for a brief period under its influence.
"It is time something was done to keep from this high-strung
nation a drug so deadly. Clear-minded medical men have
recommended its exclusion from the country, believing that its
use medicinally should be foregone rather than that such a
cursed temptation should be placed in the way of weak humanity.
"What the real action of the drug is, and how to counteract its
influence, are at present puzzling questions to the medical
fraternity. A leading member of the profession to whom these
questions were put replied after careful consideration as
follows: 'Its physiological action is practically unknown. As an
analgesic, it is uniform in its action, and this is due to the
suspension of the physiological functions of the sensory cells
which it comes in contact with. Beyond this, it is an excitant
of the cerebro-spinal axis, later it has a peculiar action on
the encephalon, manifest in a wide range of psychical phenomena.
Beyond this a great variety of widely variable symptoms appear.
In some cases all the intellectual faculties are excited to the
highest degree. In others a profound lowering of the senses and
functional activities occur. Morphine-takers can use large
quantities of cocaine without any bad symptoms. Alcoholics are
also able to bear large doses. Not unfrequently the excitement
caused by cocaine goes on to convulsions, and death. Sometimes
its action is localized to one part of the cerebro-spinal axis,
and then to another. In some cases well-marked cerebral anæmia
appears, and for a time is alarming, but soon passes away.
"Small doses frequently given are more readily absorbed than
large doses. Habitues always use weak solutions, the effects
being more pleasing with less excitation. Morphine and alcoholic
inebriates very soon acquire certain tolerance to large doses
taken at once. The cocaine user takes large quantities, but in
small doses frequently repeated. He becomes frightened at the
effects of large doses, and when he cannot get the effects from
small (to him safe) doses, he resorts to alcohol, morphine, or
chloral. In many cases memories of the delusions and
hallucinations are so vivid and distressing that other narcotics
are used to prevent their recurrence. In other cases the
recollection is very confused and vague, and strong suspicions
fill the mind that the real condition is grossly exaggerated by
the friends for some deterring effect. In common with opium and
alcoholics, there is moral paralysis, untruthfulness, and low
cunning in order to conceal and explain the condition by other
than the real causes."
Hoffman Drops are used considerably as a heart stimulant. They are much
more intoxicating than whisky, and, used as a beverage, make the drinker
crazy while under their influence. According to Dr. F. E. Jones, of
Mass. Board of Health, they consist of 325 parts ether, 650 parts
alcohol, and 25 parts ether oil. They are said to have a very bad effect
upon the kidneys.
_The Banner of Gold_ for Oct., 1898, contained a lengthy article upon
the dangers of drugging, from which an extract is given here:--
"Philanthropists, when trying to stay the hand of rum, do not
overlook the victims of drugs. If you will go, under the
protecting ægis of an officer, to an opium den, such as are to
be found in every large city, and as a visitor view for yourself
the degradation of hopeless opium users, then train your
batteries towards removal of the cause. Do not depend upon
preaching, or the writing of essays, or the delivery of an
address before some society whose mission ends in telling others
what to do, but put on the armor of earnestness, go into the
nursery, and demand of the mother to know why, when little lumps
of human clay are placed in her keeping for the sacred purpose
of moulding them into men and women, she deliberately feeds the
prattling babe with soothing syrups, sleeping drops, paregoric,
and opiates in various other forms, rather than with the
healthful food, and simple remedies, that nature only requires.
With such commercial nostrums the thoughtless mother too often
paves the way for her offspring to a life of toxic-slavery by
creating a systemic condition, which, in maturer years, develops
an abnormal craving, or appetite, for narcotics and stimulants.
Follow this little victim of nursery malpractice through the
imitative age, and you will discover in him the cigarette
smoker, the tippler, the self-abased youth, and later, the man
whose life is shadowed with the curse of baneful appetite.
"Ask the druggist, and the saloon keeper, why they dispense
deadly poisons so freely to old and young, and they will tell
you the law permits it; a sad commentary!
"Converted men relapse into evil ways through coquetting with
sin; and cured inebriates relapse to drink, and drugs, through
the use of proprietary medicines, with which the domestic market
is flooded. Tonics, compounds, nerve remedies, bitters,
vitalizers, appetizers, balsams, pectorals and kindred nostrums
contain, with few exceptions, from 7 to 50 per cent. of alcohol,
or opium in varying quantities, each preponderating in kind, as
the effect is designed to be stimulating, or sedative. The
active principle of some of the best known catarrh remedies is
cocaine, and a few manufacturers are honest enough to so
announce on the labels covering their goods; more do not, and
leave the victims to discover the truth after they have paid the
penalty of ignorance, and developed the cocaine habit. Wholesale
legislation, as well as vigorous education, is needed along
these lines, and while considering means of betterment, the
reputable citizen, the clergyman, and others of good moral
repute, whose names are so generally used to herald the efficacy
of so-called remedial inventions, should not be overlooked for
ethical attention.
"For the information of those of our readers, who are not
familiar with the nature and use of toxic drugs, we here refer
briefly to the prominent characteristics of a few most
dangerously potent for evil, and seductive in kind.
OPIUM AND MORPHINE:--"Gum opium, the dried milky exudate from
the green capsules of the white poppy, and its
product--morphine--are the most reliable drugs known for the
relief of pain. The dose of gum opium in medicine is from 1/4 to
1 grain. It contains from 8 to 14 per cent. of morphine, which
is its principal alkaloid. Opium is a much more stable, and
stronger, sedative than morphine. The cumulative effect of
repeated medicinal doses is frequently observed, and is followed
by dangerous symptoms. It is both a sedative and hypnotic, and,
if given in large doses, quiets the brain, and excites the
spinal cord. Small doses have little perceptible effect upon the
circulation, but, under the influence of large doses, the pulse
is retarded, and the respiration becomes fuller, deeper, and
slower. In poisonous doses the pulse may become rapid, and great
depression follow, the respiratory centres are paralyzed, thus
causing death. If taken in from 2 to 4 grain doses it produces
deep comatose sleep, full breathing, full pulse, dry skin, and
contracted pupils. If the dose is sufficiently large, the sleep
will be more profound, the patient can hardly be roused, and if
awakened quickly, he sinks back into slumber. The face may be
swollen, and reddened, and the lips deeply tinged with blue. At
this stage the breathing may be characterized as puffing.
Respiration may be from 8 to 10 per minute, perhaps be reduced
to 4, 2 or 1, and as the toxic effect is more marked, it becomes
shallow, the pupils are contracted, and the patient is so
thoroughly narcotized that nothing will arouse him, the heart
ceases to beat, and he dies by respiratory failure, or paralysis
of the pneumogastric nerve.
"Morphine, extracted from gum opium by a slow and expensive
process, is used much less in proprietary medicines than is
tincture of opium, which is more easily manufactured.
"A medicinal dose of sulphate of morphine is from 1/8 to 1/4 of
a grain. One grain is a dangerous dose, and 2 grains are liable
to prove fatal. Morphine is a true narcotic. It is a sedative,
lessens tissue change, and weakens every function of the body.
TINCTURE OF OPIUM, OR LAUDANUM:--"Laudanum, or the tincture of
opium, is a mixture of gum opium with alcohol and water, the
solution consisting of equal parts of alcohol and water. Each
ounce contains 5-1/2 grains of powdered gum opium and half an
ounce of alcohol, and is equal in alcoholic strength to one
ounce of strong whisky. The ordinary medical dose is from 12 to
15 minims, or from 25 to 30 drops. It is much used as a domestic
remedy for pain from any cause, such as ear or toothache,
indigestion, insomnia, summer complaints with children or
adults, and is often used in poultices over painful sores or
swellings. It is also used in many medicines for throat and lung
troubles, in nearly all medicines for painful chronic diseases,
and in many of the well advertised spring tonics, as well as in
nearly all the compounds that are offered for sale for blood
troubles, or as alteratives. The opium in laudanum acts the same
as morphine, or any other of the thirty preparations of opium,
officially recognized by the medical profession.
PAREGORIC:--"Paregoric of standard grade is half alcohol, which
is as strong of alcohol as high proof whisky. It contains a
little opium, some benzoic acid, oil of anise, and camphor. The
dose is from 15 to 60 drops.
COCAINE:--"Cocaine is an alkaloid of coca leaves, and is used in
medicine in the form of hydro-chlorate. It is used locally in
powder or solution to relieve pain. It is a strong local
anæsthetic. The ordinary dose when used as medicine is from 1/4
to 1/2 grain, and is very unstable and treacherous in its
effects. Some patients will tolerate large doses while in others
small doses produce unpleasant effects. Deaths are recorded from
the use of 1-7 to 1 grain.
CHLOROFORM:--"Chloroform is an anæsthetic, and death is often
caused by a few inhalations. The dose internally is from 3 to 20
minims. It is not much used in medicine, except to control pain,
and produce sleep. It is inhaled to produce mild slumber, or
complete insensibility in surgical operations. Death may come
suddenly, and without warning, at any time during its
administration.
CHLORAL:--"Chloral, or hydrate of chloral, is an hypnotic. It is
of but little value in medicine, except to control nervousness,
and produce sleep. The dose is from 15 to 30 grains. It should
be administered with caution, and only by the physician. It is
made by passing chlorine gas through pure alcohol, and gets its
name from the first syllables of the two words, chlorine and
alcohol. It produces death by inhibition of the heart's action,
and by paralyzing the pneumogastric nerve.
BROMIDIA:--"Bromidia is the trademark of an hypnotic, the
manufacturers of which give out to the public that each fluid
drachm contains 15 grains of chloral hydrate, or 1 ounce to
every 4 ounces of bromidia.
SULPHONAL:--"Sulphonal is a coal tar preparation, and is
valuable in medicine as an hypnotic only. An ordinary dose to
produce sleep is from 10 to 40 grains. If it is given in these
doses for several days in succession it produces great
weariness, an unsteady gait, and may involve paralysis of the
lower limbs, with great disturbance of digestion, and scanty
secretion of urine of about the color of port wine. There are a
number of cases of death reported as resulting from acute, or
chronic poisoning, by sulphonal.
PHENACETINE:--"Phenacetine is a product of coal tar, and an
antipyretic, a drug that lessens the temperature in high fevers,
and rapidly disintegrates the blood.
ANTIFEBRIN:--"Antifebrin, another of the coal tar preparations,
is the registered name for acetanelid. Its effects are very
similar to the effects of phenacetine, and it is used in fevers
for lessening the temperature, and for neuralgic pains. The
medicinal dose is from 3 to 10 grains. Unpleasant effects follow
its continued use, such as great exhaustion, blueness of the
lips, and a slow, labored pulse.
HEADACHE REMEDIES:--"The indiscriminate use of the many coal tar
products and other hypnotics, such as sulphonal, phenacetine,
antifebrin, chloral, bromidia, etc., under the guise of headache
remedies is productive of much disaster, all being nerve
paralyzants."
The public owe a debt of gratitude to those physicians, and chemists,
who give freely such valuable information as to the real nature and
effects of dangerous drugs. While it is true that the popular belief in
drugging is due to professional practice, yet it is also true that what
the people know of the preservation of health, and of the danger of
alcohol and other drugs is largely owing to the medical profession.
There is as much difference among the members of the medical profession
as there is among the members of any profession; some are careless,
selfish, unprincipled, unobservant of the effects of various medicines;
while others are anxious to teach the people how to avoid sickness, and
gain strength. It is the latter class who warn against the self
prescription of drugs, especially those of the dangerously seductive,
narcotic class.
Yet, with all the warnings, few pay heed. Even highly educated,
intelligent people seem possessed of a blind faith in the power of
drugs. Every little ache or pain must have its sedative, be the future
penalty what it may.
Were people to quit drugging themselves, avoid indigestible viands, eat
at regular hours, chew well, stop eating when they have had enough, take
a sufficiency of exercise, sleep and fresh air, with a hot bath once a
week, and a cold "towel bath" each morning, laying aside all alcoholic
beverages, tea and coffee, and tobacco, there would be very little
sickness in the world. Over-eating leads to the drug habit for relief
from uneasy sensations, so does improper food, or poorly cooked food.
It should be remembered that it is not possible to violate the laws
which relate to the physical well-being, and then escape the natural
penalty of transgression by swallowing a few doses of medicine. Remedies
may postpone the results of physical transgression, and may even seem to
prevent them altogether, but careful observation will show that the
escape from punishment is only apparent. Sometimes a parent escapes,
while his child pays the penalty of his transgression, in a weakly
nervous system, which may lead to insanity, or other trouble.
CHAPTER XV.
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 anæsthetic 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, pyæmia, septicæmia, 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 anæsthetics 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, Schöneseiffen 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 anæsthetic 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
Möbius, 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 anæmic 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 £8. 3s. 6d., amongst 2,496 patients, while the
cost of the same number at the average of the twelve hospitals
was £124. 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 habitués, 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 anæsthetic, is rapidly falling into disfavor, and
will soon be put aside and forgotten."
CHAPTER XVI.
RECENT RESEARCHES UPON ALCOHOL.
In the year 1900 Prof. Taav Laitinen, of the University of Helsingfors,
Finland, published an account of experiments made upon 342
animals--dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, fowls and pigeons--to determine the
effects of alcohol upon the resistance of the body to infectious
diseases. He used as infecting agents, anthrax bacilli, tubercle
bacilli, and diphtheria bacilli. The doses of alcohol given varied with
the animal. For his "small dose" experiments he used the quantity of
alcohol given as a food or as a medicine, or both, in a neighboring
sanitorium. The alcohol employed was, as a rule, a 25 per cent. solution
of ethyl alcohol in water. It was given either by esophageal catheter,
or by dropping it into the mouth from a pipette. It was administered in
several ways, and for varying times; sometimes in single large doses, at
others in gradually increasing doses for months at a time, in order to
produce here an acute, and there a chronic poisoning; in fact, he
produced the conditions consequent upon steady, moderate drinking.
