Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why

CHAPTER XV.

TESTIMONIES OF PHYSICIANS AGAINST ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION

“In abandoning the use of alcohol it should be clearly understood that we abandon an injurious influence, and escape from a source of disease, as we do when we get into a purer atmosphere. There is not the slightest occasion to do anything, or to take anything to make up for the loss of a strengthening or supporting agent. No loss has been incurred save the loss of a cause of disease and death.” – Dr. J. J. Ridge, of London Temperance Hospital.

Sir. B. W. Richardson, M. D., said of the London Temperance Hospital: —

“No alcohol is administered, and no substitute for it. Any drug with similar action would be bad; warmth and suitable nourishment are relied on to keep up the system. We know that people who take alcohol often feel better; this is from the narcotic action. The pain may be stilled, and the disease forgotten, but it has not been removed; its symptom has been narcotized.”

Another writer says: —

“I am asked for a substitute for brandy, and frankly and gladly I tell you there is no substitute, for I have no knowledge of any agent equally pleasing to the palate, and yet so destructive of life.”

Dr. Norman Kerr, President of the Society for the Study of Inebriety, England, says: —

“My own experience of thirty-four years in the practice of my profession has taught me that in nearly all cases and kinds of disease the medical use of alcohol is unnecessary, and in a large number of instances is prejudicial and even dangerous. Having given an intoxicant, in strictly definite and guarded doses, probably on the whole only about once in 3,000 cases (then usually when nothing else was available in an emergency), and having had most varieties of disease to contend with, my death-rate and duration of illness have been quite as low as my neighbors. The experience of the London Temperance Hospital and other similar institutions, the current reports of that hospital being now reliable scientific records, amply support this experience.

“The chief peril of narcotic drugs has always appeared to me to lie in their disguising the real state of the patient from himself as well as from his doctor and his friends. If there is any serious ailment, such as cholera or fever, the sufferer may seem to be and may feel better. He is not better. He is actually worse – made worse by the alcohol, and not unseldom, after the evanescent alcoholic disguise and deceptive improvement has faded, it is found that the malady itself has been progressing, unseen and unsuspected from the delusive aspect of the alcohol, steadily toward a fatal termination, which might, in many cases, have been averted but for the true state of the patient having been completely masked.

“Wherever the blame really has lain, one thing is now clear, that alcoholic intoxicants are very rarely useful as a medicine; are at the best dangerous remedies; and that, other things being equal, the less they are resorted to the better for the chances of the patient’s recovery, the better for body and brain, the better for physical, intellectual and moral well-being. Alcohol does not nourish, but pulls down; does not stimulate, but depresses; does not strengthen, but excites and exhausts. Alcohol is the pathological fraud of frauds, degenerating while it claims to be reconstructing, enfeebling while it appears to be invigorating, destroying vitality while it professes to infuse new life.”

A medical writer in the Toledo, O., Blade holds up in clear light the relation of the materia medica and alcohol, and the opportunity of the physician to become a benefactor, and active temperance worker. His remarks follow: —

“One of the signs of the times in the temperance movement is the steady growth among physicians of a sentiment against the administration of liquor of any kind as a medicine. The accepted scientific view of alcohol is that it is a poison, and its administration should be as guarded as that of any other poison used as a medicine. Perhaps the hardest thing a physician finds in his effort to restore his patients to health without the use of liquors is the common, but erroneous, belief that they are ‘strengthening,’ and that the convalescent, by their use, reaches recovery more quickly. The error is in supposing that any alcoholic liquor is nourishing, or strengthening. They are neither. Alcohol does not nourish, but it pulls down; it does not strengthen, but excites and exhausts, for every stimulation is necessarily followed by a period of depression, and this is inevitably unfavorable to the patient.

“There is a grave responsibility resting on the physician who prescribes alcoholic liquor. It may arouse in a susceptible patient a dormant, inherited tendency to drink. He may, by authorizing its use during the period of convalescence, fix a habit upon a patient of feeble will, which the latter will never be able to shake off. No physician who realizes this great moral responsibility will be willing to accept it habitually. He certainly knows that the best medical authorities agree that alcoholic intoxicants are rarely useful as a medicine; that at best they are dangerous remedies, and that the less they are resorted to, the better for both brain and body.

