The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1881-04-20
CURES FOR DRUNKENNESS.


not strong enough TO undertake midnight jour
ney to Garden City.
CURES FOR DRUNKENNESS.
Popular Methods for ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
and Their Dangers.
New York SUM-
The methods, both popular and profes
| sional, proposed for the cure of drunken
ness are as many and varied as the phases OF
| the disease itself. But marked increase in
the number of victims-as shown in the
| yearly returns of causes of death-proves
| plainly enough that there is no royal road
out Of the captivity of alcohol
The treatment adopted by most physicians
is TO entirely withhold the exciting cause,
to give nourishing food, neryines and tonics,
and to allow the system free field for the
action of its marvellously active recupera-
tive powers. OF the popular remedies for
the habit-administered for the most part
by the wives, mothers or sisters of the suffer
ers-few achieve any permanent success,
though they may appear for time TO be
working well. Some of these systems of
cure are peculiar in their action, the doses
| being intended TO influence the moral or in
tellectual nature of the drunkard, while
others are expected to cause the stomach to
reject liquor or compel the nervous system
TO abhor it. The more ambitious popular
remedies are designed to intimidate the pa
tient and create a superstitious fear of alco-
hol. The latter is a most illogical remedy,
as it tends, through its severe action on the
nerve centers, to develop the very excite
ment which it is the aim of all treatment
for dipsomania to allay.
Those popular methods are often as harm
less as they are ineffioacious, being of the
kind OF which may be said that if they do
no good they will work no injury. A GER
tain class of them are, however, far from
harmless, while the use of several of the
most popular of these means is intended
with great danger.
Perhaps the most hazardous of all the
remedies FOR drunkenness is the one TO
which the female mind has become most
largely attached, probably because its adj
ministration comes directly within her own
province. 1t is the idea of mixing alcohol
with all of the patients food and drink until
both body and mind repel it, or he becomes
so thoroughly disguised with its taste and
odor as to remain thereafter forever weaned
from il.
That this method is extremely dangerous,
and that is frequently followed by brain af-
fectons and loss of life itself, is unquestion-
able. Where death has supervened, it is
oftener attributed TO the previous drunken
ness than to the remedy, and this Is proba-
bly, the reason why the method has not yet
lost its popularity among those who are UNI
able to trace the course of diseased induced
by drunkenness.
DIR. T. ID. Crothers called attention to the
fact, in recent paper upon the subject that
he received letter from an Ohio physician
in which it is related that lady in his
neighborhood had tried the plan of saturat-
ing the food with alcohol upon ar inebriate
husband. The result was to develop a flu
rious mania after five days of treatment,and
the mans commitment to an Insane Asylum
as a dangerous person.
DIR. Beike, Swedish physician, mas given
an account of this plan as tested in Stock
holm several years ago, although no accu-
rate knowledge of its results appears thus
far to have reached the popular mind
through our periodical literature.
A clergyman in Sweden, who was also
physician and man OF wealth, obtained per-
mission from the authorities to receive in
ebriates in his home for treatment by this
method. Three chronic cases wer put under
his charge The patients were given brandy
in all their food and drink, and were not al
lowed to take any form Of food that was not
saturated with some form of alcohol. Each
patient was given the kind of spirits that he
used commonly, in addition to the brandy.
In the course of two months six patients
were received and treated on this plan. One
of them died two weeks after admission of
apoplexy or cerebral hemorrhage; two de-
veloped into dangerous cases of delirium
tremens and were sent to the Hospital: the
fourth patient became violently delirious
and destructive in his mania, and was COM
mitted to an Insane Asylum: the other two
seemed to have gone on quietly in condition
of semi-stupor or alcoholic narcoTism. The
authorities interfered and the clergyman was
forced to move away to escape persecution
from indignant friends of the patients
In the year 1880 DR.. Brown wrote to the
London Times that he had tried his plan of
treatment for two days, in three cases, but
the effects were so alarming that he gave
it up.
Other physicians, successors to the clergy
man physician of Stockholm have, here and
there, approved of the plan, for DR.. Crothers
tells us that he was once informed by a
physician that the treatment was successful
in lnebriety. 1t is not likely that either
DIR. CrOthers or many other physicians
agreed with him. for cases of successful
treatment by these means are very seldom
reported, and there is not particle of evil
dence to show that the same result might
not have been achieved without employing
them. The evidence showing the great
danger of such treatment is clear and con-
elusive. 1t will be perceived that this
method, if used by really competent
physician, would not be so likely to result
in danger to the patient, as il certainly is
when pursued by the average housewife.
No really competent physician would COR
tinue the treatment after the first indication
of a bad result; the wife would not
understand what conditions constituted
danger.
On the whole, this means of reforming
drunkards should be carefully let alone. 1t
may be added that the advice not unfre-
quently given inebriates to change the form
of the drink used, is stated upon the highest
medical authority to be improper, as such
action is always attended with danger.
American Children.
George Jacob Holyoake in the Cooperative News