His first conclusion from these experiments, most carefully carried out,
is that alcohol, however given, induces in the animal body a markedly
increased susceptibility to infectious diseases; and he maintains that
his experiments indicate that the use of alcohol, at least in the
treatment of anthrax, tuberculosis, and diphtheria, is not only useless
but probably injurious. From a number of other experiments carried out
with scrupulous care he comes to the same conclusion as Abbott, Welch,
and others that the predisposing to disease of alcohol must be explained
by its action in producing abnormal conditions--pathological changes in
the alimentary canal, liver, kidneys, heart, and nervous system. He
found that the alkalinity of the blood was slightly diminished, and the
number of leucocytes somewhat decreased. He also draws attention to the
fact that his experiments prove that pregnant animals and their
offspring are markedly affected by the continued use of small doses of
alcohol. He shows, too, that the temporary lowering of the body
temperature by alcohol produces the most favorable condition for the
invasion of disease germs.
Since the publication of these experiments, and of others similar to
them, the use of alcohol in diphtheria and tuberculosis has very largely
ceased. Boards of health and charity organizations unite in warning
against indulgence in alcoholic drinks as conducive to tuberculosis.
At the International Congress on Alcoholism, held in London in July,
1909, Professor Laitinen delivered two lectures. The first was upon "The
Influence of Alcohol on Immunity." The following is taken from this
lecture:--
"Modern researches have done much to explain the extent and
nature of the protective powers by which the organism endeavors
to defend itself against the attacks of all kinds of injurious
agencies, and especially against invasion by the germs of
infective diseases. It is now a well-established fact that
alcohol weakens the normal resisting power of the body against
the above-named disease-producing influences. In the hope of
contributing something to the explanation of the way in which
alcohol weakens the organism, I have made a number of
experiments bearing upon the question of the influence of
alcohol on immunity.
"Early in this century careful experiments went to show that
alcohol certainly had some influence upon immunity. Two
Americans, Abbott and Bergey, were the first to discover that
this agent produces a diminution of the hæmolytic complement in
the blood-serum of certain animals which were tested. They
showed also that the formation of specific hæmolytic receptors
(immune bodies) may be retarded by the action of alcohol.
"The extent of the evil effects upon the human body resulting
from the consumption of alcoholic liquors is as yet far from
being fully known, and stands in need of scientific
verification. Many other injurious influences such as unsanitary
dwellings, bad feeding, excessive toil, and toxic agents like
nicotine, etc., may produce somewhat similar morbid effects. It
is therefore necessary, in the scientific study of the question,
to take these possibilities into consideration. In my
investigations, the results of which I am now to lay before you,
I have endeavored to select as subjects for my experiments both
abstainers from alcohol, and those who indulge more or less in
its use, in such a way that their conditions of life and their
habits in other respects should be as nearly as possible the
same. All persons, for instance, suffering from any acute or
chronic disease were rejected, and very few of the persons
selected were smokers. The subject of this research has been
human blood, and especially its two principal components,
namely, red blood-corpuscles and blood-serum, both of which up
to the present time have been very little studied in relation to
the question under discussion. I have gone into these matters
chiefly because the modern theoretical study of immunity during
the last few years has, in general, attracted greater attention
to the blood, and shown the important role which the different
parts, properties, and capacities of the blood play in defending
the organism against internal and external injurious agencies.
Further, the subtle methods employed in the study of immunity
(such as organic reactions, and reactions between greatly
attenuated organic liquids) would also seem to be available for
our purpose, as they allow of the detection of the minutest
differences which alcohol may produce in any part of the
organism in question.
"During the course of this research, which has lasted over a
period of three years, I sought to investigate the action of
alcohol on the resistive power of human red blood-corpuscles. I
wished to ascertain whether the resistivity of the red
blood-corpuscles in a healthy man could be lowered by the
consumption of alcohol. * * *
"It may be well for me here to explain that in this lecture I
mean by the term 'drinker' a person who has taken alcohol in any
quantity whatever. Many of these 'drinkers,' therefore, were in
fact most moderate consumers of alcohol. By the term 'abstainer'
I mean a person who has never taken alcohol in any quantity
worth mentioning. In the course of my investigations I have
examined blood from two hundred and twenty-three persons. They
were of different classes and ages. There were professors of
medicine and other physicians, University fellows, students of
both sexes, hospital nurses, school-teachers, waiters, and other
men and women belonging to the working-classes."
The rest of the lecture as given here is an abstract made by Professor
Laitinen:--
"My studies have been directed to an investigation of the
following points:
"1. I sought to ascertain whether the resistance of human red
blood-corpuscles against a heterogeneous normal serum, or an
immune serum, can be diminished by the use of alcohol.
"2. I have studied the action of alcohol in drinking and
abstaining persons on the hæmolytic power of blood-serum over
heterogeneous red blood-corpuscles (rabbits). I have studied not
only the hæmolytic power of the human blood-serum, but also its
power of precipitation in the presence of rabbit-serum, with a
view to ascertain if the reaction between a known dilution of
rabbit-serum and a certain dilution of serum of alcohol-users
and non-drinking persons is different or not, and if the
reaction is more apparent with the former or with the latter.
"3. The resisting power of serum obtained both from
alcohol-drinking and from non-drinking persons was further
tested by human blood, with the object of discovering whether
any difference in reaction existed between the same immune serum
and the two kinds of human sera above mentioned.
"4. I have studied the problem as to whether the hæmolytic
complement in the blood-serum of alcohol-drinking and
non-drinking persons is altered in any way by alcohol.
"5. The bactericidal power of blood-serum from both
alcohol-drinking and non-drinking persons was determined by some
experiments.
"The above experiments have given the following results:
"1. The normal resistance of human red blood-corpuscles appears
to be somewhat diminished against a heterogeneous normal serum
or an immune serum by the consumption of alcohol, provided that
tolerably large equal, or nearly equal, numbers of drinkers and
abstainers of both sexes be examined, and the average of
resistance be taken on both sides: this last-named precaution
being necessary because the resistance of red blood-corpuscles
from different human beings varies largely. The difference is
often greater when using weaker solutions than when using
stronger dilutions of lysin.
"2. These experiments have shown the normal hæmolytic power of
human blood-serum to be less in the case of alcohol-drinkers
than in that of abstainers.
"3. The precipitating reaction between a solution of 1 per cent.
human blood-serum and different dilutions of immune serum was
greater in the case of drinkers than in that of abstainers.
"4. These experiments have also shown that the bactericidal
power of blood-serum against typhoid bacteria was less in the
case of drinkers than in that of abstainers.
"It seems clear, therefore, that alcohol, even in comparatively
small doses, exercises a prejudicial effect on the protective
mechanism of the human body."
The lecturer made his points clear by a carefully prepared series of
charts. At its close Sir Victor Horsley, Professor Sims Woodhead, A.
Pearce Gould, and several other distinguished physicians spoke in high
terms of the painstaking care exhibited in the experiments.
Professor Laitinen's second lecture was upon "The Influence of Alcohol
Upon Human Offspring." He sent out 15,000 circulars to his countrymen,
asking many questions relative to themselves and their infant children,
and received 5,845 replies relative to 20,008 children. He also studied
personally a large number of drinking and abstaining families. From
these studies he shows by careful tables that the drinking of alcohol by
parents, even in small quantities, has an injurious influence upon human
offspring. His studies in former years showed the same unfavorable
influence upon the offspring of animals. One of his tables gives
percentages of deaths of children in the homes of abstaining parents,
moderate drinkers, and harder drinkers. Children of abstainers dying in
the first year, 13.45 per cent.; of moderates, 23.17 per cent.; of
harder drinkers, 32.02 per cent. Other tables show that abstainers'
children gain in weight more steadily in the first year than drinkers'
children, and have their teeth earlier, as a rule.
At the International Medical Congress of 1909, held in Budapest,
Professor Laitinen lectured again upon his researches, and summarized
his conclusions thus:--
"1. The importance of alcohol as an article of food is rendered
very questionable by recent researches. 2. These researches
prove that alcohol diminishes the natural power of the tissues
to resist injury, promotes degeneration, and has a disastrous
effect on future generations. 3. The questions of relation of
alcoholic liquor to crime and of the manufacture and sale of
such beverages deserve the serious consideration of the
legislature. 4. It is the duty of medical men to direct more
attention than formerly to the alcohol question, and by careful
study to decide whether recent researches are justified or not
in regarding alcohol and alcoholic beverages as a poison and one
of the principal causes of degeneration in the human family;
they ought also to consider whether it would not be advisable in
medical practice, and especially in hospitals, either to banish
it altogether or at least to prescribe it with the same care as
other poisonous drugs. In this matter the attitude taken by
medical men as representatives of public hygiene was of quite
exceptional importance."
Metchnikoff, the illustrious Russian scientist, who has for some years
been connected with the Pasteur Institute in Paris, was the discoverer
of the work assigned by nature to the white corpuscles of the blood.
These blood-cells are the "guardian-cells" of the body, and their duty
is to destroy disease germs which may gain an entrance. They actually
devour disease germs. Metchnikoff has been studying the effect of
alcohol upon these protective cells, and he asserts that alcohol, even
in small doses, has a harmful action on these agents of defence against
disease. Alcohol seems to paralyze them more or less so that they are
unable to do their full duty in destroying the infective microbes. Thus
disease germs can multiply more rapidly when alcohol is in the blood. In
his book called "The New Hygiene," Metchnikoff suggests that the
administration of alcoholic liquors in infectious disease appears to be
attended with danger to the patient.
The researches of Kraepelin, Ach, Aschaffenberg and other German
scientists have become so well known through the articles by Henry Smith
Williams in _McClure's Magazine_ that only brief reference need be made
to them here. Kraepelin used very small doses of alcohol for some of his
experiments. He found that after 1/4 to 1/2 ounce of alcohol had been
taken the time occupied in making response to a signal was slightly
shortened, but in a few minutes, in most cases, this quickening action
passed and a slowing process began, and continued until the body was
free from the influence of the alcohol, which was sometimes four or five
hours.
The ability to add figures was tested, and this decreased very rapidly
under minute doses of alcohol. Memory tests showed that only 60 figures
could be remembered from numbers written in columns after alcohol had
been taken, while 100 figures could be remembered correctly when the
mind was free from the alcoholic influence. Type-setters were tested,
and the average number of errors they made and the amount of work they
did in a given time was carefully recorded. After a small dose of
alcohol none of the men could in the same time do as much work, or as
accurate work. Yet every one of the men experimented upon thought he was
doing better work after his drink. This proves the narcotic effect of
alcohol.
The economic loss to a people from beer and wine drinking is worthy of
serious consideration since a bottle of wine or its equivalent in beer
could diminish by ten to fifteen per cent. the amount of work done by
these type-setters experimented upon by Professor Aschaffenberg.
Professor Kraepelin says:--
"I must admit that my experiments, extending over more than ten
years, have made me an opponent of alcohol."
He says again:--
"The laborer who wins his livelihood by the working power of his
arm strikes at the very foundation of his power by the use of
alcohol."
Professor Aschaffenberg says of moderate doses:--
"Any quantity of alcohol must be regarded as considerable which
causes a disturbance, even if only transitory, of bodily and
mental efficiency."
Dr. Reid Hunt, chief of the Division of Pharmacology, Hygienic
Laboratory, United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Service,
made some very interesting experiments to determine the physiological
changes upon animals which would result from the strictly moderate use
of alcohol. These are described in Bulletin No. 33 of the Hygienic
Laboratory, published in 1907. Mice and guinea-pigs were used. The food,
usually oats, was soaked in diluted alcohol, at first of five per cent.
strength, then gradually increased to forty or fifty per cent. By
carefully observing the weight of the mice, and not increasing the
strength of the alcohol too rapidly, it was possible to keep the animals
for months on this diet without any material loss of weight. After the
lapse of weeks, in some cases, and months in other cases, these alcohol
fed animals were given small doses of a poison known as acetonitrile.
Other mice to whom no alcohol was fed were given similar doses of this
poison. In the first series the mice which had received alcohol died
from about one-half the quantity of acetonitrile required to kill those
which had not received alcohol. In the second series with a somewhat
stronger dilution the alcohol mice succumbed to one-half to one-third
the dose necessary to kill the non-alcoholized animals. In no case was
enough alcohol given for any symptoms of intoxication to appear, nor was
there any outward indication of any injury being done by the alcohol. In
another experiment a mouse was kept for four months on a diet of oats
soaked in water, then 0.5 milligram of acetonitrile per gram body weight
was injected. The mouse recovered. It was then fed on oats soaked in an
alcoholic solution which was gradually increased to 45 per cent. After a
little more than a month of this diet 0.2 milligram acetonitrile per
gram body weight proved fatal. The weight of the mouse had remained
about the same throughout.
Alcohol increased the susceptibility of the guinea pigs also.
Dr. Hunt says on page 33 of the bulletin:--
"These experiments with alcohol and acetonitrile are of interest
in another connection. The greatest advance in recent years in
our knowledge of the physiological action of alcohol has been
the clear demonstration that alcohol is oxidized in the body,
and may replace fats and carbohydrates and to a certain extent,
the proteids of an ordinary diet. So clear has been this
demonstration that the view that alcohol, in moderate amounts,
should be regarded as a food is almost universally accepted by
physiologists, and the drift of opinion is certainly toward the
view that it is in all respects strictly analogous to sugar and
fats, provided always that the amount used does not exceed that
easily oxidized by the body. Under these premises it would be
expected that alcohol in a diet would have the same effect upon
an animal's susceptibility to acetonitrile as has dextrose, for
example. This is by no means the case, however; on the contrary,
the action of these substances in this regard is entirely
different. Mice fed upon oats soaked in a solution of dextrose
or upon cakes containing considerable dextrose, or upon rice,
show a very distinct increase in their resistance to
acetonitrile; such mice may recover from two or three times the
dose fatal to controls. (Controls are the animals fed in the
ordinary way without alcohol or in this case dextrose.--Ed.)
While these facts are not sufficient to justify the conclusion
that in many cases alcohol has not a true food value, yet they
are sufficient to indicate caution in applying, without further
consideration, the brilliant and very exact results on the
proteid sparing power of alcohol to practical dietaries."
