The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1884-05-02
A New and Wholesome Doctrine.
Not newer however than the old say
ing of an old poet who in ridicule Of
many prescriptions of physic, asks:

many prescriptions Oh physlc, asks:
land what at last shall gain by these?
Only a costlier disease.
That which makes us have no need
Of physic, that's physic indeed!'
Alcohol and its compounds certainly
will not fall under this class of physic.
and it is pleasant thing to note that
the Boston Journal of Chemistry and
Popular Science Meas in its April issue
comes out editorially in the statement
that spirituous liquors are not needed
in medicine or the arts. Not that alco-
hol may not be sometimes convenient,
or even useful, but is not indispensable
or necessary in the two great depart
ments where it has hitherto been regard
ed as the one accessible vehicle for the
processes of chemistry or the solution of
drugs. The article in question also de-
cides that no necessity of household or
domestic applications of alcohol exists;
that the alcoholic solutions of camphor,
peppermint, paregoric and the tinctures
once found on the top pantry shelf or
in the family medicine chest are RENE
dial agents of very doubtful efficacy;
that camphor as drug is not needed
in any household save as an insecticide;
that hot or cold water serve the pur-
pose of an embrocation far better than
alcohol that even the bay rum of the
toilet table is useless appendage.
AS to the need of alcohol in the drug
store, this high authority maintains
that it is no longer needed to hold the
active principles of opium, Peruvian
bark, or other drugs and vegetable
products-the most effective Of these,
like quassia, gentian, SIENNA, rhubarb,
ETC., yielding their benefcence to
water as easily as to alcohol. And
since the active alkaloidal and
resinoidal principles of roots, barks and
gums have been isolated, and put in
better and more convenient forms,
there is no longer need of alcoholic
tinctures and elixirs.
In the laboratory, the question "'How
to dispense with alcohol may be not
so easily disposed of, yet even here,
says the writer in the Popular Science
NeaOs, if the article were banished en-
tirely, such exile would not deprive us
of single one of the indispensable
agents which modern civilization de-
mands; neither would chemical science
be retarded by its loss.
Modern science has given us glycer-
inc, naptha and sulphat of carbon, car
bolic acid and a hundred other agents
which can take the place of alcohol in
a very large number of appliances and
processes. In the manufacture of ether
and chloroform, where alcohol is most
indispensable, it may be produced
simultaneously with these agents.
For the naturalist, cheaper and equal
ly good material for preserving his
specimens have already come into use.
Neither city nor household depend
longer on alcohol for purpose of il
Elimination. The petroleum well and
the coal-bed have driven it from the
market.
The dictum of medical science is fast
being pronounced against the wines and
liquors of commerce as medical agents.
and in all cases of disease when an
ancoholic stimulant would seem bene-
fetal other agents are now offered to
the practitioner which serve an equally
useful purpose, and have none of the
evils of the alcohol train. The result
of scientific researches are on our side.
The experiment of medical practice
entirely without alcohol has been sue
cessfully carried Oh in the London Tenn
perance Hospital for seven years, and is
now no longer experiment but scientific
theory Union sigma.