“In point of fact the physician who does his duty to his patient teaches him the error of the prevalent belief in the virtues of liquor in restoring the sick to health. He becomes an active temperance worker in effect. And he can do a noble and useful work in the rescue of those who are under the control of the drink habit. * * * * *

“Furthermore, every physician owes it to his profession to teach his patients the utter fallacy of the common belief that alcohol is an article of food value. It has no such value. The use of intoxicants in any quantity whatever, or at any time, is entirely useless and unnecessary. The continued use of them gradually induces structural degradations and functional derangements of the great bodily organs, thus leading to the gravest physical disorders.”

“I have demonstrated by actual experience that no form of alcoholic drink is necessary, or desirable, for internal use, either in health, or any of the varied forms of disease; but that health can be better preserved, and disease more successfully treated, without the use of such drinks.* * * * * Simple truth compels me to say that I have never yet seen a case in which the use of alcoholic drinks either increased the force of the heart’s action, or strengthened the patient. But I could detail very many cases in which the administration of alcoholics was quieting the patient’s restlessness, enfeebling the capillary circulation, and steadily favoring increased engorgement of the lungs and other internal viscera, and thereby hastening a fatal result, where both attending physician and friends thought they were the only agents that were keeping the patient alive.

“I have found no case of disease and no emergency arising from accident, that I could not treat more successfully without any form of fermented or distilled liquors than with. It is easy to see that the anæsthetic properties of alcohol can be made available by an intelligent and skillful physician to meet a very limited number of indications in the treatment of some cases that will come before him. But the same intelligence and skill will enable him to select other remedies capable of meeting the same indications more perfectly, and, with less tendency to secondary bad effects. I have no hesitation, therefore, in stating that for the attainment of the highest degree of success in the management of all forms of disease, whether acute or chronic, we need no form of fermented, or distilled, alcoholic drinks. And whoever will boldly make the trial, will find that his patients, of every kind, will make better progress, on good air and simple nourishment, without any admixture of alcoholic liquids, than they will with such addition. In other words he will find that the supposed benefits of this class of agents in medicine, are as illusory as they are in general society, and that the words of the wise man are worthy of careful consideration when he says: ‘Wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.’” – Dr. N. S. Davis, Chicago, Ill.

“Dr. Hirschfeld, a well-known physician of Magdeburg, Germany, was recently arrested on a charge of malpractice. The specific charge was that he had refused to give alcohol to one of his patients who was supposed to need it. The doctor, like the more advanced German physicians, is discarding liquor from his practice, and made such a hot defence to the charge that the court not only discharged the physician, but assessed the cost of the defense against the prosecution.” —Bulletin of A. M. T. A.

Dr. Greene, of Boston, when addressing his brethren and sisters of the medical association in that city, upon alcohol, said in closing: —

“It needs no argument to convince you that it is upon the medical profession, to a very great extent, that the rum-seller depends to maintain the respectability of the traffic. It requires only your own experience, and observations, to convince you that it is upon the medical profession, upon their prescriptions and recommendations for its use upon many occasions, that the habitual dram-drinker depends for the seeming respectability of his drinking habits. It is upon the members of the medical profession, and the exceptional laws which it has always demanded, that the whole liquor fraternity depends, more than upon anything else, to screen it from opprobrium, and just punishment for the evils which the traffic entails upon society; and it is because the rum-seller, and the rum-drinker, hide under this cloak of seeming respectability that they are so difficult to reach either by moral suasion, or by law. Physicians generally have only to overcome the force of habit, and the prevailing fashion in medicine, to find an excellent way, when they will all look back with wonder and surprise, that they, as individuals, and members of an honored profession, should have been so far compromised.”

“It will be asked, Was there no evidence of any good service rendered by the agent in the midst of so much obvious bad service? I answer to that question that there was no such evidence whatever, and is none.” – Sir B. W. Richardson.