Various other experiments were made, but there is not room here for a
record of them.
In the summary Dr. Hunt says:--
"It is believed that these experiments afford clear experimental
evidence for the view that extremely moderate amounts of alcohol
may cause distinct changes in certain physiological functions,
and that these changes may, under certain circumstances, be
injurious to the body. The results also afford further evidence
that in some respects the action of alcohol as a food is
different from that of carbohydrates, and finally that in all
probability certain physiological processes in 'moderate
drinkers' are distinctly different from those in abstainers."
Professor Chittenden, of Yale University, has made extensive researches
upon alcohol and digestion. A full report of these may be found in the
"Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem." In the _Medical News_,
vol. 86, page 721, Professor Chittenden says of the theory that alcohol
is a food similar to sugar and fats:--
"It is, I think, quite plain that while alcohol in moderate
amounts can be burned in the body, thus serving as food in the
sense that it may be a source of energy, it is quite misleading
to attempt a classification or even comparison of alcohol with
carbohydrates and fats, since, unlike the latter, alcohol has a
most disturbing effect upon the metabolism or oxidation of the
purin compounds of our daily food. Alcohol, therefore, presents
a dangerous side wholly wanting in carbohydrates and fats. The
latter are simply burned up to carbonic acid and water, or are
transformed into glycogen and fat, but alcohol, though more
easily oxidizable, is at all times liable to obstruct, in some
measure at least, the oxidative processes of the liver, and
probably of other tissues also, thereby throwing into the
circulation bodies such as uric acid, which are inimical to
health; a fact which at once tends to draw a distinct line of
demarcation between alcohol and the two non-nitrogeneous
foods--fat and carbohydrate."
Dr. S. P. Beebe, now of the Cornell Medical College Laboratory, New York
City, has made some very valuable experiments with alcohol. It is well
known that impairment of the functions of certain organs results in the
appearance in the urine of nitrogeneous compounds which do not normally
occur there. In certain diseases of the liver the same quantity of
nitrogen may be excreted as in health, but a portion of it is in the
form of acids never found in the urine during health. Dr. Beebe, with
this knowledge in mind, sought to discover the effects of alcohol upon
the excretion of uric acid in man. Most of the experiments were made on
the same person, a young man in good health, of regular habits,
unaccustomed to the use of alcohol in any form. Absolute alcohol,
diluted with water, whisky, ale, and port wine were used at different
times. Dr. Beebe reported his experiments in the _American Journal of
Physiology_, vol. 12, No. 1. His conclusions are given as follows:--
"After a consideration of these experiments, it hardly seems
possible to doubt that alcohol, even in what is considered by
the most conservative as a moderate amount, causes an increase
in the excretion of uric acid, and this effect is seen almost
immediately after taking the alcohol. The following points
indicate that the effect is due to a toxic effect on the liver,
thereby interfering with the oxidation of the uric acid derived
from its precursors in the food: Alcohol taken without food
causes no increase. The maximum increase occurs at the same time
after a meal as it does when purin food but no alcohol is taken.
Alcohol is rapidly absorbed and passes at once to the liver, the
organ which has most to do with the metabolism of proteid
cleavage products.
"There is no evidence that the alcohol has merely hastened the
excretion of urates normally present in the blood; the increased
excretion means that a larger quantity has been in circulation,
and although it is classed by Van Noorden among the substances
easily excreted, still most physiologists would consider the
presence in the blood of this larger quantity as undesirable.
Certainly in pathological conditions it might be harmful.
"If we accept the origin of the increased quantity of uric acid
to be in the impaired oxidative powers of the liver, the results
of these experiments will have greater significance than can be
attributed to uric acid alone. For the impaired function would
affect other processes which are normally accomplished by that
organ, and the possibilities for entrance into the general
circulation of toxic substances, of intestinal putrefaction, for
instance, would be increased. The liver performs a large number
of oxidations and syntheses designed to keep toxic substances
from reaching the body tissues, and if alcohol, in the moderate
quantity which caused the increase in uric acid excretion,
impairs its power in this respect, the prevalent ideas regarding
the harmlessness of moderate drinking need revision."
Dr. Winfield S. Hall, professor of physiology at the Northwestern
University Medical School, Chicago, has interpreted these researches of
Beebe and Hunt in a very striking way. He says that they prove that the
oxidation of alcohol in the body is a protective oxidation, the same as
the oxidation of any other poisonous substance by the liver. His views
have such an important bearing upon the commonly accepted theory that
alcohol is in some sense a food that they are given here, somewhat
abbreviated, as a fitting finish to this chapter. Dr. Hall says:--
"The fact that alcohol is oxidized in the body has been
generally misunderstood. The first impression naturally was:
'Foods are Oxidized; Alcohol is Oxidized; therefore alcohol is
a food.' But many difficulties appeared. A real food promotes
muscular, glandular and nerve activity, and its oxidation
maintains body temperature. But alcohol disturbs muscular,
glandular, and nervous activity, and its oxidation does not
maintain body temperature. When one eats a real food it is
assimilated largely by muscle tissue and is oxidized for the
purpose of liberating the life energy. When one ingests alcohol
it is carried by the blood to the tissues, mostly to the liver,
where it is oxidized, as any toxine would be, for the purpose of
making it harmless. Its oxidation liberates heat energy but this
energy cannot be utilized by the body even for the maintenance
of body temperature. If a food is defined as a substance which,
taken into the body, is assimilated and used either to build or
repair body structure, or to be oxidized in the tissues to
liberate the energy used by the tissue in its normal activity,
then alcohol is not a real food.
"But, if alcohol is not a real food, what is the significance of
its oxidation? It has been long known that the liver produces
oxidases and that it is the site of active oxidation of
mid-products of katabolism of toxins and of other toxic
substances. Alcohol, usually formed as an excretion of the yeast
plant, is also found as a mid-product of tissue katabolism. On a
priori grounds we should expect alcohol to be oxidized in the
liver along with leucin, tyrosin, uric acid, xanthin bodies, and
various amido bodies. There have recently appeared two most
important papers based upon extended researches upon man and
lower animals. These researches practically clear up this knotty
question."
Dr. Hall then reviews the work of Dr. Reid Hunt and Dr. S. P. Beebe, and
continues:--
"The value of this work can hardly be over-estimated. In the
first place the rapid oxidation of the alcohol in the liver is
explained. _Alcohol itself being one of the toxic substances
which reach the liver from the alimentary canal is at once
attacked by the liver, and if the oncoming tide of alcohol is
not too great it will practically all be oxidized._
"But the liver oxidation of other toxic substances is impaired
in the meantime so that they get past the liver to the tissues,
where they may do injury. Some of these toxins are excreted
unoxidized by the kidneys. There are three ways of accounting
for this condition: (1.) The oxidation capacity of the liver is
limited. The physiological limit of alcohol ingestion is that
amount which taxes the oxidation capacity of the liver to its
limit. When thus taxed all other toxic substances including uric
acid and the xanthin bodies pass through the liver unoxidized to
appear in the urine. (2.) The presence of alcohol in the blood,
through its toxic action upon the liver cells, impairs the
hepatic oxidation capacity and thus permits toxic substances to
pass unoxidized. (3.) A combination of these conditions may
represent the real situation. It is hardly conceivable that the
relation of alcohol to the liver activity is not covered in the
hypotheses above formulated.
"We may therefore accept it as practically demonstrated by the
researches of Beebe, Hunt, and others that the oxidation of
alcohol in the liver is simply one of the defensive activities
of that organ, _i. e._, it is a protective oxidation and belongs
strictly in the same category with the oxidation of uric acid,
xanthin bodies, leucin, tyrosins, and the amido acids.
"The next question which arises is, why does the liver select
alcohol first and oxidize that substance to the exclusion of
other toxic substances up to the oxidation capacity? The answer
is probably to be found in the chemical composition of alcohol.
"It oxidizes very easily, much more so than any of the other
toxic substances which gain access to the liver. Its early
oxidation may be due to this fact alone, or in part to an actual
selection on the part of the liver. Another question of
importance: Is the energy liberated in the oxidation of alcohol
in the liver available for the use of the muscles, nervous
system, or glands?
"If this question is answered affirmatively, then alcohol is a
food. If negatively then alcohol is not a food. Let us reason
together. All body oxidations may be classified in two groups:
(1.) _Active oxidations_ which take place in the active
tissues--muscles, nervous system, or glands--and take place
incident to action. It is under the perfect control of the
nervous system and is proportional to normal activity. (2.)
_Protective oxidations_ which take place in the liver. This
class of oxidation processes is wholly independent of the usual
tissue activity and is proportional to the ingestion of toxic
substances and quite independent of muscle action, brain action,
or gland action, other than liver action.
"If the oxidation of alcohol in the liver belongs to class 1,
the following consequences should be found: (1.) The ingestion
of alcohol would lead to an increase in muscular power and in
the working capacity of the brain or glands. (2.) The ingestion
of alcohol would serve to maintain body temperature in the
healthy individual subjected to low external temperature. (3.)
The accession of muscle, brain, or gland activity would be
proportional to the amount of alcohol ingested, but laboratory
observations and general experience show that none of these
things are true; _i. e._, the ingestion of alcohol decreases
muscle, brain, and gland work, and depresses body temperature
when external temperature is low.
"In the nature of the case there can be no proportional
relation. The oxidation of alcohol does not therefore belong to
class 1. If the oxidation of alcohol in the liver belongs to
class 2, the following consequences would be found: (1.) The
ingestion of alcohol would be followed by its early oxidation in
the organs in question. (2.) If the oxidation capacity of the
liver is limited this capacity may be overloaded by exceeding
the physiological limit of alcohol. (3.) If the oxidation
capacity of the liver is taxed nearly to its limit in the
oxidation of uric acid, xanthins, and other toxic substances,
the introduction of alcohol may seriously interfere with this
protective oxidation by overtaxing the capacity. (4.) If the
oxidation capacity is overtaxed, an excess of uric acid,
xanthin bodies, and other toxic substances will get by this
portal and reach the active tissues or the kidneys. Now all of
these things take place, so we are forced to the conclusion that
the oxidation of alcohol is a protective oxidation. In the light
of this presentation the significance of Dr. Hunt's work becomes
very clear. The alcohol given to the animals taxed the oxidation
capacity of the liver to the limit and left the organism
defenseless against bacterial or other toxic substances."
CHAPTER XVII.
MISCELLANEOUS.
ALCOHOL BATHS:--The action of alcohol upon the surface of the body is
that of a refrigerant. Alcohol baths for debility, weakness, and states
of exhaustion are opposed by non-alcoholic physicians. The old custom of
bathing a new-born babe with whisky was simply a superstition, and a
dangerous one, because the infant should not have a refrigerant applied
to its body so soon after leaving the warm nest where it had been
sheltered so long. Warm water is the proper liquid for a baby's bath
until it becomes hardy. There is nothing of strength imparted by an
alcohol rub; the 'rub' is good, but vinegar, or water, or olive oil can
be used according to what is desired. Alcohol is not necessary
internally nor externally. Its proper use is for mechanical purposes and
to give light and heat.
WILHELMINA LEMONADE:--Take four or five rough-skinned oranges (according
to size) and two pounds of sugar, in big lumps. After having cleaned the
oranges, rub the sugar with them, till the oranges are quite white--the
sugar yellow. Place the sugar in a big earthernware pan or jar, and add
three pints of _cold_ water. Then cover it up and let it stand two days,
stirring it occasionally to help the melting. Now take two ounces of
citric acid, dissolved in a little boiling water, and add it to the
syrup, stirring the whole. Then strain the whole through a fine sieve,
covered with muslin, so that it becomes perfectly clear. In well-corked
bottles it will keep for more than a year. Mix one-third of the lemonade
with two-thirds water. [Instead of the oranges five or six lemons may be
used.]
BEVERAGES FOR THE SICK:--Unfermented Grapejuice. Hot milk. Egg cream,
made as follows: Beat the white and yolk separately, add milk and sugar,
and stir well, flavor to suit taste. Egg lemonade--beat yolk and sugar
thoroughly, add lemon and water, shake well, then add white, beaten
stiff. Barley water, made by boiling pearl barley five or six hours, and
straining the water from it; add milk or cream if wished. These are used
in the National Temperance Hospital of Chicago.
BATHS:--"If all people understood the value of water to cool,
cleanse, invigorate and sustain life, and how to use it, _and
would use it_, one-half of all the afflictions from disease
would be removed; and the other half might be banished if all
the people understood how and what to eat, how to breathe, and
the necessity of daily vigorous exercise. A daily towel bath
will do more to counteract disease, and restore the body to its
normal health condition, than any other method or remedy yet
discovered. After the bath, the body should be thoroughly rubbed
with a crash or Turkish towel. Rub until a warm glow is
produced. This bath is a fine tonic if taken upon rising in the
morning."
HOT WATER AS A MEDICINE:--"One is never," says a physician, "far
from a pretty good medicine chest with hot water at hand. It is
a most useful assistant to the mother of a family of small
children, who is frightened often to find herself confronted by
a sudden illness of one of her flock, without her usual
dependence--the family doctor. If the baby has croup, fold a
strip of flannel or a soft napkin lengthwise, dip into very hot
water, and apply to the child's throat. Repeat and continue the
application till relief is had, which will be almost at once.
For toothache, or colic, or a threatened lung congestion, the
hot-water treatment will be found promptly efficacious if
resorted to. Nature needs only a little assistance at the first
sign of trouble to rally quickly in the average healthy child,
and often hot water is all that is wanted."
