Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why

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Allen Martha Meir. Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF ALCOHOL

CHAPTER II. THE WOMAN’S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION IN OPPOSITION TO ALCOHOL AS MEDICINE

CHAPTER III. ALCOHOL AS A PRODUCER OF DISEASE

CHAPTER IV. TEMPERANCE HOSPITALS

CHAPTER V. THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE HUMAN BODY

CHAPTER VI. ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE

CHAPTER VII. ALCOHOL IN PHARMACY

CHAPTER VIII. DISEASES, AND THEIR TREATMENT WITHOUT ALCOHOL

CHAPTER IX. ALCOHOL AND NURSING MOTHERS

CHAPTER X. COMPARATIVE DEATH-RATES WITH AND WITHOUT THE USE OF ALCOHOL AS A REMEDY

CHAPTER XI. REASONS WHY ALCOHOL IS DANGEROUS AS MEDICINE

CHAPTER XII. WHY DOCTORS STILL PRESCRIBE ALCOHOLICS

CHAPTER XIII. ALCOHOLIC PROPRIETARY OR ‘PATENT’ MEDICINES

CHAPTER XIV “DRUGGING.”

CHAPTER XV. TESTIMONIES OF PHYSICIANS AGAINST ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION

CHAPTER XVI. RECENT RESEARCHES UPON ALCOHOL

CHAPTER XVII. MISCELLANEOUS

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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.

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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.

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