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Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why
Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why / What Medical Writers Say
INTRODUCTION
This book is the outcome of many years of study. With the exception of a few quotations, none of the material has ever before appeared in any book. The writer has been indebted for years past to many of the physicians mentioned in the following pages for copies of pamphlets and magazines, and for newspaper articles, bearing upon the medical study of alcohol. Indeed, had it not been for the kindly counsels and hearty co-operation of physicians, she could never have accomplished all that was laid upon her to do as a state and national superintendent of Medical Temperance for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She is also under obligation for helps received from the secretaries of several State Boards of Health, and from eminent chemists and pharmacists.
The object of the book is to put into the hands of the people a statement of the views regarding the medical properties of alcohol held by those physicians who make little, or no use of this drug. In most cases their views are given in their own language, so that the book is, of necessity, largely a compilation.
It is hoped that while the laity may be glad to peruse these pages because of the very useful and interesting information to be obtained from them, the medical profession, also, may be pleased to find, in brief form, the teachings of some of their most distinguished brethren upon a question now frequently up for discussion in society meetings.
The writer does not presume to set forth her own opinions upon a question which is still a subject of dispute among the members of a learned profession; she simply culls from the writings of those members of that profession who, having made thorough examination of the claims of alcohol, have decided that this drug, as ordinarily used, is more harmful than beneficial, and that medical practice would be upon a higher plane, were it driven entirely from the pharmacopœia.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
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.
The writer wishes here to make grateful acknowledgment of courtesies received from busy physicians who have aided materially in her work by answering personal letters of inquiry, also letters published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, by kindness of the editor. Especially would she thank those professors of medicine and superintendents of large hospitals, who so courteously aided her in preparing a paper for the International Congress on Alcoholism, held in London, July, 1909, to which she was a delegate, representing the United States government. A few of the replies received at that time are given in this book. There was not room for all.
She wishes also to acknowledge kindness and much help received from pharmacists and druggists in the fight against dangerous patent medicines and drug drinks sold at soda fountains. The Druggists’ Circular, of New York, deserves special mention in this connection.
It has been necessary to make many changes in this edition because of the changing views on alcohol and the publicity on patent medicines. Physicians will find Chapter XVI entirely new, and of great interest.
M. M. A.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF ALCOHOL
The only intoxicating drinks known to the ancients were wines and beers. That these were used for medicinal as well as beverage purposes is evident from sacred and secular history. About the tenth century of the Christian era, an Arabian alchemist discovered the art of distillation, by which the active principle of fermented liquors could be drawn off and separated. To the spirit thus produced the name alcohol was given. A plausible reason cited for this name is that the Arabian for evil spirit is Al ghole, and the effects of the mysterious liquid upon men suggested demoniacal possession.
Medical knowledge at this time was very limited: there was no accurate way of determining the real nature of the new substance, nor its action upon the human system. It could be judged only by its seeming effects. As these were pleasing, it was supposed that a great medical discovery had been made. The alchemists had been seeking a panacea for all the ills to which flesh is heir, indeed for something which would enable men even to defy Death, and the subtle new spirit was eagerly proclaimed as the long-looked-for cure-all, if not the very aqua vitæ itself. Physicians introduced it to their patients, and were lavish in their praises of its curative powers. The following is quoted from the writings of Theoricus, a prominent German of the sixteenth century, as an example of medical opinion of alcohol in his day: —
“It sloweth age, it strengtheneth youth, it helpeth digestion, it cutteth phlegme, it cureth the hydropsia, it healeth the strangurie, it pounces the stone, it expelleth gravel, it keepeth the head from whirling, the teeth from chattering, and the throat from rattling; it keepeth the weasen from stiffling, the stomach from wambling, and the heart from swelling; it keepeth the hands from shivering, the sinews from shrinking, the veins from crumbling, the bones from aching, and the marrow from soaking.”
Being a medicine, which very rapidly creates a craving for itself, the demand for it became enormous, and, as time advanced, people began prescribing it for themselves, until its use both as medicine and beverage became almost general.
If the medical profession is responsible for the wide-spread belief that alcoholics are of service to mankind both as food and medicine, it should not be forgotten that it is to members of the same profession the world is indebted for the correction of these errors. All down through the centuries there have been physicians who doubted and opposed its claims to merit. It remained for the medical science of the latter half of the nineteenth century to clearly demonstrate with nicely adjusted chemical apparatus and appliances the wisdom of these doubts.
The scientific study of the effects of alcohol upon the human body began about sixty years ago. The first American investigator was Dr. Nathan S. Davis, of Chicago, who was the founder of the American Medical Association. During the months of May, June, July, September and October, 1848, Dr. Davis published in the Annalist, a monthly medical journal of New York City, a series of articles controverting the universal opinion that alcoholic drinks are warming, strengthening and nourishing. In 1850 he executed an extensive series of experiments to determine the effects of a diet exclusively carbonaceous (starch), one exclusively nitrogenous (albumen), and alcohol (brandy and wine), on the temperature of the living body; on the quantity of carbonic acid exhaled; and on the circulation of the blood. The results of these investigations were embodied in a paper read before the American Medical Association in May, 1851. They showed that alcohol, instead of increasing animal heat, and promoting nutrition and strength, actually produced directly opposite effects, reducing temperature, the amount of carbonic acid exhaled, and the muscular strength. So opposed were these conclusions to the generally accepted teachings of the day that the Association did not refer the paper to the committee of publication. It was published later in the Northwestern Medical and Surgical Journal.
In 1854 Dr. Davis published one of the most remarkable of the numerous works which have come from his prolific pen; it was entitled, “A Lecture on the Effects of Alcoholic Drinks on the Human System, and the Duty of Medical Men in Relation Thereto.” This lecture was delivered in Rush Medical College, Chicago, on Christmas, 1854. An appendix to the work contained a full account of the series of original experiments which the author had been conducting in relation to the effect of alcohol upon respiration and animal heat, and gave the same conclusions as those presented before the A. M. A. several years previously. These experiments laid the foundation for the scientific study of the physiological effects of alcohol; and their bearing upon the study of the temperance question can even yet scarcely be appreciated. They were the first experiments which showed conclusively that the effect of alcohol is not that of a stimulant, but the opposite.
In 1855 Prof. R. D. Mussey, of Vermont, read an able paper before the American Medical Association upon “The Effects of Alcohol in Health and Disease," in which he said, “So long as alcohol retains its place among sick patients, so long will there be drunkards.”
In England as early as 1802, Dr. Beddoes pointed out the dangers attendant upon the social and medical use of intoxicating drinks, laying stress upon “The enfeebling power of small portions of wine regularly drunk.” In 1829 Dr. John Cheyne, Physician General to the forces in Ireland said: —
“The benefits which have been supposed from their liberal use in medicine, and especially in those diseases which are vulgarly supposed to depend upon mere weakness, have invested these agents with attributes to which they have no claim, and hence, as we physicians no longer employ them as we were wont to do, we ought not to rest satisfied with the mere acknowledgment of error, but we ought also to make every retribution in our power for having so long upheld one of the most fatal delusions that ever took possession of the human mind.”
Dr. Higginbotham, F. R. S., of Nottingham, a keen and able clinical practitioner, abandoned the prescription of alcohol in 1832, saying: —