The Coconino weekly sun., 1895-11-07
PAINFUL MISTAKES.
Sick People Sometimes Thought to bs
 Drunkards.

Sick People Sometimes Thought to b0
 Drunkards.
 Cases are, unfortunately. only too frequent where serious illness has been mistaken for intoxication. and where the sufferer has been taken to the sta. tion house instead of to the hospital mistake that has resulted more than once in loss of life. In fact, there are cases where all the skill of trained physician is required to tell whether man is or is not under the influence of liquor. In an article bearing the above heading The Hospital discusses this subject as follows:
 Roughly, we may say that the com monly accepted signs by which the man in the staeet recognizes the ef- fects of alcohol are unsteady gait, i'm coherent speech, extravagant behavior and drowsy helplessness. Doubtless any one of these coming on suddenly in one who, up to the moment, had been as other men, would excite sus- picion of disease. But the spectators do not see the beginning of the case. Till man is helpless or obstreperous I Out tiGtiC hobiCC 10 tdhCh oA iAo vuSo- ries, and in ninety-nine cases out of hundred the decision must be arrived at from the actual condition visible to the eye, and diagnosis is net always easy on such imperfect evidence.
 ''The first and most obvious signs of drunkenness are those dependent on unsteadiness of gait. From the street boys point of view, these are always productive of hilarity, and even the better instructed are apt to look on in- ability to walk straight as conclusive; and yet how many maladies produce the same condition. Many man in the early stages of locomotor ataxy has lost his character from his ten defcy to stagger in the dark. Then those conditions which go by the name of Meniere's disease may closely initiate the effects of drink. To the sufferer, when the parox- ysm comes on the sensation is of violent noises in the ear, accompanied by feeling of being whirled through space, or as if the road, the houses and everything in sight were flying in large circles round about him, and no wonder that he seizes the nearest lamp post or sinks down sick and helpless on the pave- ment, clutching for security anything within his reach. To the bystander. however, he is picture of the most abject drunkenness.
 The writer here reminds us that not only organic disease, but simple indigestion or headache may produce effects that simulate drunkenness. Ho goes on.
 "People sometimes also unknowing> ly take drugs which have the same eff. feet. In both these cases speech also may be affected, and explanation may be difficult. Disorder of speech. how. ever, is usually connected with more serious disease, and man with . small hemorrhage on his brain may stagger in speech as well as with his legs, and may be run i'm as drunk when his very life depends on proper treatment. The same may happen after injury of the skull. A man. full of drink, may in a street row receive blow which causes fracture of the skull, but he may not drop. He may walk away far from any evidence of riot, and then sit down, and, becoming coma tose, may be taken to the station as being dead drunk. And here, if there be no obvious wound, everything is against him. The smell of his breath condemns him to the police cell instead of the hospital ward, and only at the post-mortem is it found that his skull is broken and that the pressure on his brain might have been relieved. Such cases as this occur almost every month. But, in fact. in the diagnosis of drunk. enness the possibilities of error are endless. Poison, uremia, post-epi. leptic states, the excited stages of general paralysis, sudden out breaks of mania, the occurrence of diabetic coma, the onset of acute febrile disease, and even mere exhaustion and fatigue may all pro- duce symptoms stimulating the effects of drink. We can not, then, too strongly emphasize the necessity of medical examination whenever there can be the slightest doubt whether a man is drunk or sober, nor can we too strongly urge any medical man who is called to such case to be wary in his dealings with it, to distrust first in- pressions, to enter into all the symp- toms, however plain the case may seem, and to remember the endless pitt falls in the way of nasty diagnosis.- Literary Digest.
 Billiards the sport of Queens.
 There are many houses, both in this country and abroad, where the ladies