ALCOHOL INJURIOUS TO THE INSANE:--Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, whose
valuable paper on "The Evolution of the Mind" appeared in the December
number of the _Journal of Hygiene_, in a recent report of the Asylum for
the Insane in London, Canada, makes the following statement concerning
the use of alcohol in the institution over which he presides:--
"As we have given up the use of alcohol, we have needed and used
less opium and chloral; and as we have discontinued the use of
alcohol, opium and chloral, we have needed and used less
seclusion and restraint. I have, during the year just closed,
carefully watched the effect of the alcohol given, and the
progress of cases where, in former years, it would have been
given, and I am morally certain that the alcohol used during the
past year did no good. With humiliation I am forced to admit
that in the recent past my noble profession has been to an
alarming extent, and is still too much so, guilty of producing
many drunkards in the land, directly or indirectly, by the
reckless and wholesale manner in which so many of its members
have prescribed alcoholic stimulants in their daily practice for
all the aches and pains, coughs and colds, inflammations and
consumptions, fevers and chills, at the hour of birth and at the
time of death, and all intermediate points of life, to induce
sleep and to promote wakefulness, and for all real or imaginary
ills."
TOBACCO AND THE EYESIGHT:--"Prof. Craddock says that tobacco has
a bad effect upon the sight, and a distinct disease of the eye
is attributed to its immoderate use. Many cases in which
complete loss of sight has occurred, and which were formerly
regarded as hopeless, are now known to be curable by making the
patient abstain from tobacco. These patients almost invariably
at first have color blindness, taking red to be brown or black,
and green to be light blue or orange. In nearly every case, the
pupils are much contracted, in some cases to such an extent that
the patient is unable to move about without assistance. One such
man admitted that he had usually smoked from twenty to thirty
cigars a day. He consented to give up smoking altogether, and
his sight was fully restored in three and a half months. It has
been found that chewing is much worse than smoking in its
effects upon the eyesight, probably for the simple reason that
more of the poison is thereby absorbed. The condition found in
the eye in the early stages is that of extreme congestion only;
but this, unless remedied at once, leads to gradually increasing
disease of the optic nerve, and then, of course, blindness is
absolute and beyond remedy. It is, therefore, evident that, to
be of any value, the treatment of disease of the eye due to
excessive smoking must be immediate, or it will probably be
useless."--_Journal of Inebriety._
"Dr. Isaac Fellows was for many years a prominent physician in
Los Angeles. A temperance man, he was persuaded by an old
physician whom he loved to try for a year substituting alcohol
in drop doses in water for such patients as demanded alcoholic
stimulants. He was delighted with the result. When his patients
found they could not have wine, beer or brandy under the guise
of medicine, but must take it in drop doses in water, as they
did their other medicines, they speedily learned to do without
'a stimulant.'"--_Pacific Ensign._
ADVERTISED "CURES" FOR DRUNKENNESS.
"_Poudre Coza_, an English product, is sold at $3.00 for thirty
powders. On analysis these powders were found to contain an
impure form of sodium bicarbonate, together with a little
aromatic vegetable matter. Gloria Tonic was examined by the
Massachusetts Board of Health, and found to consist of sugar of
milk and cornstarch, with a small quantity of ground leaves
resembling those of senna. White Ribbon Remedy was found to be
made of milk sugar and ammonium chloride. Of course such things
are clearly frauds, as they can have no power to destroy a
craving for liquor. The Infallible Drink Cure was 98 per cent.
sugar and 2 per cent. common table salt. Another 'cure' was made
of chlorate of potash and sugar. Cases of poisoning by chlorate
of potash are on record. Another 'cure' contained tartar emetic,
a dangerous poison. Most of the liquid 'cures' for drunkenness
sold prior to the passage of the National Pure Food Law
contained large quantities of cheap alcohol. It is safe to say
that practically all of the secret cures for drunkenness are
fraudulent, and some are dangerous.
"If a man wants to quit drinking, he can be helped by a proper
diet, and by frequent use of the Turkish bath, or even of the
ordinary hot bath at home, with a quick cold sponge or shower
bath each morning as a tonic. The hot bath is to draw out
impurities from the system. The diet should consist of plenty of
fruit, nuts, grains and vegetables. It is better to eat no meat.
It has been fully demonstrated in Lady Henry Somerset's work
with women drunkards that a vegetarian diet is a great help in
allaying the alcohol crave. The Salvation Army, in England, have
also found by experience that a meat-free diet is a great aid in
overcoming the drink habit.
"Dr. T. D. Crothers, who has for years conducted a large
sanitarium for the cure of inebriety, at Hartford, Connecticut,
says that a valuable remedy to break up the impulsive craze for
spirits is a strong infusion of quassia given in two-ounce
doses every hour. As desire for liquor abates the quassia can be
given less frequently, until it is no longer needed.
"Dr. Alexander Lambert, of Bellevue Hospital, New York, has been
treating drunkards and other drug habitues successfully of late.
A description of his treatment may be found in _Success_ for
November, 1909."
MEDICAL PUFFS OF WHISKY AND OTHER ALCOHOLICS:--"Every medical
man knows how he is pestered with advertising circulars of
so-and-so's genuine whisky, and what-do-you-call-em's extra
stout, to say nothing of the tempting offers of wines and
spirits on sale with special discounts to medical men. Other
enterprising firms send samples or offer to send them with the
implied understanding that a testimonial is to be given, or that
at least the wares in question will be recommended to patients.
Even our medical papers have not always been incorruptible. We
have little expectation ourselves of being favored with an offer
of full-page advertisements of extraordinary wines and spirits.
We are not prepared to recommend them except as vermin killers.
Nor are we prepared to remain silent as to their alleged
virtues. The whole system of testimonials is a huge imposture.
Granted that the sample is all that it is described as being,
who can guarantee that what is served to the public in the face
of severe competition will be up to the sample?
"But there is another and a sadder view of the case. We cannot
believe that all the eulogies of all the medical trumpeters of
the wines and the spirits are wilfully false or even
exaggerated. It is a lamentable fact that a vast number of
doctors have a genuine faith in the value and virtue of these
pernicious drinks. It is not simply a question of medicinal use,
though even on that we should join issue. These things are
vaunted as valuable for the promotion of health in spite of all
the accumulating evidence to the contrary. We wish that these
doctors would carefully study this evidence. The pity of it is
that the very worst offenders are the least likely to study it.
We suppose they must die out, and be replaced by men less
prejudiced and bound by the chain of alcoholic habit. We can
only regret that they should be doing so much harm in fastening
the fetters of drink on other people, and hindering their
emancipation from the evil customs which play havoc amongst
us."--_Medical Pioneer._
ALCOHOL AND CHILDREN:--"Parents often labor under the delusion
that alcoholic drinks are good for children and act as tonics.
Mothers will put drops of brandy into the milk with which their
children are fed, increasing the quantity with the age of the
recipient. In the illness of children the same is given to meet
disturbances of the stomach or to increase growth and
development, without taking the advice of any medical man as to
the wisdom of the practice. This is all erroneous. The
excitement of the central nervous system under alcohol,
excitement which seems to be a relief to weariness and to give
strength, is nothing more than temporary at best, and injurious,
causing in fact symptoms of alcoholic poisoning, abnormal
excitement, ending, in extreme cases, in convulsions succeeded
by exhaustion of body and mind, and inducing a kind of
paralysis. Many cases of stomach and gastric catarrh in children
followed by emaciation and debility are due to the early
administration of alcoholic drinks; and impediment of growth
from the same cause is thereby produced. The most serious
derangement is that of the nervous system, and the development
in the young, under the influence of alcohol, of what is known
as nervousness, to which is added the moral paralysis with which
the habit of alcoholic drinking smites its victims in the very
spring-time of life."--PROF. DEMME, of Berne, Switzerland.
"The action of the New York Board of Health, in recommending to
tenement house parents, that on the hottest days of summer a few
drops of whisky be added to the water or food of their infants,
has received a strong protest and rebuke in a meeting at
Prohibition Park, where the opinions of eminent physicians,
collected by the _Voice_, were read, condemning such a course. A
resolution of protest was also adopted."--_Sel._
"For nineteen years we lived with a physician whose success may
be estimated from this one item: He had between 1,600 and 1,700
labor cases, and never once lost the mother, and only twice the
child, and what seems still more remarkable never used
instruments. When other physicians, as often happened, would
come to him to know how he did it, he always answered, 'A woman
will do anything if you only encourage her.' Nor was obstetrics
his specialty--he had none.
"In a fifteen years' practice in Chicago and New York, where
these diseases are so very fatal, and he was much sought after
to treat them, he did not lose a case of scarlet fever,
diphtheria or cholera infantum which he managed himself, and
saved many a one where he was called in consultation, or after
some other physician. Now when such a man after an experience
more than fifty years long and as wide as the continent, gives
it as his unqualified opinion that wines, beers, liquors of
every kind, alcohol itself, are not medicines and should never
be used as such, for SCIENTIFIC reasons, not to mention moral,
is not his opinion entitled to a hearing? Isn't it probable it
weighs more than the doctor's you were just quoting? Is it too
great a risk to act upon it?"--_Pacific Ensign._
"A lady, Mrs. A., tenderly nurtured, refined, cultured, moving
in an influential position, belonged to a family in whom the
tendency to intemperance existed. Realizing the danger, she, for
seven years of her married life, adhered to total abstinence.
Illness came, and the doctor ordered wine; and her husband, deaf
to her arguments, insisted on her taking it. She fell into
habits of intemperance. Her husband died, and for a time she
pulled up and trained as a hospital nurse; but temptation
prevailed, and she fell from bad to worse. Loving hands received
her time after time, and at last placed her in an Inebriate
Home. For a short time she did well, but soon became
unmanageable. After another desperate period she entered a
second home, but after leaving she yielded again, was twice in
prison, and fell into the lowest degradation and utter ruin,
surely deserving our deepest pity. Her doctor and her husband
had persisted in working her fall in spite of her own strongest
convictions."--_Selected._
THEY DID NOT DIE.--"Dr. Lord of Pasadena suffered from
rheumatism of the heart for more than half of a long lifetime.
No doctor ever felt his pulse (which intermitted) without
exclaiming, 'Why, doctor, you have no business to be alive with
such a pulse,'--or something similar. For nineteen years his
wife never retired without having at least one medicine she
could put her hand on in the dark, the ammonia bottle within
reach, the electric battery ready to start like a fire-engine,
and preparations for heating water in less than no time. His
acute attacks usually came in the night--an uninterrupted
night's sleep was something unknown to either the doctor or his
wife in all these years.
"They lived in sight of an open grave, and seldom a week passed
when it did not seem as if death had actually occurred. If ever
a case called for alcoholic stimulants this one did. But none
were ever administered, none were ever kept in the house. The
doctor's standing orders were: 'If all the doctors in the
country order you to give me liquor, and say my life depends
upon it, don't do it. Tell them I know more about it than they
do. It won't save my life; it will only lessen what little
chance I have.' All who knew about this case, and hundreds did,
were driven to the conclusion that if these two people, one in
this condition and the other feeble, could live all alone as
they did, miles from a doctor, and neighbors not near, and could
get along without alcoholics of any kind, everybody can do the
same everywhere. And the doctor finally wore out his heart
trouble and died of another disease."--_Pacific Ensign._
An English weekly journal is responsible for the following anecdote:--
"A Birmingham physician has had an amusing experience. The other
day a somewhat distracted mother brought her daughter to see
him. The girl was suffering from what is known among people as
'general lowness.' There was nothing much the matter with her,
but she was pale and listless and did not care about eating or
doing anything. The doctor, after due consultation, prescribed
for her a glass of claret three times a day with her meals. The
mother was somewhat deaf, but apparently heard all he said and
bore off her daughter, determined to carry out the prescription
to the very letter. In ten days' time they were back again, and
the girl looked a different creature. She was rosy-cheeked,
smiling and the picture of health. The doctor congratulated
himself on his diagnosis of the case. 'I am glad to see that
your daughter is so much better,' he said. 'Yes,' exclaimed the
excited and grateful mother. 'Thanks to you, doctor! She has had
just what you ordered. She has eaten carrots three times a day
since we were here, and sometimes oftener--and once or twice
uncooked--and now look at her!'"
THE REST CURE:--"After all, the veneer of civilization is quite
thin. Scratch most people, and very near the surface you come on
the savage. This is specially true when they are sick. They at
once want charms and miracles to restore them to health, and
come to the doctor or 'medicine man,' as they look upon
him--with this demand: 'I want something, doctor, to fix me up.'
But he, unhappy man, has not wherewith to satisfy them, unless
he is a quack.
"He knows that in most cases all he can do is to give advice as
to how best Nature may be allowed to effect a cure; for Nature
is the great physician, and the doctor's main duty is to stand
by and see that she gets fair play. Nature's chief cure, in a
large number of the diseases to which flesh is heir, is rest.
The tired man needs rest. The tired brain, the tired stomach,
the tired liver and kidneys, need the same rest.
"So, when the patient turns up with an overworked and exhausted
organ of some sort within him--be it what it may--heart, brain
or stomach--the true physician prescribes, first and chiefly,
not drugs, but rest.
"Now, this is generally the advice the patient doesn't want. His
desire is for a bottle of something, no matter how nasty it may
be, which shall 'fix him up,' and let him go on doing what he
has been doing previously. Common-sense is always at a discount,
and never more so than in this case. The tired brain-worker
doesn't want to stop. Give him something to whip up his brain
and his body, something to drive the spurs into them. 'What I
want,' he says, 'is a really strong tonic'; though, if he knew
that before, what was the use of coming to the doctor? Or he
would like to be told to take a glass of whisky-and-water when
he is tired, which is the maddest and most disastrous advice
that could be given.
"The man who has been ill-treating his stomach, eating too much
or too well, also demands a tonic--something to give him an
appetite so that he may eat more. And his poor overwrought
stomach is all the time crying out for rest.
"So it is all along the line. The possessor of an inflamed and
swollen knee prays for a liniment to rub into it which will cure
it straight away, and is highly disgusted when told that he will
have to lie up for a week or two.
