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