Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why Part 23

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 a.s.similative 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 quant.i.ty, 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 quant.i.ty of food eaten, but that which is digested, and a.s.similated, 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 appet.i.te, and good digestion are essential to health and strength. The very best help towards gaining a good appet.i.te 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 appet.i.te. 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 quant.i.ty, and improve the properties of her milk. So far from producing these effects, such drinks, when taken in any quant.i.ty, invariably disturb more or less the health of the stomach, and tend to impair the quality, and diminish the quant.i.ty, 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 b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter, 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 gla.s.s 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 a.n.a.lyses 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 a.s.similable than the adult, who is furnished with strong teeth, and possessed of a fully-grown stomach. The mastication, digestion, and primary a.s.similation 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 a.s.similate the food. The proper course for such women to adopt is a simple and rational one. They should a.s.sist 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 quant.i.ty 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 'h.o.a.re'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 appet.i.tes 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 pract.i.tioner, 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 quant.i.ties of beer for nursing their children, they become perfectly infatuated, and are practically incapable of pa.s.sing 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 quant.i.ty 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 una.s.sailable. I think I might fairly say that among the comfortable middle cla.s.ses 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 appet.i.tes and instincts have been undergoing debas.e.m.e.nt, 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 p.r.o.ne 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 quant.i.ty. With some patients the milk will fall off in quant.i.ty at the end of two or three months. With others, although the quant.i.ty may not fall off, the child seems unsatisfied; and there is a third cla.s.s 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 quant.i.ty, 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 a.s.similated 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 quant.i.ty; 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 quant.i.ty being duly increased--until it has cut almost all its milk teeth, when it may eat bread and b.u.t.ter, 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 quant.i.ties 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 subst.i.tution 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 cla.s.ses 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 quant.i.ty of pure water; while the alcohol it contains, by daily repet.i.tion, induces congestion of the gastric mucous membrane, with disordered gastric and hepatic secretions.

"A case strikingly ill.u.s.trating 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 gla.s.s 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 quant.i.ties 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 anaesthetic 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 Cla.s.s in the Northwestern University Medical School, Dr. Davis told of a case similar to the preceding:--

"The flow of milk in her b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 anaesthetic effect of the alcohol in her beer and gin, just as she would from any anaesthetic or narcotic. And it is equally true that so long as the alcohol is present in her blood it so modifies the hemoglobin and alb.u.minous const.i.tuents, as to diminish the reception and internal distribution of oxygen, and thereby r.e.t.a.r.ds metabolic changes. But the combined influence of the alcohol in r.e.t.a.r.ding 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 a.s.sociation, and from the _Bulletin of the American Medical Temperance a.s.sociation_.

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."