The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1918-12-28
DOMAIN OF TEMPERANCE
MEDICAL DECLARATIONS
AGAINST. ALCOHOL.

Jay dILST udy Ill Jul uclly PcPDLS clIA0E
for or against the use of alcohol in
the plague that recently in
tested the city, and the criticism di-
rected against those who brought about
the closing of saloons and places
where intoxicants are generally on
sale, encourage us to reprint from an
exchange the following timely discus
sion concerning the attitude 'of the
medical world toward the use Of alco-
hol as drug.
Cora Frances Stoddard in The Union
Signal writes:
5 The. ringing words for the abolition
of the drink habit and traffic of Dr.. Ar
thur Bevan, president of the American
Medical Association, at its recent an
nual meeting, have set the seal of
American medical approval on the war
against alcohol. That war may be
said to have begun in this country
with the warning of a physician, DR..
Benjamin Rush, while the temperance
society, commonly reckoned as the pio-
neer, had it's inception in the convic-
tions Of another physician, DIR. Billy J.
Clark.
We have come far and fast even in
the past decade. 1t is but six years
since nearly two hundred of the most
honored names in the medical profess
memorial asking Congress to restore
the sale of beer in the army canteen
as a preventive of vice. To be sure
it was met by counter memorial of
over one hundred quickly gathered in
fluential medical names opposing the
proposition for the very reasons that
today make drink and vice twin out
laws from our army. But, can any one
imagine any well-known physician, al
lowing his name to speak for beer now
in this connection? Thus has the
world moved in six years. s2s
Yet through all the past century of
temperance effort, doctors have not
only given that new light on alcohol
| which has stripped it of its glamor but
they have united in declarations to
| the public about alcohol, as useful to
| their generation as those of today are
to ours. AS far back as 1910, physi-
clans addressed memorial to Con-
gress against intemperance. The Med
ical Society of New Haven, Connect
| cut, in 1926, deemed it it's duty to state
| the fact however humilating it may
| be" that of 81 deaths of persons over
| 20 years of age in that town in the
preceding year, over one-third were
1 or II.
rectly, by intemperance. And this
they asserted was not a special year.
A resolution of the Massachusetts
Medical Society, in 1927, declared the
| constant use of spirits to be not a
cause of strength and vigor, but Of
weakness and disease, and agreed to
| discourage the use of spirits in dis
ease whenever substitutes could be
| found, and to warn patients of the dam
| ger of forming an unconquerable and
fatal habit.
| This was the era of the struggle
against spirits. Three temperance so
cieties in Great Britain secured in the
early thirties important medical sigma
lures to declarations against the use
of spirits. In 1889 came the first medi-
| cal declaration for total abstinence,
characterizing as wholly erroneous
/ the opinion handed down from rude
and ignorant times that the habitual
portion of drink as of wine, beer, or
spirit is beneficial to health and even
necessary to those subjected to habit
| ual labor" Nearly eighty signatures
of the leading British physicians of the
time thus early testified to the fallacy
of the idea which still persists that
beer is necessary to labor.
In 1847 came declaration, signed
| by over 1000 physicians of the United
Kingdom and India, asserting that "the
| most perfect health is compatible
with total abstinence from all intoxi-
eating beverages"
The third great British medical
| statement, 1871, was directed against
the then prevailing free medical pre-
scription and use of alcohol, and urged
| that alcohol in whatever form, should
be prescribed with as much care as
any powerful drug, and directions for
its use should be so framed as not to
be interpreted as sanction for ex-
cess or necessity for the continuance
of its use after the occasion is past"
Hopes were expressed also for wise
Legislation that would tend to restrict
the use of these beverages. Nearly
three hundred London physicians and
surgeons, nearly all connected with
hospitals, signed this appeal.
Catholic AbStoiney.