"Again, for the tired stomach the cure is starvation. Let the
person live on his own fat, and a little milk-and-water for a
few days, and his stomach will take courage again and return to
work with renewed zest. But it is the most difficult thing in
the world to persuade the patient or his kind relatives of the
truth of this. There are many diseases in which, for a short
time at least, the less food the sick person has the better. But
the relatives are always much wiser than the doctor. They insist
'that the strength must be kept up,' and would like to force the
patient to eat more than he does when well. 'You will let his
strength down, doctor,' is a common complaint, and one of the
difficulties hospital authorities have to face is to prevent
kind friends from smuggling in food to the inmates, who, in
their opinion, are being brutally starved.
"I myself have cured people by making them rest--lie in bed and
starve. But the next time they were sick, _I wasn't the
doctor_."--"PHYSICIAN" in _Our Federation_.
"The blessings of sunlight and fresh air should be more
appreciated. The sun is the godfather of us all. The source of
all light, heat, electricity and energy, what wonder that it was
once worshipped as the Creator. The future will recognize it not
only as the best disinfectant, an all powerful preventive of
disease, but also as a wonderful healer of disease. The more
people can be taught to live in pure air out of doors, and bask
in the rays of the sun, the less of disease there will be to
prevent."--DR. C. H. SHEPARD, Brooklyn, N. Y.
ALCOHOL TESTED.
"Some years ago Dr. Beddoes, a physician of eminence, was very
anxious to put to the test the disputed question as to the power
of alcoholic liquors to give strength to the system. He
discovered that those who had most calls upon their physical
endurance were the smiths who were engaged in forging ship's
anchors, for at one moment they would be exposed to a heat so
fierce that one marveled that any human organization could
endure exposure to it, and then their work would call them away
to a temperature that was chilly and cold, added to which all
the time their work lasted they were bathed in a profuse
perspiration, the demands upon their physical energy were so
great. To counteract this perpetual drain upon their system they
were in the habit of drinking unlimited quantities of beer,
which their masters provided for them as a matter of course, and
a _sine qua non_. One day, as they were resting from their work
at midday, Dr. Beddoes made his appearance amongst some of these
men who were employed in a certain foundry, and submitted a
formal proposition to them, to this effect, that twelve of their
number, the strongest and stanchest, should be selected for an
experiment, and they should work for a week, six of them
drinking only water, and the other six taking their beer as
usual. His proposition was laughed to scorn. The men would not
hear of it. 'Look here, mate,' said their spokesman, 'do you
want us to be all dead men; you don't know what our work is, and
how it takes all a man's strength to weld an anchor. Why, if we
did not have our beer and plenty of it, it would be all up with
us in a brace of shakes.'
"The doctor said: 'I should be very sorry for any harm to come
to you. You know I am a doctor, and I will be constantly at hand
to see if any of you are going wrong, and I promise that if I
see any of you breaking down I will at once stop my experiment.'
And then taking out of his pocket ten crisp five-pound notes, he
displayed them to the anchor smiths. 'I will put down these
notes, £50 in all; six of you shall try water for one week
honestly and fairly; if you pull through without giving in, the
£50 shall be yours; if not, I'll take the £50 back again. Is it
a bargain?'
"This clenched the matter, and very soon the doctor's offer was
accepted, and a gang of six men volunteered to begin their work
on the Monday without beer. The beer drinkers did their best to
chaff the water drinkers, and aggravated them by taking good
care to show them how very nice it was to have recourse to
unlimited beer. The water drinkers kept firm, and the first day,
to their astonishment, found that they could do just as much
work as the rest of their mates. On Tuesday the water drinkers
began to crow over the beer drinkers, for they found that, while
the latter complained and grumbled at the heat, they were
enabled to take the work in a philosophical kind of way.
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday wore away, and the teetotal band
became more and more triumphant, the laugh was all on their
side, for not only did they feel more comfortable than their
beer-loving companions, but the £50 came nearer and nearer, and
at last, on Saturday, when the time for finishing work came,
they threw down their tools and their hammers, and crowded up to
the doctor to claim the prize, and to give a faithful record of
their experiences; and one and all declared that they had done
their hard work with more ease and comfort to themselves than
ever it had been done before, and, instead of feeling tired and
jaded, as they often did on the Saturday afternoon, they were
quite ready to begin work again, and if the doctor had another
£50 to dispose of, they would most gladly give him a chance of
protracting his experiment for another week. The doctor
expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the trial which had
already taken place, and left the place amidst three hearty
cheers, while the men proceeded to discuss the ins and outs of
the matter among themselves."--_National Advocate._
BEER-DRINKING INJURES HEALTH.
"I think there is no doubt that beer-drinking is deleterious to
health, and personally I have never seen any case of disease
where I thought it useful. I believe it is more deleterious to
health than the stronger spirits, and this opinion is derived
from the report of the actuaries' investigations for our
insurance companies a few years ago."--DR. JOHN M. DODSON, Dean
of the Medical Department of the University of Chicago.
"My connection with large medical institutions for many years
past has given me, I think, an excellent opportunity to observe
the effect of beer-drinking and the use of other alcoholic
liquors in many cases. I can say as a result of my own
observation that beer-drinking has a very pernicious effect upon
nearly every organ of the body. It produces disease of the
stomach and digestive tract, of the heart and circulating
system, of the kidneys and liver, and of the nervous system. In
addition to this it lessens the vigor and vital resistance of
the whole body, makes the beer drinker very much more
susceptible to infection such as pneumonia, and other acute
infections, and also lessens his ability to recover from
illnesses of any kind. An untold amount of misery and disease
would be avoided if the use of beer and other intoxicating
liquors could be wiped off the face of the earth."--DR. W. H.
RILEY, Battle Creek Sanitarium, Battle Creek, Mich.
In the report of Bellevue Hospital, New York City, for 1904, Dr.
Alexander Lambert, in speaking of delirium tremens, says: "The
delirium tremens from beer does not come on so readily as that
from whisky, but is slower in clearing up." Page 138 of report.
"Apart from its toxic effect it is seldom realized how harmful
beer may be by promoting obesity, and, in susceptible persons,
favoring dilatation of the stomach."--DR. E. P. JOSLIN,
Professor in Harvard Medical School.
"It is not the concentrated alcoholic liquors alone that cause
heart and kidney trouble but pre-eminently the continued
immoderate use of beer. Nothing is more false than the belief
that the progressive dislodgement of other alcoholic drinks by
beer will diminish the destructive influences of alcoholism. * *
* It has been conclusively established by thousandfold
experiments that soldiers in all climates, in heat, cold and
rain, endure best the most fatiguing marches when they are
absolutely deprived of alcoholic drinks."--PROF. G. VON BUNGE,
M. D., Basle, Switzerland.
"Beer, wine and spirits furnish no element capable of entering
into the composition of blood, muscular fibre, or anything which
is the seat of vital principle. If a man drinks daily 8 or 10
quarts of the best Bavarian beer in a year he will have taken
into his system as much nourishment as is contained in a
five-pound loaf of bread."--_Liebig, the great German chemist._
"Beer-drinker's heart is a term well-known to the physicians of
our large hospitals, and indicates a special condition of
unhealthy enlargement of the heart due to dilatation,
accompanied by some increase of tissue and of fat. Doctors Bauer
and Bollinger found that in Munich one in every sixteen of the
hospital patients died from this disorder. It is common in
Germany--the land of beer-drinking--and proves incontestably
that the habit of drinking even such a mild alcoholic beverage
as lager-beer is one that is undesirable and unwise."--_From
"Alcohol and the Human Body," by Sir Victor Horsley, M. D.,
London._
"Nothing is more erroneous from the physician's standpoint, than
to think of diminishing the destructive effects of alcoholism by
substituting beer for other alcoholic drinks, or that the
victims of drink are found only in those countries where whisky
helps the people of a low grade of culture to forget their
poverty and misery."--PROF. STRUMPEL, Breslau, Germany.
"The result of extolling beer as the mightiest enemy of whisky
and brandy has been that the consumption of the distilled
liquors has changed very little, while to these liquors has been
added beer, the use of which has led to a great and still
increasing beer alcoholism. * * *
"The beer drinker who is not at all a drunkard in the popular
sense, is very frequently the victim of chronic inflammation of
the kidneys. * * * An enlarged and fatty condition of the liver,
marked by a dull pain in the region of the organ, often follows
from the habitual use of beer. The death-rate from liver
diseases among brewers of beer in England is more than double
that in all other occupations. * * * Beer-drinkers have a marked
tendency to enlargement of the stomach, and to chronic
diarrhoea. Beer causes also inflammation of the nerves. This is
often announced by 'rheumatic' pains in the legs. * * * Beer
alcoholism, as well as alcoholism in general, lowers the
resistance of the body to all diseases by injuring most of the
organs. And herein lies the chief danger in the general
wide-spread use of beer. The drinker is especially open to
attacks of infectious disease. * * * The brutalizing effect of
beer-alcoholism is shown most clearly by the fact that in
Germany crimes of personal violence, particularly dangerous
bodily injuries, occur most frequently in Bavaria where there
is the highest consumption of beer."--DR. HUGO HOPPE, Nerve
Specialist, Konigsberg, Germany.
"The life insurance companies make a business of estimating
men's lives, and can only make money by making correct estimates
of whatever influences life. Now they expect a man otherwise
healthy, who is addicted to beer-drinking, will have his life
shortened from 40 to 60 per cent. For instance if he is twenty
years old and does not drink beer he may reasonably expect to
live until he is 61. If he is a beer-drinker he will probably
not live to be over 35. If he is 30 years old when he begins to
drink beer he will probably drop off somewhere between 40 and 45
instead of living to 64 as he should. There is no sentiment,
prejudice or assertion about these figures. They are simply
cold-blooded business facts, derived from experience, and the
companies invest their money on them just the same as a man pays
so many dollars for so many feet of ground or bushels of
wheat."--DR. S. S. THORN, Toledo, Ohio, in U. S. Senate
Document, published in 1901.
"Fatty degeneration of various organs is frequently witnessed in
beer-drinkers. Diabetes mellitus is frequently due to
beer-drinking, and is made much worse by its continuance. In
Germany more than half of the cases in the inebriate asylums
enter from beer-drinking. In Bavaria, the women are not able
properly to suckle their children because of the universal
consumption of their favorite national drink. Indeed, so grave
are the evils caused by beer-drinking that the fight against
beer should now be conducted as strenuously as that against
stronger liquors."--DR. LEGRAIN, Paris, France.
DRUG DRINKS.
In the report of the President's Homes Commission, Senate Document 644,
may be found a list of soft drinks examined by the Bureau of Chemistry.
The report says:--
"Attention is directed to the danger of soft drinks containing
caffeine, and extract of coca leaf, the active principle of the
latter being cocaine. * * * We have seen how the opium habit may
be acquired by the use of the various proprietary or secret
preparations, and so the cocaine habit may be developed by the
use of these much lauded soft drinks. * * * No wonder that
insanity and diseases of the nervous system are on the
increase."
The following is a list of drinks examined by the Bureau of
Chemistry. Investigation showed that these contained both
caffeine and extract of coca leaf:
Afri Cola, Ala Cola, Cafe Coca, Carre Cola, Celery Cola, Chan
Ola, Chera Cola, Coca Beta, Coca Cola, Pilsbury's Coke, Cola
Coke, Cream Cola, Dope, Four Kola, Hayo Kola, Heck's Cola, Kaye
Ola, Koca Nola, Koke, Kola Ade, Kola Kola, Kola Phos, Koloko,
Kos Kola, Lime Cola, Lima Ola, Mellow Nip, Nerv Ola, Revive Ola,
Rocola, Rye Ola, Standard Cola, Toka Tona, Tokola, Vim-O, French
Wine of Coca, Wise Ola.
The manufacturers of some of those listed claim that their coca
extract is prepared from a decocainized coca leaf, the refuse
product discarded in the manufacture of cocaine. The Coca Cola
company claims that their coca extract is now without cocaine,
and most of the recent analyses show this to be true, yet the
Pure Food Commissioner of North Dakota says in his report for
1907 that Coca Cola as examined by him, "Gave a reaction for
cocaine." It is easy to see that so long as even refuse coca
leaves are used some cocaine may at times be in the product.
As cocaine is the most destructive drug known to humanity its
presence in any of the so-called temperance drinks is a
frightful evil calling for speedy legislation. It is practically
impossible to cure a person of the cocaine habit. This drug
causes insomnia, dyspepsia, chronic palpitations, and complete
paralysis of will-power, with a tendency to criminal acts. When
a person becomes habituated to its use he suffers torments when
not under its influence. The real cocaine fiend will rob or kill
to get the drug. What can be thought of men, who knowing the
deadly nature of this drug, will hide it away in a drink sold as
harmless to children and women who would never touch beer or
wines? It is placed in the drink to form a craving for that
drink and thus create a demand that will enrich the
conscienceless manufacturers.
The following preparations were found to contain caffeine, but
there was no evidence to the effect that coca leaf in any form
had been used in their manufacture:
Calcycine, Celery Cocoa, Citro Cola, Deep Rock Ginger Ale,
Fosko, Heck's Star Pepsin, Koke, Koke Ola, Kalafra, Kumfort,
Lime Juice and Kola, Lon Kola, Meg-O, Mexicola, Pau Pau Cola,
Pedro, Pepsi Cola, Speed Ball, To-Ko, Vril.
The report says that the following list were not examined but
from their names, and from the evidence submitted, they contain
either caffeine or coca leaf extract, or both: Charcola, Cherry
Kola, Cola Soda, Cola Ginger, Field's Coca, Imported French
Cola, Jacob's Kola, Koko Ale, Kola Cream, Kola Pepsin Celery
Wine Tonic, Kola Vena, Loco Kola, Mintola, Mate, Pikmeup,
Ro-Cola, Schelhorn's Coca, Vine Cola, Viz.
Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, says that
the sale of all such drinks should be prohibited.
