The Monitor-register., 1897-04-23
NON-ALCOHOLICs IN MEDICI NE


''Truth for authority, not authority for
truth" should, without doubt, be the
motto of one attempting to write a paper
upon this su bject, bat when an unlearn-
ed lsyman like myself ventures upon
such professional ground, the only
thing to do seems to be to take the
authority for truth of those whose stand
ing in their own profession and in the
trusted as being that of real experts.
And this il what 1 have tried to do in
this paper. The ground that advocates
for n~on.alcoholic medication take is not
that it is morally wrong to administer
alcoholics to a patient, thereby creating
the grave danger that if the man RECEIVERS
he may have thus contracted the love
for strong drink; not that many others
may follow the example and themselves
make use of alcohol in cases which may
or may Lot re quire it; nor do they assign
as q motive that it is very undesirable to
encourage a trade which includes
alcoholic preparations of all kinds, but
DR.. Ezra M. Hunt in a very important
paper read before the International
Medical Congress held in Philadelphia
in 1876, to which he was sent as a dele
gate from the New Jersey State Medical
Society, said: "If l knew that brandy
would save my patient, and that a thou
sand copying from his restoration
would make self resort to the same
remedy and die, l would in solemn sor-
row, yet in holy fealty to my patient,
give him the brandy and hold myself
not responsible for the self inflicted re-
suit to others" The claim then is that
alcohol is not necessary in the practice of
medicine, or as DR.. Cheyne of Dublin.
said: "The liberal use of alcohol as
medicine is one of the most fatal delu-
sions that ever took possession of the
human mind"
We White Ribbon women are liable
at any time to find ourselves in a sad
dilemma. We are sick, or some member
of the household is sick, the doctor
comes and orders something containing
alcohol. What are we to do We have
not all taken the pledge against alcohol in
medicine, but We have said SO much and
worked so hard against the evil thing,
we do so hate the sight, smell and taste
of it, how can we bring ourselves to make
use Of it, sick or we'll ? Yet there are
the DOCTORS orders, our ignorance must
lean on his knowledge, and there may be
a life in the balance. One thing we can
say right here, unless your physician is
a temperance man, he may be ordering
you, for convenience, an alcoholic med j.
cine when he knows of something else
which will, even in his estimation, do
quite as we'll. Therefore, it behooves us
all to watch and inquire. if we go no
further.
But. friends, though we are at present
mostly ignorant on this sub ject, why
should we be SO any longer? Have we
any right to be ? Those who ought to
know tell US that as long as doctors
make free use of alcohol in prescri bling
for their patients just SO long will we
have the rumseller in our midst; just SO
long as large quantities of alcohol must
be manufactured for use in medicines, per-
fumes, ETC., just SO long will it continue
sending its more than sixty thousand
victims every year to fill dishonored
graves. Its use as medicine attaches a
sort of respectability to a trade which
otherwise has come to be considered ex-
ceedingly unolean. Also this notion of
its necessity in sickness is one of the
things holding back many, l believe,
who might otherwise become loyal and
useful members of the Women's Chri g.
tian Temperance Union. A lady told me
last summer that she believed in temper
ance, but would never put on the white
ribbon because she must use alcohol as
medicine. l believe we should pay
great attention to this department of
work in our Unions and begin to find out
all we can upon the subject, and l need
not urge, 1 suppose, that when we nave
become instructed and convinced that
alcohol in medicine is much worse than
useless, we will talk about it, and let our
| opinions and the reasons for them be
known. White Ribboners, as a rule, are
not open to criticism on the charge of
keeping their convictions to themselves.
A few months ago their died in EGG
land the man who, perha ps, more than
any other during his lifetime, prom oted
the cause of temperance treatment of
disease. From his eminence as a prac-
titioner and Investigator his medical
brethren, as well as the rest of the
world, were obliged to attach great
weight to what he had to say upon even
80 unpopular a subject as the use of non
alcoholics 10 medicine. Workers in the
cause of temperance every where must
mourn the loss of such an able coadiutor
as Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson.
Formerly the opin ion prevailed, and
indeed some doctors and others still hold
to it, believe, that brandy, whiskey,
beer, etc., have some value as food.
Taking beer as the one of these drinks
most commonly used, we fiud, when
chemistry enlighteus us, that as ascer-
tanned by Richardson, the most of the
beer sold in London contained from
ninety -four to ninety parts in the hun
dred of pure water. Now water is
wholesome and if there were nothing else
in the beer to make trouble, we'll and
good, if the beer drinker prefers to buy
his drinking water, but the mischief is
there in the small per cent. of alcohol.
Beside the water and the alcohol there
are in beer small quantities of
other substances, but as to the nutri-
ment they contain Baron Liebig says
that a man must drink daily eight or ten
quarts of the best Bavarian beer for
twelve months to take into his system
the nutritive constituents of a five pound
loaf of bread. This would be about
twenty-three barrels of beer, costing
$292, that must be consumed to get the
value of a five pound loaf of bread. If
we take wine as a basis our five pound
loaf will cost $500. So there is left
nothing to furnish nutriment in the beer
but the alcohol of which it contains, as a
rule, from five to ten per cent. The
question then is, is alcohol of any value
as q food =?
Foods, for the main part, are of two
great classes, heterogeneous foods, which