Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why Part 36

"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 r.e.t.a.r.der of waste, are all negative. There is no reliable evidence to support these claims, but a constant acc.u.mulation 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, Ma.s.s.

"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 p.r.o.nounced 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.sed among the anaesthetics and poisons, and that the human family would be benefited by its entire exclusion from the field of remedial agents."--DR. J. S. CAIN, Dean of the Faculty, Medical Department, University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn.

"Let me cite my experience in surgery for the last three years in proof of the uselessness of alcohol, and the benefit of abstinence from its administration. During that time I have performed more than one thousand operations, a large portion upon cases of railroad injuries, one hundred for appendicitis, and in none of these was alcohol administered in any form, either before, during, or after operations. I defy any one who still adheres to alcohol to show as good results. Equally gratifying results have been obtained with my medical cases, and I fail to understand how any observing and thinking physician can still cling to so prejudicial a drug as alcohol, when he has within his reach a mult.i.tude 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 pract.i.tioner 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, Ma.s.s.

"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 alb.u.men 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, Schoneseiffen and Roseman.

The uniform result of all these experiments, arrived at by altogether different methods, is that _alcohol does not possess alb.u.men sparing power_; that it even brings about an undoubted breaking down of alb.u.men, and consequently it is entirely unequal to carbohydrates and fat."--DR. JULIAN MARCUSE, a contributing editor of _Die Heilkunde_, a German medical magazine. See issue of July, 1900.

"Thirty years ago the general principle of practice was stimulation. Alcohol was supposed to rouse up and support vital forces in disease. Twenty-three years ago the first practical denial was put into a permanent position in a public hospital in London, where alcohol was seldom or never used. * * * Doctor Richardson's researches showing the anaesthetic nature of alcohol have had a great influence in changing medical practice in England. * * * On the Continent a number of scientific workers have published researches confirming Doctor Richardson's conclusions, and bringing out other facts as to the action of alcohol on the brain and nervous system. These papers and the discussions which followed have been slowly working their way into the laboratory and hospital, and have been tested and found correct, materially changing current opinions, and creating great doubts of the value of alcohol.

"In 1896, the prosecution of Doctor Hirschfeld, a Magdeburg physician, in the German courts, for not using alcohol in a case of septicemia, seemed to be the central point for a new demonstration of the danger of the use of alcohol in medicine.

Doctor Hirschfeld was acquitted on the testimony of a large number of leading physicians from the large hospitals and universities of Europe. It was proved that alcohol was not a remedy which was specifically required in any disease; also that its value was most seriously questioned as a general remedy by many able men, and its subst.i.tution 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.n.a.lyzed the effects of spirits as medicinal agents to check and antagonize disease, and a.s.sert very positively, that alcohol is a dangerous and exceedingly doubtful remedy. Doctor Meyer, of the University of Gottenburg, Doctor Mobius, 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 pract.i.tioners 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sociations on the community at large, would do immeasurable good.

"And the newspapers might aid materially in this beneficent work if, while they continue to spread before our households every day the details of the brawls and fights of drunken men and the horrible murders which they commit, they would discontinue advertising, without warning or dissent, side by side with the atrocities, the 'innocuous beers,' the pure malt whiskies, the genuine brandies, guaranteed to prevent and cure all manner of diseases."

The following testimony from an English physician is significant:--

"Although I know beforehand that their united testimony must be in favor of the practice of total abstinence from all intoxicating drinks, being most conducive to health and longevity of their patients, but very inimical to the pocket interests of themselves, my own experience is, that my teetotal patients are seldom ill, and that they get well very soon again, if they are attacked by disease. A higher principle than that of gain must influence a medical man's mind, or he will never advocate the doctrine of total abstinence."--J. J. RITCHIE, M.

R. C. S., Leek.

"One of the most dangerous phases of the use of alcohol is the production of a feeling of well being in weakly, dyspeptic, irritable, nervous or anaemic patients. In consequence of the temporary relief so obtained, the patient develops a craving for alcohol, which in many cases can end only in one way, and, as I felt compelled to tell an a.s.sembly 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.