Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine. Martha Meir Allen

      Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Battle Creek, Mich.: "Every organ feels the effect of the abuse through indulgence in alcohol, and no function is left undisturbed. By degrees, disordered function, through long continuance of the disturbance, induces tissue change. The most common form of organic or structural disease due to alcohol is fatty degeneration, which may effect almost every organ in the body. ***** No class of persons are so subject to nervous diseases due to degeneration of nerves and nerve-centres as drinkers. Partial or general paralysis, locomotor ataxia, epilepsy and a host of other nervous disorders, are directly traceable to the use of alcohol."

      One of the visiting physicians of Bellevue Hospital, New York, states that at least two-thirds of all the diseases treated there originated in drink.

      Dr. W. A. Hammond: "It is of all causes most prolific in exciting derangements of the brain, the spinal cord, and the nerves,"

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      CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      TEMPERANCE HOSPITALS.

      THE LONDON TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL.

      In 1865 Dr. S. Nicholls, medical officer of the Longford Poor-law Union, published a report of the results of non-alcoholic treatment of disease as practiced by him for sixteen years in the institutions under his control. The figures for 1865 were:—

	ADMITTED.		RECOVERED.		DIED.
Fever,	142		135		7
Scarlatina,	33		30		3
Small-pox,	48		47		1
Measles,	8		8		0
	231		220		11

       The treatment was altogether without wines, spirits or alcohol in any form.

      The death-rate reported by Dr. Nicholls was so small that some of the more observing and progressive physicians were led by it to begin similar experiments in the disuse of alcohol in other hospitals. Among these was Dr. James Edmunds, senior physician at the Lying-in Hospital, London. The experiments continued a year with a reduced ​death-rate among both mothers and children. But the great brewers of London, who contributed largely to the support of this hospital raised such a storm of opposition to the discontinuance of alcoholic liquors that the experiments had to be abandoned.

      The establishment of a temperance hospital was now suggested, and in October, 1873, a temporary institution was opened in Gower Street, accommodating only seventeen in-patients at one time. Later a fine site was secured on Hampstead Road, and in 1881 the east wing and centre were opened by the Lord Mayor of London. In 1885 the west wing was finished, and the opening ceremonies conducted by the Bishop of London.

      At the time of the launching of this enterprise, wine and spirits were literally "poured into" sick persons, with frightful results. Death-rates were enormous. The success of the Temperance Hospital has no doubt had much to do in modifying this abuse. Its death-rate, on an average, has been only 6 per cent, throughout the years since its beginning. This is lower than that of any other general hospital in London, and certainly proves conclusively that alcohol is not necessary in the treatment of disease. The physicians connected with it have been men of eminence in the profession, such as Dr. James Edmunds, Dr. J. J. Ridge and Sir B. W. Richardson.

      The visiting staff is not compelled to pledge disuse of alcohol, but is required to report if it is used. ​During all these years it has been given only seventeen times, then almost entirely in surgical cases, and in nearly all of these a fatal result proved it to be useless. The patients who are restored to health leave without having had aroused or implanted in them a desire for alcoholic liquors, neither have they been taught to regard them as valuable aids to the recovery of health and strength. On the contrary, there have been many who have come in, suffering from this delusion, who have had it thoroughly dispelled, both by their own experience and the experience of their fellow patients.

      Sir B. W. Richardson took charge of this hospital from 1892 until his death in 1897. In his report in 1893 he said:—

      "I remember quite well when according to custom, I should have prescribed alcohol in all those cases that were not actually inflammatory (speaking of diseases of the alimentary system); but I never remember having seen such quick and sound recoveries as those which have followed the non-alcoholic method."

      The following selection showing points of practice in this hospital is taken from the same report:

      "For medicinal purposes, we are as free as possible from all complexity. We use glycerine for making what may be called our tinctures, and in my clinique I am introducing a series of 'waters'—aqua ferri, aqua chloroformi, aqua opii, aqua quinas, and so on—to form the menstruums of other active drugs when they are called for. I also follow the plan of having the medicines administered with a free quantity of water, and with as accurate a dosage as can be obtained, for I agree with Mr. ​Spender's original proposition that the administration of medicines in comparatively small and frequent doses is more effective and useful than the more common plan of large doses given at long intervals.

      "I treat many cases by inhalation, and for this end I use oxygen in a new and, I hope, efficient manner. I make oxygen gas a medium for carrying other volatile substances that admit of being inhaled with it. The mode is very simple. ***** In the pneumonic and bronchial cases the treatment has been of the simple and sustaining kind. The medicines that have been given during the acute febrile stages have been chiefly liquor ammoniæ acetatis and carbonate of ammonia in small and frequently repeated doses. The patients have all been well and carefully fed on the milk and middle diet until convalescence was declared. In some of the more extreme instances, where there was fear of collapse from separation of fibrine in the heart or pulmonary artery, ammonia has been given freely according to the method I have for so many years inculcated. I have also in cases of depression under which fibrinous separation is so easily developed, lighted on a mode of administering ammonia which combines feeding with the medicine. I direct that a three or five-grain tabloid of bicarbonate of ammonia shall be dissolved in a cup of coffee or of coffee with milk, and be taken by the patient in that manner. The coffee can be sweetened with sugar if that is desired by the patient, and the ammonia can be so administered without any objectionable taste to the beverage. After what is called the crisis in acute pneumonia, I administer very little medicine of any kind; I trust rather to careful feeding with an occasional alterative or expectorant, as may be required. *****I am satisfied that no aid I could have derived from alcoholic stimulants, as they are called, could have bettered my results. I feel