Caffeine is a drug much used in headache remedies. It is derived
from the kola nut, and from tea and coffee. It is also made
artificially from uric acid occurring in the guano or bird
manure deposits of South America. This bird manure product is
said to be used in some of the drinks while in others caffeine
obtained from refuse tea sweepings is used. The sales-manager of
the Coca Cola Company says the caffeine in their product is made
from tea. It is claimed by the manufacturers of caffeine drinks
that they are as harmless as tea or coffee. But physicians
advise against the use of tea and coffee for children and for
delicate, nervous people, and every intelligent person knows
that these drinks should not be indulged in immoderately. The
secret caffeine drinks at the soda-fountain are not warned
against because few people know of what they are made. So it
frequently happens that children whose parents do not permit
them to drink tea and coffee are taking caffeine in a much more
injurious form at the drug stores.
Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, says:
"When caffeine is separated from tea and coffee, and used as a
separate drug, it exerts a much more specific action upon the
system than when in natural combination. Its general effect is
to induce that unhappy state described as nervousness, with
deranged digestion and impaired health." Dr. H. H. Rusby, Dean
of the College of Pharmacy, of Columbia University, New York
City, a high authority, says: "Caffeine is a genuine poison,
both acute and chronic. Taken in the form of a beverage it tends
to the formation of a drug habit, quite as characteristic,
though not so effective, as ordinary narcotics. Permanent
disorders of the cardiac function, and of the cerebral
circulation, result from its continued use."
The _Druggists Circular_, for May, 1908, contained a query from
a druggist as to a good formula for a kola nut soda syrup. The
answer was in part as follows: "There are two kinds of
druggists. One kind puts any and every kind of stuff into stock,
and passes it out to his customers, young and old, ignorant or
learned, foolish or wise, his only desire being to get a profit.
The other kind of druggist refuses to stock some things at all.
Kola drinks owe their vogue to the caffeine which they contain.
Caffeine is a poison which is cumulative in its effects, and an
excess of which has not infrequently caused death. We believe
you would better be on record as discouraging rather than
encouraging the growth of the caffeine habit, especially among
young people, who constitute a large part of the soda-water
trade."
The _London Lancet_ of January 25, 1908, reports the results of
experiments made in Paris with kola given to horses to determine
its action in relieving fatigue. It apparently diminished
fatigue, but the horses receiving it lost more weight than those
to whom it was not given. The experimenter said this showed
that kola (caffeine) like alcohol, can give the tissues a lash
with a whip, but that such energy, artificially produced, is at
the expense of the organism. So, when people see the alluring
advertisements of caffeine drinks which "relieve fatigue," let
them beware of the relief which carries with it injury to the
body.
Of the most widely advertised of these caffeine drinks the
government report says: "The prevalence of the 'Coca Cola fiend'
is becoming a matter of great importance and concern." (See
volume on Social Betterment of Senate Document 644, page 268.)
M. M. A.
SPECIAL MEDICAL DIRECTIONS FOR WOMEN.
"In the treatment of diseases of women, alcohol has been
considered a very important remedy. Because it affords relief
from pain, many resort to its use during painful menstruation.
Each month either whisky, or some medicine containing a liberal
supply of alcohol, is considered a necessity.
"The alcohol habit is not infrequently formed in this way. I
have in my mind several cases of inebriety which were traceable
to the habit of taking something to relieve pain at these
periods. A woman whose husband held a high official position,
thus acquired a craving for alcohol and became a confirmed
drinker. He was finally compelled to place her in an institution
for treatment.
"Alcohol affords relief, not by lessening the internal
congestion which causes the pain, but by paralyzing or benumbing
the nervous system. In fact, alcohol, instead of relieving,
aggravates the internal congestion. It is a deceiver, for it
makes the patient believe she is benefited when in fact the
condition is made worse. The uterus has become more congested by
its use, and when the paralyzing effect of the alcohol has worn
off the pain will be found more severe, and the demand for
alcohol increased correspondingly. The only safe and wise plan
when suffering from pain due to internal congestion is to remove
the cause. If uterine misplacement exists suitable treatment
must be taken to correct this. Almost immediate relief from
pain due to congestion of the pelvic organs may be obtained by
taking a hot full bath. A hot foot or leg bath is also a good
treatment since the warming of the extremities quickens the
circulation in the limbs and relieves congestion in the pelvic
region.
"There are various forms of dysmenorrhea or painful menstruation
and each form has a treatment by itself. The congestive type
which is due to taking cold is better relieved by a hot sitz
bath before the date expected, the temperature of the water
should be 101°-103° with the feet in water a degree or two
hotter. If at the time of the period the pain still continues,
an enema or vaginal douche will usually give the necessary
relief unless the patient should be exposed to cold by allowing
the hands, arms, feet or legs to become chilled.
"Many women do not dress their limbs warmly enough at any time.
Just before the menstrual period the tendency is for the pelvic
organs to become congested; there is a greater tendency to cold
feet then, than at any other time. I would therefore advise
warmer clothing on the limbs at such times. The drinking of hot
pepper tea, ginger tea, etc., is a pernicious practice, for
these irritants inflame the mucous membrane of the stomach and
intestines. Hot lemonade or hot water will afford the same
relief without leaving an inflamed surface behind to be
irritated by the next meal.
"There are some cases of great constriction of the uterine canal
which have reflex irritability in the stomach. Those having the
stomach affected cannot take food, the least thing is rejected.
It is best for such to remain quiet in bed, applying heat to the
stomach and abdomen and to the feet until relief is experienced.
Those suffering from headache should also remain quiet in bed.
Some resort to anodynes and form the habit of using codeine,
morphine. All these are bad and should be avoided. I have never
found it necessary to give one dose of either to relieve pain at
such times. Hot applications with the enema, vaginal douche, or
foot bath, has usually been all that was required.
"I recall many cases of severe pain where the extremities were
cold and clammy and the entire body was in a hysterical
contraction that were immediately relieved by a hot vaginal
douche. The muscles relaxed, the patient warmed up and recovered
nicely.
"For securing sleep in insomnia, a hot toddy is often used, but
a quicker and better effect can be gained by a hot, or neutral
bath. The latter given at 99° or 100° for twenty minutes will
produce sleep and refreshment, as it equalizes the circulation
by bringing the blood to the surface.
"It is safer under all circumstances to do without alcohol or
other dangerous drugs in treatment of these diseases."--DR.
LAURETTA E. KRESS, Washington, D. C.
NOTE--An experienced nurse says that prompt relief in painful
menstruation may often be found by sitting upon a toilet
water-jar half full or more of hot water. The steam rises and
the heat relieves.
TOTAL ABSTINENCE AND LIFE INSURANCE.
Nothing shows more clearly and convincingly that alcoholic
liquors have a tendency to shorten life than the figures
published by life insurance companies. A most interesting and
valuable paper upon this theme was read before the Actuarial
Society of America, in 1904, by Mr. Joel G. Van Cise, actuary of
the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. In it
he gives the experience of different life insurance companies
which have separate sections for total abstainers and
non-abstainers. The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York,
one of the large companies, showed after a few years' experience
with the two sections a death-rate 23 per cent. higher among the
drinkers than among the abstainers. The Sceptre Life for the
years from 1884 to 1903, inclusive, gave the following: Expected
deaths of abstainers, 1,440; actual deaths, 792, being 55 per
cent. of the expected. Expected deaths of non-abstainers, 2,730;
actual deaths, 1,880, or 79 per cent. of the expected. The
Scottish Temperance Life from 1883 to 1902 gave the following:
Abstainers, expected deaths, 936; actual deaths, 420, or 45 per
cent. of the expected. Non-abstainers, expected deaths, 319;
actual deaths, 225, or 71 per cent. of the expected.
Mr. Van Cise goes on to show that the statistics which have been
published from time to time, giving the percentages of mortality
in the various occupations of life, invariably show a higher
death-rate among those engaged in the liquor business than among
those engaged in other lines of work, except such as are
specially hazardous. He says: 'The higher death-rate among
liquor dealers is so universally recognized by life assurance
companies that a number of them will not issue policies, even on
the lives of the richest brewers, upon any terms, and not one of
the companies, to my knowledge, admits liquor dealers upon as
advantageous terms as those engaged in other ordinary
occupations.' He then quotes from a circular sent to the agency
force of a prominent United States company, in which attention
is called to a rule which forbids the taking of any risks on
bartenders: 'Saloonkeepers, generally, not taken, but best of
this class may be accepted on 10 or 15 year endowments only.'
Others connected more remotely with the liquor business might be
taken with a charge of $5.00 per thousand extra. The circular of
instructions adds that the limitations of liquor dealers are
made necessary 'by the very excessive rate of mortality found to
exist among persons so employed.'
Mr. Van Cise closed his address before the Actuaries' Society by
saying: 'I contend that the facts given in this paper show
conclusively that the effect of total abstinence is to lower the
death-rate, and increase the average duration of human life.'
The Equitable Company had a section for total abstainers for a
few years which was discontinued on account of the new insurance
laws which came into effect in 1907. The actuary writes in
response to inquiry: 'We are very careful in our selection of
risks, and only those who drink in moderation will be accepted.
I think it safe to say that, other things being equal, all
American life insurance companies would consider a total
abstainer a more desirable risk than a moderate drinker.'
The United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Institution,
of London, is a large and successful company which was organized
in 1840, expressly for total abstainers, because at that time
larger premiums were asked from abstainers than from drinkers,
the common opinion then being that alcoholic liquors were
necessary to health. In 1846, this company added a general
section, in which carefully selected moderate drinkers were
accepted, but each section was kept entirely separate from the
other. This separation has continued to the present time, both
classes paying the same premiums, but sharing in profits
according to the earnings of the section to which the members
belong. From 1866 to 1900, for every 100 deaths in the
temperance section there were 137 deaths in the moderate
drinking section, based on a corresponding number of lives at
risk. The dividends for a recent five years average $20 to the
temperance members, and $17 to the drinking members.
The actuary of this English company, Mr. Roderick Mackenzie
Moore, read a paper before the Institute of Actuaries, in 1903,
in which he reviewed the work of this company during its history
of sixty years' experience with abstainers and over fifty with
non-abstainers. He showed that there has been no marked
difference in the number of policies in force in the two
sections, and the average amount of the policies in each section
has been about the same, so that the comparison is as fair as
could possibly be made. He gives these figures: 'Non-abstainers,
male, expected deaths, 8,911; actual deaths, 8,947; per cent. of
actual to expected, 100.4. Abstainers, male, expected deaths,
6,899; actual deaths, 5,124; per cent. of actual to expected,
74.3.' This shows a difference of 26.1 per cent. between the
actual and expected deaths of abstainers and moderate drinkers,
and the full figures show the death rate among the drinkers to
be 35 per cent. higher than among the abstainers.
The American Temperance Life Insurance Association was organized
in 1887. It gives a lower premium rate to members of the
abstainers' section than to those in the general section. The
circulars sent out by this company state that the average life
of moderate drinkers is thirty-five and a half years; tipplers,
fifty-one years; total abstainers, sixty-four and one-fifth
years.
Very interesting is the result of an inquiry made of various
insurance companies not long ago as to whether they consider the
habitual user of intoxicating beverages as good an insurance
risk as the total abstainer; 'if not, why not?' All but two out
of forty-one companies answered, 'No.' The two answered,
'Depends on quantity used.' In answer to the 'Why not?' the Etna
said, 'Drink diseases the system and shortens life'; Hartford
Life, 'Moderate use lays foundation for disease'; Knights of the
Maccabees, 'Drink tends to destroy life'; Knights Templar and
Masons' Life Indemnity, 'Drink lessens ability to overcome
disease'; Sun Life, 'Drink injures constitution. Habit apt to
grow'; Massachusetts Mutual Life, 'Drink causes organic changes.