“A prominent general practitioner expressed surprise that any one could do without alcohol in general medicine. He was persuaded to make a trial, by abandoning the internal use of spirits as medicine. A year afterward he wrote that his success in the treatment of disease had been equal to that of any year in the past, and that his cases recovered as well without alcohol as with it. In a recent medical meeting he remarked, ‘I thought for many years that I could not do without spirits as medicine. I was mistaken. I am constantly treating cases of all degrees of severity without alcohol, and my success is fully equal to the average.’” —Quarterly of A. M. T. A.

“Happily, the belief in alcohol is passing away.” – Dr. C. R. Francis, late Professor of Medicine, Calcutta Medical College.

Dr. Moor, the distinguished editor of the Pacific Record, says: —

“While the use of alcohol is always injudicious and injurious, it is particularly so in summer, when the system is predisposed to disturbances of the gastro-intestinal tract.

“Alcohol flushes the capillaries of the mucous membranes just as it does the capillaries of the skin, and where there is already a smouldering congestion, it will take but little to light the fire of acute inflammation, which will rage with greatly increased intensity.

“It is wiser to habitually avoid even the medicinal use of alcohol, as there are plenty of other stimulants which will give the desired results without entailing any disastrous after effects.”

“All the pleasant sensations of increased mental and physical power, which the use of alcohol produces, are deceptive and arise from the paralysis of the judgment and the momentary benumbing of the sense of fatigue which afterwards returns so imperiously with perhaps even greater intensity.” – Prof. Adolf Fick, of Wurzburg.

Dr. Frank Payne, vice-president of the London Pathological Society, says: —

“Alcohol is a functional and tissue poison, and there is no proper or necessary use for it as a medicine.”

“When I first heard that there was going to be a total abstinence hospital, I thought it would be a complete failure. That was because I had been taught as a student to regard alcohol as absolutely necessary in the treatment of disease. Nevertheless I was an abstainer myself. When I was asked to join as physician, I did not consent without a good deal of consideration, and then only on the understanding that if I thought a person needed it, I should be allowed to administer alcohol. I remember the first case of severe typhoid fever I had. He was hovering between life and death, and I was anxiously watching to see whether it would be necessary to give alcohol, but the man made a good recovery without it. After watching many cases to whom I should have given alcohol if I had been treating them elsewhere, I came to the conclusion that I had been completely deluded. I gave it at one time to a woman in the Hospital who was in a dying condition, but it did not save her. I do not think I am likely to administer alcohol again. We have had progress and efficiency in the Hospital. It has been like an experiment for the profession, and our success shows that this giving of alcohol is certainly a matter for re-consideration for the medical profession. I believe that they are mistaken. There is no doubt that the amount of alcohol used in other hospitals has diminished greatly, compared with what was used in the past. To the outside public also this Hospital is an example. I believe that an immense number of the public have been teetotalers some time in their lives, but a great many of them have gone back to the drink in time of illness, because they have been advised to do so. This Hospital is a standing witness that disease and surgical injuries can be treated without alcoholic liquors.” – Dr. J. J. Ridge, of London Temperance Hospital.

“I find very little use for alcohol in the practice of medicine. Where there is one element of good in alcohol there are thousands that are bad.” – Dr. Alfred Mercer, Syracuse, N. Y., Professor of Medicine in Syracuse Medical School.

“Alcohol is rarely necessary. Other remedies are much more efficacious. In my department of the University of Buffalo I follow Cushny, who claims that alcohol is a poison, a depressant in direct proportion to the amount ingested, and a so-called false food.” – Dr. De Witt H. Sherman, Adjunct Professor of Therapeutics, University of Buffalo Medical Department.

“I believe that alcohol is the greatest foe to the human race to-day. I feel that it would not be a serious harm if its use as a medicine were totally discontinued.” – Dr. Walter E. Fernald, Professor in Tufts Medical School, Boston, Mass.

“I rarely or never prescribe alcohol as a medicament or a food, or sanction its use as a beverage. Physiologically I look upon alcohol as a narcotic, with perhaps a primary stimulating effect, but I believe that such desired action as it is capable of producing can be equally well brought about by other agents. As a beverage the use of alcohol, particularly in excess, is attended with definite and well-known dangers.” – Dr. A. A. Eshner, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates in Medicine.

“I agree with you altogether in your agitation against the use of alcohol in any form. I believe that wine is a mocker, and belief in wine as a benefit, mockery.” – Dr. Matthew Woods, Philadelphia, Pa.

