The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1889-06-26
soN.ALCoHoLIc MEDICATION.
What Temperance Hospitals Have Taught
Concerning the Cure Of Disease.


A correspondent asks: What have |
temperance hospitals taught concern
Ing the cure Of diseases without al
ooholP and the editor Il the Advance
desires me to answer.
The London Temperance Hospital
began this teaching fourteen years
ago. 1t is in charge of DR.. James
Edmunds, a careful, conservative
physician. 1t opened with no flourish
of trumpets nor any assertions as to
what it would do 1t simply pro-
posed not to use alcohol as remedy,
unless deemed necessary because all
other remedies failed. 1t is situated
in the heart of London, and takes all
cases that naturally come to q great
city hospital, including the accident
and emergency cases for which the
use OF alcohol is usually deemed
necessary. During those fourteen
years it has received and treated over
10000 cases. In only five of them
have alcoholics been used, and in
these instances results proved no
more successful than where the RENE
dies ordinarily employed in the
hospital we're used. The rate OF
mortality was only five and eight
tenths per cent, which is four and
five-tenths per cent lower than in any
other London hospital taking the
same class OF patients. Especial at
tention has been paid to typhoid fever
cases, as the conviction is very deep
seated that these must have brandy,
whisky or other alcoholics. The
typhoid wards quite unexpectedly
showed results strongly supporting
the theory Of non-alcoholic medica-
ton. the ratio Of recoveries as COM
pared with those in hospitals where
alcoholics are used being even greater
than was shown in the general aver
age.
Another good result is noted: OF
the 10000 patients treated in the
London Temperance Hospital, more
than 10000 were more or less
addicted to the use Of strong drink.
While in the hospital they were free
from it entirely; the taste for it was
not kept alive and pampered as in al
coholic medication. by daily or hourly
doses of liquor; thus the system was
purged of the poison. This, added to
their appreciation of the good effects
of non-alcoholic medication, led many
to become total abstainers.
The records Of this hospital also tes-
tify to the fact that the use of liquor
subtracts from the life force and rem
ders the patient more liable to succumb
to disease. In fatal cases there were
fully twenty per cent. more deaths
among the n-abstainers than among
teototalers. Every visitation of the
cholera, the yellow fever or Of any
other great plague, demonstrates the
same fact.
The National Temperance Hospital
at Chicago has not yet been established
long enough to teach with the sanna
!. authority, but its teachings are ID 3hs
same direction. Especially has. II
proved that in cases OF collapse prep
arations of ammonia can be used with
much better effect than alcoholics, re-
suits being secured more quickly and
certainly. and the after effects being
much better, there being no danger
Gus reaction. as is often the case when
resort has been had to alcohol, the
paralyzer. For the world is coming
to understand that alcohol is always
and everywhere depressant. and
never stimulant, as it has so long
claimed to be.
What substitutes can be used in itl
placer is asked. For fainting and
shock, ten drops OF aqua ammonia well
diluted in water; this may be repeated
in ton minutes, If necessary. For ex
haustion, hot milk, tea, coffee or souT
will give better results than alcohol.
For collapse, ten drops of aqua am
monia in hot milk, given in small
quantities every few minutes will
p owe efficacious. Florence Nightin
gale, in her Notes on Nursing, recon.
mends hot tea very strongly. Sht
says that in the Crimean hospitals sh,
directed the nurses to give cup o
hot tea to the weakest patients abou
three o'clock in the morning, the tim,
when vital forces run lowest and NOR,
patients die than at any other hour O
the twenty-tOur. This she feels as
sured, tided many patient over tn,
turning-point, who without it would
have died.
DR.. Nathan S. Davis, the Nestor o
American physicians, testifies that TO
over thirty years he has tested tn,
efficacy Of non-alcoholic medication
, and has found no case Of disease all,
no emergency arising from acciden
that he could not treat more success
fully without any form of fermente'
or distilled liquor than with it. Ii
the Journal OF the American Medica
Association, December 81, 1887. h
says:
I'm typhoid fever, with iodine as Q scners
alterant and antiseptic to counterfeit the molec
ular degeneration in the tissues and tn
HOOD, and the choice Of cardiac and vas(
motor tonics from the class Of remedies rey
! resented by coffee. tea, strychnia, carbonas
, ammonia, ETC., according to the special SYM
toms Of each case, and viglant attention I
the local complications that are, in man
cases. more dangerous to the patient than u
, general disease, with an equally vgilant after