Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1896-08-10
w. c. T. u. COLUMN.
God and Home and Native Land
DECLINE OF ALCOHOL As 4
MEDICINE.

coming thing of the past. Ten
years ago leading medical men and
text books spoke of stimulants as es-
sentlals of many diseases, and de-
Tended their use with warmth and
positiveness. Today this is changed.
Medical men seldom refer to spirits
as remedies, and when they do ex-
press great conservatism and caution
The textbooks show the same
changes, although some dogmatic
authors refuse to recognize the
change of practice, and still cling to
the idea of the food value of spirits.
Druggists who supply spirits to the
profession recognize a tremendous
dropping off in the demand. A dis
tiller, who, ten years ago, sold many
thousand gallons of choice WHISTLES
almost exclusively to medical men,
has lost his trade altogether and gone
out of business. Wine men, too, re-
cognize this change, and are making
every effort to have wine used in the
place of spirits in the sick room. Pro-
prietary medicine dealers are putting
all sorts of compounds of wine with
iron, bark, etc., on the market with
of these will be able to secure any
permanent place in therapeutics.
The fact is, alcohol is passing out
of practical therapeutics because it's
real action is becoming known. Facts
are accommodating in the laboratory,
in the autopsy room, at the bedside,
and in the work of experimental psy-
biologists, which show that alcohol is
a depressant and a narcotic; that it
cannot build up tissue, but always
acts as a degenerative power; and
that its apparent effects of raising
the hearts action, and quickening
functional activities are misleading
aud erroneous.
French and German specialists
have denounced spirits both as
beverage and a medicine, and shown
by actual demonstration that alcohol
is poison and depressant, and that
any therapeutic action it is assumed
to have is open to question.
All this is not the result of agitation
and wild condemnation by persons
who feel deeply the sad consequences
of the abuse of spirits. 1t is simply
the outcome of the gradual accumula-
ton Of facts that have been proven
within the observation of every
thoughtful person. The exact or ap
proximate facts relating to alcohol
can now be tested by instruments of
precision. We can weigh and meas
ure the effects, and it is not essential
to theorize or speculate; we can test
and prove with reasonable certainty
what was before matter Of doubt.
Medical men who doubt the value
of spirits are no more considered
fanatics or extremists, but as leaders
along new and wider lines of re-
search. Alcohol in medicine, except
as narcotic and anesthetic, is rap
idly falling into disfavor, and will
soon be put aside and forgotten
Journal of I1sebriety.
The Welsh miners, who some years
ago were locked up for many days
without access to solid food, were
sustained, because fortunately near
to them and within their reach, was
little stream which supplied them
with water. And in the absurd feats
of men living without food, we find
they all take water; when sometimes,
for even forty days, they survive.
Many call this starvation, but it is
really not SO. The water acts as a
food-not, after all, surprising fact
when we consider that the human
body, including even the teeth and
the skeleton, is made up pretty near
ly of sixty five per cent Of
water alone, The greatest fact, how
ever, derived from natural history is
the magnificent one that all animals
except man, and all plants, demand
as drink, nothing but water. Life,
activity, intelligence, are
sustained on this fluid alone. Nay, if
we take man we discover that it is
not all men, women and children who
use this thing alcohol. Millions and
millions never touch it, and yet, as
our modern experience shows US,
they live just as we'll, just as indus
just as actively as do they
who indulge in alcohol. Most con-
vincingly it is, too, that men who
take alcohol take it with water.
Brandy contains half water, and it has
to be diluted with more before it can
be tolerated; our beers and ales con-
tain over ninety per cent of water,
our wines over eighty; so that even