“It is extremely seldom that I ever advise the use of alcohol in any form for my patients.” – Elliott P. Joslin, M. D., Professor in Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

“My belief is that there is very little need of the medical use of alcohol. I almost never use it in my practice, and think that its use by practitioners generally is far less than it was a few years ago.” – Dr. E. G. Cutler, Professor in Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

“I believe that the trend of teaching in the Harvard Medical School has been growing less favorable, of late years, to the use of alcohol in the treatment of disease, and in fact it is far less used than it was a generation ago.” – Dr. James J. Putnam, Professor in Harvard Medical School.

“My personal opinion in regard to the use of alcoholic drinks is very decidedly averse to such use. I have long been of the opinion that while the use of alcohol may restrain tissue metamorphosis, it cannot legitimately be considered a food.” – Dr. William O. Stillman, Albany Medical College, Albany, N. Y.

“I do not think you will meet with very many physicians who favor alcohol and its use. I believe the trend of the teaching in the Albany Medical College is that alcohol is not a food or stimulant.” – Dr. A. Vander Veer, Albany, N. Y., Medical School.

“I think the medical profession could get along perfectly well without the use of alcohol, except as it is needed in the manufacture of drugs. As a therapeutic agent, it has very little value. I do not suppose I have used a pint of alcohol in the last ten years. I think the tendency of the medical profession throughout the country is to give up alcohol in the treatment of disease.” – Dr. Matthew D. Mann, Dean of the Medical Department of the University of Buffalo, N. Y.

“I very seldom prescribe alcohol as a medicine, and think its effects are positively harmful in the vast majority of medical cases.” – Dr. Allen A. Jones, Adjunct Professor of Medicine, Buffalo, N. Y.

“At the Baptist Hospital I have not ordered alcohol for a patient in several years. At the Massachusetts General Hospital, in the out-patient department, I never prescribe it.” – Dr. Richard Badger, of Harvard Medical School, Boston.

“Alcohol is used much too freely in the treatment of the sick, especially in such conditions as mild typhoid fever, neurasthenia and early tuberculosis. It should be prescribed only when there is definite indication for it, and then in definite dose for a limited period in the same manner as any other powerful and potentially harmful drug.” – Dr. S. S. Cohen, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia.

“It is seldom necessary to prescribe alcohol as a medicine.” – Dr. James B. Herrick, Professor of Medicine in Rush Medical College, Chicago.

“As I have said but little about the use of medicine in the treatment of typhoid fever, save for one symptom, I may add, for the purpose of definiteness, that I use none except for special symptoms. The rare exceptions are stimulants such as strychnia, in less marked indications coffee. Alcohol as a routine drug I have entirely abandoned, having found that the doses formerly given before or after the bath are altogether unnecessary. Hot milk internally, or hot water bags externally, more than replace spirits according to my experience.” – Dr. George Dock, New Orleans.

“I have no use for alcohol, either personally, or in my practice. Yet I cannot say that I have entirely abolished it. Alcohol is used in compounding most of our tinctures, but in remedies proper my experience has been that other stimulants, such as ammonia, strychnine, caffeine, kolafra, etc., answer the same purpose without alcohol’s dangerous effects. In my practice, which is confined to surgery, I find very, very little use for it. During the past year, in extreme cases, I used it in hypodermic injections, and afterwards felt that ether, or ammonia would have answered the same purpose. I think, in general practice, physicians are dispensing with alcohol more and more, but perhaps unconsciously.” – D. W. B. De Garmo, Professor of surgery in Post-Graduate Hospital, New York City.

“Medicine, to-day, would be in a more satisfactory condition if the use of alcohol as a medicine had been interdicted a hundred years ago, and the interdict had remained to the present day. The benefits derived from its use are so small (even when they can be proved, which is much more rarely the case than most people imagine), and the advantages gained are so slight, that they are completely outweighed when we set against them the evil that has been wrought by the abuse of alcohol, and that has arisen out of the loose methods of prescription that have obtained, and even still obtain, in regard to this drug.” – Dr. G. Sims Woodhead, F. R. C. P., F. R. S., Director of the Research Laboratories of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, London.