Reduces expectation of life nearly two-thirds.' The rest of the
answers are much the same as these.--_M. M. A._
INDEX
Abbott, Dr. A. C., 264, 278, 280, 281, 368
Abdominal bandage, 199
Abel, Prof. J. J., 128
Abernethy, Dr., 36
Acetanilid, 180, 301, 346
Acetic acid in pharmacy, 134, 136
Acid drinks kill bacilli, 150
Adelung, Dr. Edward Von, 326, 379
Adynamic disease, 272
Aiken, Dr. J. M., 376
Alabama law and alcoholic prescriptions, 27
Albumen, 30, 60, 62, 152, 173
Alcohol,
food claims, 112-114, 128
a mocker, 364, 377
a narcotic, 121, 123
a poison, 28, 29, 100, 105, 358, 371, 388
injurious to living cells, 275
advance in study of, 380
affinity for blood and tissues, 114
affinity for water, 148, 149
and foods, action contrasted, 406
and empty stomach, 100
mental work, 400
anti-spasmodic, 124
apparent benefits; deceptive warmth from evanescent, 108
anæsthetic and paralyzant, 120, 181
anæsthetic effect deceptive, 222, 262, 266
antipyretic, 127
as medicine, 96-130
as medicine, causes waste of force, 83
as medicine, diminished use, 20, 53-57
as medicine, need of popular education regarding, 297
as medicine, opposition to by W. C. T. U., 21-27
causes disease, 28-36
as sedative, 127
as tonic, 124, 126
beginning of scientific study, 11
a cause of Bright's disease, 34, 91
causes malnutrition, 284
craving, 140
delusion that it "supports", 294
depressant, 150, 178
dangerous in pneumonia, 201
difference in action from carbohydrates and fats, 403
diminishes arterial pressure, 119, 120
effect on respiration, 263, 266
experiments, 11, 15, 62, 65, 80, 93, 101, 119, 120, 149, 200, 266,
267, 268, 275, 279, 288, 392-405, 421
Alcoholic diseases ascribed to other causes, 33
drink, no danger in sudden stopping, 293
drinks, stories of life sustained on, 112
dyspepsia, 63
proprietary medicines, 299-334
Alcohol, medical use bulwark of liquor-traffic, 96, 97, 360, 361
medical use causes death, 260
medical use delays recovery, 115
medical use evidence against, 336-391
medical use result of habit and tradition, 292, 294, 295, 298, 378
medical use, Toledo Blade on, 358
medical use, mortality increased by, 247-261, 267
Ammonia, 40, 188
Anæsthesia, 119, 120
Anæmia, 141
Anders, Dr. Howard S., 370
Angina pectoris, 181, 182
Animal poison, 206-211
Anthrax, 281, 282
Alcoholism, 36, 111
Ale, 120, 142, 236
Alkalies for stomach, 174
Alum, 143, 164, 171, 215
American Association for Study of Inebriety, 329
American Druggist and Patent Medicine Agitation, 26
American Medical Association, declaration on alcohol, 14
Antikamnia, 192, 346
Anti-Tuberculosis Congress resolution, 154
Apoplexy, 31, 32, 111, 142
Appetite, loss of, 142
Aschaffenberg, Prof., 400
Association of Abstaining Physicians, Germany, 387
Asthma, 179, 345
Athletes and alcohol, 103
Atwater, Prof., 128-130
Australian Government Commission on Patent Medicines, 314
Baldwin, Dr. Edward R., 370
Barton, Miss Clara, 48
Baths, 57, 145, 146, 147, 152, 164, 193, 197, 199, 410, 431, 432
Battle Creek Sanitarium, 223-227, 255, 256
Bavaria, beer-drinking effects, 425
Beale, Dr. Lionel, 99, 286
Beaumont, Dr., 61, 293
Beddoes, Dr., 13, 421
Beebe, Dr. S. P., 404, 405
Beef-tea, 194, 197, 325
Bacteria, 150
Badger, Dr. Richard, 365
Baer, Dr., 19
Barker, Prof., 337
Barr, Sir James, 372
Beer, 31, 66, 116, 117, 124, 126, 142, 179, 239, 244-246, 247, 423-426
Bellevue Hospital, 36, 54, 309
Berkley and Friedenwald, 279
Beverages for the sick, 411
Bigelow, Dr. Jacob, 335
Billings, Dr. Frank, 155
Bitters, 176, 329
Blankmeyer, Dr. H. J., 159
Bleuler, Dr., 388
Blood, 66-75, 76, 86,106, 113, 114, 119, 393
Blood purifiers, 75
Blood vessels, 63, 75, 76, 108, 109, 120, 124, 143
Blumenau, alcohol and digestion, 173
Boils and carbuncles, 144
Bond, Dr. Knox, on fevers, 252, 373
Bostwick, Dr., 336
Bowditch, Prof. Vincent Y., 157
Boynton, Dr., 377
Bradner, Dr. Roe, 329, 332
Brain, 32, 36
Brandy, 35, 120, 143, 151, 173, 177, 183, 196, 215, 356
Brewers, 38, 425
Bright's disease, 34, 91, 94
British army, experiences with alcohol, 101, 102
British Medical Journal, 180, 247, 269, 270, 319, 324
British Medical Temperance Association, 148-151, 250
Broadbent, Dr., 274
Brodie, Dr. Benj., 105
Bromidia, 353
Bromo Seltzer, 346
Brown, Dr. Alonzo, 271-273
Brunton, Dr. Lauder, 269, 270
Bucke, Dr. R. M., alcohol and the insane, 412
Buckley, Rev. J. M., D.D., cured of consumption, 159
Bunge, Prof. G. Von, 207, 424
Bureau of Chemistry, 426, 427
Burnett, Dr. Mary Weeks, 41-44
Burt, Mrs. Mary T., 24
Bussey, Dr., 237
Butter, substitute for cod-liver oil, 314
Cabot, Dr. Richard C., 57, 370
Caffeine, 49, 135, 300, 428-430
Cain, Dr. J. S., 229, 377
Calmette, Dr., snake-bite 206-209
Camphor, 217, 374
Cancer and alcohol, 288
Carbolic acid, 138, 145
Carbon dioxide, 71-73
Carbonic acid in wine, 117
Cardiac paralysis in diphtheria, 272, 273
Carpanutrine, 313
Carpenter, Dr. Alfred, 86
Carson, Prof. J. W., 336
Casgrau, Dr., doctors who personally use alcohol less observant
of its effects, 294
Catarrh, 144, 145, 345
Cells, 58-60, 68, 130, 271, 272
Chapman, Dr. C. W., 184
Charcoal, 179
Charrin, Dr., 287
Cheese, cannot be made from milk of cows fed on distillery slops, 236
Cheyne, Prof. W. W., snake-poison, 209, 210
Children, danger of alcohol for, 416
Children of beer-drinking mothers, 236, 237
Children, per cent. of deaths of those of abstaining and drinking
parents, 397, 398
Chills, 146
Chittenden, Prof., 93, 403
Chloral, 127, 138, 190, 275, 332, 353
Chlorodyne, 127
Chloroform, 119, 120, 121, 270, 353
Cholera, 35, 147-152, 257, 258
infantum, 152, 153
morbus, 152
Christian Advocates, The, and patent medicines, 26
Christison, Prof., 34
Cincinnati Hospital, 254
Circulation, 76, 77, 184-186
Claret, 120, 177, 419
Clark, Dr. Alonzo, 336
Sir Andrew, 35, 101
Clinique, The, 180
Coal-tar drugs, 75, 180, 192, 339, 340
Coca wines, 319-324
Coca Cola, 427
Cocaine, 300, 319-325, 345-351, 427
Cod-liver oil, fraudulent preparations, 314
Coffee, 40, 141, 194, 236
Cohen, Dr. S. S., 365
Cold, as a heart stimulant, 184-186
as tonic, 125
pack, 186
treatment for pneumonia, 202
Colds, cause and treatment, 146
Colic, 147
Collier, Dr. Wm., 372
Collier's Weekly and nostrums, 26
Collins, Dr., 157
Coloring matter in wines arrests digestion, 176
Coma from waste retention, 115
Committee of Fifty, 19, 128, 279
on Pharmacy, 314, 315, 316
Condi, Dr., nursing mothers, 236
Constipation, 146
Consumption, 153-162, 326
Convalescence and alcohol, 292, 294
Convulsions, 147, 179
Cook County Hospital, 54, 159, 253
Cordials in dyspepsia, 176
Cough medicines, 310-312
simple remedies, 146, 147, 162
Cramps, 179
Cream, substitute for cod-liver oil, 160, 314
Crothers, Dr. T. D., 120, 131, 183, 218, 345, 390
Cures for inebriety, 329, 414
Deaths from alcohol, 28, 83, 87
from alcoholic diseases ascribed to other causes, 31-34
Death-rates, comparative, 75, 85, 247-261, 267
lowered by non-alcoholic treatment, 37, 46, 219
Debility, 171, 172
Davis, Dr. Nathan S., Sr., 11, 12, 29-31, 45, 66, 75, 80-82,
91-95, 107, 112, 117, 118, 125, 128, 178, 193, 217, 219,
244, 253, 262, 267, 289, 294, 358-360
De Garmo, Prof., 366
Deléarde, Dr., Pasteur Institute, 279, 284
Delirium tremens, 388
Depression of spirits, 172, 179
Diabetes, 88, 89
Diarrhoea, 172
Digestion, 106, 155-157
Digestive organs, injured, 389
Digitalis, 128, 135
Diphtheria, 75, 85, 272
Diseases of women, 430
non-alcohol treatment, 140, 233
Distilled liquors, composition, 117
Doan's Pills, 315
Dodson, Dr. John M., 423
Dogbite, 211
Dock, Dr. George, 365, 371
Douches, 164, 431
Drowning, 193, 194
"Drugging", 335-355
Drug habits formed by patent medicines, 301
Drugs, medical opinions of, 336-338
Druggists' resolutions against whiskey drug-stores, 27
Druggist's Circular, 8, 429
Druggists, liquor selling by, 139
Drunkards made in infancy, 311
Drunkards, 126, 350
Drysdale, Dr., 372
Dubois, experiments, 119
Dysentery, 172, 173
Dysmenorrhea, 431
Dyspepsia, 65, 127, 173-177
Edmunds, Dr., 37, 38, 183, 238-243
Edsall, Dr. David L., 374
Epilepsy, 32, 36, 178
Erysipelas, 74, 388
Eshner, Dr. A. A., 364
Exhaustion, 178
Fainting and faintness, 177, 178, 180, 181
Fatigue, 178, 320, 430
Fatty degeneration, 34-36, 82-85, 114
Fats digested in small intestines, 60
Fere, Dr., 203
Fermentation, 116, 274
Fevers, 75, 85, 249-255, 388
Fibrine, 40, 62
Fits, 238
Flatulence, 179
Flick, Dr. Lawrence, 156
Fomentations, 147, 199, 229
Food, alcohol as indirect, 112-114, 29, 98-117, 128-130
Foods, proprietary, 313
Forel, Dr. A., 36, 105
Forrest, Dr., 160, 161
Foster, Dr., 68
Franco-Prussian War, wine, 110, 111
Francis, Surgeon Gen'l, cholera, 150
Frick, Dr. A., 388, 389
Fruit, 141, 146, 374
juice, 65, 232, 374
Gairdner, Dr., fevers, 251, 252
Garber, Dr., typhoid, 230
Garfield Memorial Hospital, 55, 254
Gastric juice, 62, 65
Gastritis from beer and gin, 246
Georgia law and alcohol prescriptions, 27
Germs, 70, 115, 223, 272, 286, 287
Giddiness, 179
Gilman, Prof., treatment leads to death, 337
Gin, 61, 117, 199, 246
Ginger drinking, 341
Gloria Tonic, 414
Gluzinski and digestion, 61, 176
Glycerine in pharmacy, 134, 135, 138
Glycogen, 85, 130
Gordon, Dr. A., 377
Gould, A. Pearce, 288, 367, 373
Gout, 31, 74
Grape juice, 65
Gréhant, 288
Gruber, Prof., 128, 129
Guardian cells, see leucocytes
Gull, Sir Wm., 35, 104
Gum resins, non-alcoholic preparation, 134
Hagee's Cordial of Cod-Liver Oil, 314
Hall, Dr. W. S., 379, 405-409
Hamilton, Dr. Frank H., 285, 286
Hammond, Dr. W. A., 36, 95
Hargreaves, Dr. W., 35, 85, 86, 105, 236, 237
Harley, Dr., alcohol and diabetes, 88, 89
Harrington. Dr. Chas., 313, 316
Hart, Dr. Ernest, 126, 152, 269
Harvey, Dr., counsel to young physicians, 389
Hay Fever, 145, 146
Hayes, Dr., arctic work, 110
Headaches, 179, 180
Headache remedies, 301, 354
Health, how to preserve, 355
Health Grains, 315
Healy, Dr. H. H., 375
Heart abscesses, 277, 278
and alcohol, 31, 75-85, 263
beer-drinkers, 424
disease, 181, 182
failure, 83, 85, 184, 185-188, 227, 273
force diminished, 183
stimulants, 188
weak, 182
Hemaboloids, 313
Hemapeptone, 313
Hemaglobin, 30, 67, 114, 221
Hemorrhage, 34, 180, 197
Heredity of alcoholic diseases, 33
Herrick, Dr. James B., 365
Hewes, Dr. Henry F., 379
Heyburn, Senator, nostrums, 334
Hiccough, 179
Higginbotham, 13, 140, 180
Higginson, Col. T. W., 196
Hirschfeld, Dr., 360, 380
Hiss, Dr. A. Emil, 309, 310
History of study of alcohol, 9-20
Hob-nailed liver, 87
Hoffman drops, 349
Hoff's Consumption Cure, 316
Holmes, Dr. Oliver W., on drugs, 137, 344
Hop tea, 66, 142, 176
Hoppe, Dr. Hugo, beer, 425
Horsley, Sir Victor, 129, 372, 424, 425
Hospitals, Temperance, 37-53
death-rates, 252-261
decreased use of alcoholic liquors, 53-57
Hugounencq, alcohol and pepsin, 176
Hunt, Mrs. Mary H., temperance education, 17
Hunt, Dr. Reid, 369, 402
Hydrochloric acid, 173, 177
Hydrophobia, 281-283
Internal Rev, Dep't. and Nostrums, 27, 312
International Congress on Alcoholism, London, 1909, 9, 393
Encyclopedia of Surgery, 209
Medical Congress 1876, and National W. C. T. U., 23, 82
Immunity, influence of alcohol on, 281, 282, 393-395
Indigestion and alcohol, 32
Infant feeding, 242, 243
Infection, liability to increased, 392, 393
Infectious diseases, 288, 368, 369, 425
Inflammation in wounds, 74
Influenza and drinkers, 192, 193
Iron, injurious to stomach, 315
Jackson, Dr. Henry, 370
Jaundice, alcohol prejudicial, 89
Jayne's Expectorant, 310
Johnson, Lieut., arctic work, 110
Joslin, Dr. E. P., 364, 424
Journal Amer. Med. Ass'n., 129, 204-209, 211, 368, 369
Journal of Inebriety, 131, 192, 329, 413
Kansas prohibits whiskey drug-stores 27
Kassowitz, Prof. Max, 373, 374
Kellogg, Dr. J. H., 36, 89, 95, 121, 129, 141, 152, 166, 176,
185, 195, 199, 255, 378
Kerr, Dr. Norman, 150, 357
Kidneys, 30, 89-95, 276, 425
Koch, Dr., consumption, 153
Knopf, Dr. S. A., 155
Kola, see caffeine.
Kraepelin, 399, 400
Kress, Dr. Lauretta, 430-432
La grippe, 190-193, 337
Ladd, Prof., 332, 333
Ladies' Home Journal, 26
Laitinen, Prof. T., 368, 369, 392-398
Lambert, Dr. Alex., 415, 424
Lancet, The London, 191, 184, 252, 368, 429
Landis, Dr. J. H., and typhoid, 379
Laudanum, 137, 352
Laxative pills often harmful, 346
Lees, Dr. F. R., 106
Legrain, Dr., 426
Liebig, 116, 251, 424
Lemon, 146, 147, 179, 194, 411
Lesser, Dr. A. Monæ, success in treating fevers in Cuban War, 53
Leucocytes, 271, 272, 274, 275, 278, 282, 283, 284, 285
Life insurance and total abstinence, 36, 423, 426, 432-435
Life saving stations and alcohol, 193
Liniments, non-alcoholic, 134, 135
Liquid Peptones, 313
Liver, 31, 33, 85-89, 404-409, 425
Lloyd, Prof. J. U., 328
London Temperance Hospital, 37-41, 132-135, 357
Loomis, Dr. A. L., 255
Dr. Henry P., 157
Lungs, 30, 201
Lying-in-Hospital, London, 37, 38
Martin, Dr. Newell, 63, 79, 84, 85, 91, 109, 119, 158
Massage, 166, 180, 213, 214
Mass. State Board of Health, 34, 310
Massart and Bordet, leucocytes, 277
McNicholl, Dr. T. A., 48, 378
Madden, Dr. John, 378
Magnesia, 179
Malaria[D], 195, 196
[Footnote D: Of late years malaria is attributed to the bite of
a certain kind of mosquito. In preparing this edition that item
was overlooked.]
