Evening star., 1925-05-28
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL Y. COLLINS.

The news comes from Atlantic City
that the house Of delegates of the
American Medical Association, in
convention here. has passed resolu-
tion in favor of the removal of all
Government restrictions on the
amount of alcohol which physician
may prescribe for a patient within d
specified time-half a pint in two
weeks. Under that resolution, it is
alleged, a physician would be enabled
to prescribe all the whisky he desired
to give or sell.
There appears to be some confusion
of language in the press dispatches,
if not in the scientific circles of the
American Medical Association. There
is absolutely no limit, now. nor has
there ever been under the Volstead
law, on the amount of medicated al
cohol that any physician might pre-
scribe, so long as he did not flavor
the alcohol with the taste of whisky.
Whisky contains about 45 per cent
of alcohol, the rest being water and
other ingredients that make 1t potable
and attractive as a drink. The DO
per cent of whisky content, there
fore, has no connection nor relation
to therapeutic effect, but panders to
the taste of the drinker. The law
is aimed exclusively at potable
liquorS-not at pure grain alcohol
used with medicine.
Under present conditions Of bootleg
products, many physicians consider
all whisky as being of unknown con-
stituents, and in their practice prefer
to use pure grain alcohol, into which
they mix whatever medication their
knowledge indicates, without making
the concoction too pleasant to take,
as a highball or punch.
X X
1t has long been a mooted question
in medical circles as to the therapeutic
value of alcohol. Whatever value
there is in whisky comes from it's AS
per cent content of alcohol. The
American Pharmacopia omitted alco-
hol from its list Of recognized med
icines more than a, decade ago, and the
membership of the association is Tar
from being in united support today OF
alcohol in medicine-even pure grain
alcohol medicated, not whisky. Those
who are against its use declare that
there is no purpose for which alcohol
Is used that can not be achieved more
effectively by some other means.
Other reputable physicians hold that
alcohol is better as a stimulant than
any other known substance. Where
doctors disagree, who shall decide?
Yet the doctors themselves seem
to have approached form or de-
cision, since statistics show that in
1922 there were in the United States
l52,627 physicians, Of whom only 49,,
s79 held permits to prescribe whisky
and brandy. Seventy-eight per cent
of the doctors declined to take out per
mits authorizing them to use whisky
even to save the lives" of patients.
There are 4S States in the Union
| % of which forbid the use of whisky
or brandy in medicine, and so In these
States, with 40,3S9 doctors. none holds
a permit for it's prescription. In al
the % States there are only $50 per
mits for the use of pure grain alcohol
| to be medicated. Even in the permit
granting States only 29 per cent o1
| the physicians have permits. In the
| States granting permits to doctors 81
out of every 100 wrote prescrip
| tions for whisky or brandy and 8.
per cent did not. This refers to the
| time before the Federal law. when al
restrictions upon the freedom of doc
| tors came from State laws.
* X + X
| The American Medical Association
has been on record since 1917 in tht
| following resolution:
| Whereas we believe the use Of al