Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - Martha Meir Allen (readict books txt) 📗
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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:—
“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:—
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:—
—— 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
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