Malt Extracts, 316-319
Manassein's Clinic, alcohol and kidneys, 93, 94
Mann, Dr. Matthew D., 365
Martin, Alexis St., 61, 293
McCormack, Dr. J. H., 370
Measles, 194
Meat extracts, valueless, 325, 326
Medical temperance department of W. C. T. U., 25-27
Menstruation, painful, 197
Mercer, Dr. Alfred, 363
Metchnikoff, 374, 398
Milk, 141, 153, 188, 236, 237, 251, 373
Miller, Dr. James Alex., 157
Mitchell, Dr. S. Weir, 207, 210
Miura, investigations, 379
Morphine, 300, 345, 351, 352
Mossop, Dr., experiments, 120
Mother Bailey's Quieting Syrup, 310
Munyon's Kidney Cure, 315
Mulford's Predigested Beef, 313
Muscles and alcohol, 33, 103, 124
Musser, Dr. John H., 369, 370
Mussey, Prof. R. D., 12
Nansen and polar expedition, 110
Narcotic drug dangers, 345, 346, 350-355, 357
Nausea, 199
Nerves, 32, 36, 76, 77, 105, 118, 185, 425
Nervous system affected by retention of waste, 115
Neuralgia, 198
New York State Board of Health, 154, 155
Newspapers and whiskey ads., 382
and patent medicine ads, 333
Nichol, Dr., experiments, 120
Nichols, Dr. Jas. R., 136, 138
Nitrite of amyl, 15, 181, 182
Non-alcoholic treatment, 37, 89, 140-233, 258-260, 360
Nurses, abstinence in cholera, 149
Nursing mothers and beer, 234, 426
Nutrition retarded by alcohol, 114
Oatmeal, 197, 235
Oils, essential, non-alcoholic preparation, 134
Opium, 127, 132, 149, 150, 172, 180, 189, 190, 300, 351, 352, 389, 412
Orangeine, 346
Osler, Dr., 158
Oxidations, 408
Oxidation checked by coal-tar drugs, 339, 340, 346
hindered by alcohol, 263
Oxidative powers of liver effected by alcohol, 404
Oxygen, 40, 67, 71, 75, 92, 113, 114, 118, 130, 187, 264
Page, Dr. C. E., on typhoid, 232
Pain after food, 203, 204
Palmer, Dr. A. B., 79, 121-123
Pepper, Cayenne, 147, 188
Pepsin, 62, 64, 173, 176
Peptonic Elixir, 313
Peruna, 312
Peterson, Dr. Frederick, 375
Phagocytes, 271, 272, 374
Pharmacy, non-alcoholic, 132-139
Phenacetine, 300, 339, 340, 346, 354
Physicians need awakening as to evils of alcohol, 379
responsibility for prescribing alcoholic liquor, 358, 359, 388
why they prescribe alcoholics, 291-298
Pneumonia, 40, 75, 85, 192, 200-203, 253, 254, 257, 280,
340, 346, 371, 388
Poheman, Dr. Julius, 200, 201
Poisons, 29, 204-211, 300, 301
Port Wine, 64, 65, 144, 172, 292
Porter, 236
Pregnancy, danger of alcohol in, 203
vomiting in, 199
Packs, hot 194, 202, 213
Panopepton, 313
Paralysis, caused by alcohol, 31, 36
Paregoric, 352
Parkes, 77-79, 100, 102
Patent medicines, 26, 27, 299-334, 350
Preble, Dr. Robert B., 375
Proprietary "Foods", 313, 314
Prostration, 179
Protoplasm and alcohol, 59, 60, 286, 287
Psychical treatment, Cabot, 57
Ptomaine poisoning, 152, 270
Puerperal fever, 229, 290
Pulse and alcohol, 79, 181
Pure Food Law, 299, 300
Putnam, Dr. J. J., 364
Quackery, cause, 337
Quinine, 128, 190, 196, 340, 345
Rattlesnakes, bite of, 210
Recent researches on alcohol, 276-284, 392-409
Reichert, alcohol and snake-bite, 207
Retina, blood-vessels and alcohol, 120, 124
Rheumatism, 211-214, 259, 260, 343
Richardson, Sir B. W., 15, 17, 31, 39, 63, 72, 105, 111,
121, 148, 153, 177, 259, 295-297, 356, 383, 385-387
Ridge, Dr. J. J., 73, 84, 124, 127, 143, 149, 180, 188, 196,
213, 216, 248, 250, 275, 286, 292, 356, 362
Riley, Dr. W. H., 223-227, 423
Ringer and Sainsbury, 80, 119
Ritchie, Dr. J. J., 383
Roberts, Sir W., 176
Robin, 264
Rusby, Dr. H. H., 429
Salicylic acid, 128
Saline injections, 187
solutions, 145
Sartoin Skin Food, 316
Scarlet fever, 91, 248, 337, 373
Schafer's physiology on alcohol, 129
Scientific temperance education, 17, 18
Sedatives, dangers of, 127
Shock, 215, 216
Sight impaired by alcohol, 120
Sleeplessness, 179
Small-pox, 247-250
Smith. Dr. E., 105, 238
Snake-bite, 207, 211
Soft drinks, dangerous, 427
Soldiers, 101, 102, 285
Soothing syrups, 310
Sore nipples, 215
Sore throat, 145
Sphygmograph, 79, 120, 122
Stammreich, investigations, 379
Starch, 116, 129, 130
Stimulant, definition, 118, 222
Stimulants, 105, 177, 179, 186, 188, 190, 194, 237, 338
Stimulation, fallacy of theory,, 385
Stockton, Dr. C. G., 158
Stomach, 32, 60, 63, 87, 293, 425
Strychnia, 222, 365
Strumpel, Prof., on beer, 425
Sudden illness, 217
Sugar, 86-88, 116, 117, 129, 130, 374
Sulphonal, 346, 353
Sunstroke, 217, 218
Switzerland and alcohol deaths, 36
Syncope, 177
Tannin, 124, 152, 164
Taylor's Headache Powders, 346
Tea, 236
Temperance hospitals, 37-53
Tonic Beef, 313
Toxins, 267-269, 406-409
Treves, Sir Frederick, 342, 372
Trudeau, Dr. Edward, 155, 161
Tuberculosis, 35, 154-158
Tetanus, 281, 282
Thompson, Sir Henry, 120
Tinctures, 131-137
Tissue changes, 113-115
waste retarded, 115
Tobacco and alcohol, 212, 343, 413
Todd, Dr. B., 250, 252
Turkish baths, 193, 208, 212, 213
Type-setters and alcohol, 400
Typhoid fever, 219-233, 251, 252, 253, 268, 365, 373, 379
Typhus, 252, 255, 388
Uric acid, 93, 404, 405
Urine and alcohol, 89, 92, 93, 267, 268
Uterine displacements, 163-171
hemorrhage, 180
Van Duyn, Dr. John, 374
Vasomotor nerves, 76, 77, 83
Vegetarian diet for drink crave, 414
Vinol, 314
Vita-Ore, 315
Vomiting, 140, 233
Water, 30, 95, 112, 128, 135, 143, 145, 150-152, 175, 177,
187, 188, 224, 225, 232, 411
Weakness in growing youth, 125, 178
W. Va. Medical Society resolutions, 371
Whisky, 28, 50, 112, 127, 155, 157, 173, 190, 193, 196,
210, 265, 370, 390
Willhite, Dr. O. C., 159
Wine, 13, 31, 64, 65, 109, 110, 117, 123, 125, 141,
176, 236, 325, 417, 424
Wampole's Cod-Liver Oil, 314
Warbasse, Dr. J. P., 375
Waste, retention invites disease, 70
Welch, Dr. W. H., 393
White, Dr. John E., 158
White Haven Sanitarium, 155
White Ribbon Remedy, 414
Wiley, Dr. H. W., 301, 428, 429
Willard, Miss Frances E., 23, 44-47
Williams, Henry Smith, 399
Pink Pills, 315
Willson, alcohol and snake-bite, 211
Winternitz, 184, 185, 225
Wolff, 176
Wollowicz, 77-79, 81
Woodhead, Dr. G. Sims, 211, 276-284, 366, 383
Woods, Dr. Matthew, 364
Wood, Dr. H. C., 119
Zwieback, 175
ERRATA
Page 346, third line from bottom omitted:
The use of cocaine is advancing rapidly in this
[Transcriber's Note: The text was emended to include
the above correction.]
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including obsolete and variant spellings. Obvious
typographical errors in punctuation (misplaced quotes and the like) have
been fixed. Note that the index has _not_ been resorted
alphabetically.Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted below:
page v: typo corrected
Sims Woodhead on immunity--Delearde's[Deléarde's] experiments
page vi: typo corrected
Dr. Knox Bond on Scarlet Fever--Metchinkoff[Metchnikoff] on
white blood-cells--Kassowitz describes his
page vii: typo corrected
to quit drinking--Dr. T. D. Crother's[Crothers'] remedy
page 21: typo corrected
THE WOMAN[']S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION IN OPPOSITION TO
ALCOHOL AS MEDICINE.
page 48: typo corrected
department of the hospital was commissoned[commissioned] to
treat diseases without the use of alcoholic liquids.
page 53: typo corrected
treatment for seven weeks for metorrhagia[metrorrhagia],
nietortes[TN: unsure what this word is] and peritonitis
page 106: typo corrected
who, but for its mistaken use, might have recovered from the
illness affecting then[them].
page 111: typo corrected
or influenced by alcoholism. If the clinical
thermometor[thermometer] shows the temperature to be above
page 129: typo corrected
An editorial in the Journal of the Amercian[American] Medical
Association said:
page 158: typo corrected
E. White, M. D., Medical Director Nordrach Ranch
Sanatorium[Sanitorium], Colorado Springs, Colorado.
page 172: typo corrected
irritant of which the stomach is trying to be rid. Do not arrest
it permaturely[prematurely], but assist it.
page 180
is usually a symptom of trouble somewhere else, often in the
alimentary canal, and[an] overloaded stomach,
page 238: duplicate word removed
which they soon experience in the [the] supply of milk?
page 255: typo corrected
Dr. A. L. Loomis, in the treatmemt[treatment] of 600 typhus
fever cases on Blackwell's Island in 1864, excluded
page 256: typo corrected
These cases include a number of hyterectomies[hysterectomies],
and many cases so desperate that those who trust in alcohol
page 257: aded missing single quote
be called criminal. I certainly feel that punishment would be
just.[']"
page 260: typo corrected
there is less frequent relapse, and there is quicker recovery.
In brief, the experience of treament[treatment] of rheumatic
page 275: typo corrected
therefore, may open the door to fever or erysipelas.' A
similiar[similar] experiment of Doyen confirms this.
page 301: added missing quote
a habit of gaining relief which becomes an obsession and
incapable of being resisted.["]
page 302: added missing quote
harmful only, that so many people profess to have received
benefit from them?["] There are different
page 313: added missing quote
no fatty substances present in these products; their food value
from this point of view is, therefore, _nil_."]
page 314: added missing quote
show any oil. Analysis revealed sugar, alcohol, and glycerine,
none of which is contained in cod-liver oil.["]
page 316: added missing quote
["]Hoff's Consumption Cure consists essentially of sodium
cinnamate and extract of opium, a mixture at one time suggested
page 319: typo corrected
5233 Philadephia[Philadelphia] Porter
page 348: end of quote ambiguous
questions were put replied after careful consideration as
follows: '[could not find ending single quote]Its physiological
action is practically unknown.
page 360: typo corrected
"Dr. Hirschfield[Hirschfeld], a well-known physician of
Magdeburg, Germany, was recently arrested on a charge
page 361: typo corrected
more than upon anything else, to screen it from
opprobium[opprobrium], and just punishment for the evils which
the traffic entails upon
page 381: added missing quote
in their denunciations of the current beliefs concerning alcohol
in medicine.["]--_Journal A. M. A._, January 6, 1900.
page 392: typo corrected
RECENT RESEARCHES UPON ALCOLOL.[ALCOHOL]
page 402: typo corrected
strictly analagous[analogous] to sugar and fats, provided always
that the amount used does not exceed that easily oxidized
page 421: added missing quote
and starve. But the next time they were sick, _I wasn't the
doctor_.["]--"Physician" in Our Federation_.
Throughout the index, typos corrected:
Berkley and Friendenwald[Friedenwald], 279
Delearde[Deléarde], Dr., Pasteur Institute, 279, 284
Fére[Fere], Dr., 203
Grehaut[Gréhant], 288
Hirschfield[Hirschfeld], Dr., 360, 380
International Congress on Alcoholism, London, 1909, 9, 393
" Encyclopædia[Encyclopedia] of Surgery, 209
Lesser, Dr. A. Monae[Monæ], success in treating fevers in Cuban
War, 53
Massert[Massart] and Bordet, leucocytes, 277
Panopeptone[Panopepton], 313
Phenacetin[Phenacetine], 300, 339, 340, 346, 354
Rushy[Rusby], Dr. H. H., 429
Stamreich[Stammreich], investigations, 379
Whiskey[Whisky], 28, 50, 112, 127, 155, 157, 173, 190, 193, 196,
210, 265, 370, 390
Zweiback[Zwieback], 175
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