WHY HE NO LONGER USES LIQUOR AS A MEDICINE.
AMONG the many pleas made for alcohol is its use as a medicine; but it is good to know that not a few able physicians have seen and are seeing that its medical use results in more harm than good. Here is the testimony of one worthy to be heard, Dr. H. D. Didama, dean of the Medical College of Syracuse University, N. Y. He thus writes to the New York Voice, of Jan. 15, 1897:— “In answer to your request for ‘a somewhat extended statement’ of my views concerning the use of alcohol in medical practise and the observations which led me to adopt them, I refer you to an article in No. 3 of the new Philadelphia Medical Journal, published last week, entitled ‘Experientia Fallax.’ This is, as you will see, entirely impersonal, but it gives an intimation of my own habits and medical practise. “For many years after my graduation at Albany, in 1846, I prescribed alcohol, and for twenty years, while occupying the chair of professor of the science and art of medicine in the College of Medicine of Syracuse University, I followed in my lectures—often reluctantly and usually afar off, but still I followed—the almost unanimous teaching of authors, ancient and modern, and the professors in the medical schools. “Convinced that a great number of the diseases I was called to treat owed their existence or aggravation to the use, in alleged moderation of alcoholic beverages, and that not in a few instances this use was commenced and even continued by the advice of the medical attendants; convinced also by the published experiments of many acute observers at home and abroad, and by my own observations, that almost all diseases could be managed as well if not better by the non-use of alcohol, and satisfied from the communications of some brother practitioners that the fatality in certain specified diseases was not delayed, to say the least, by the employment of increasing and enormous doses of wine, whisky, and brandy; and influenced also, I must admit—overwhelmed, indeed—by what I know and what I read daily of the pauperism, domestic wretchedness, crime, insanity, and incurable maladies transmitted to innocent offspring, I abandoned entirely, more than three years ago, the use of alcoholic remedies. “I have endeavored by personal example and earnest counsel to dissuade my patients from the use of intoxicating beverages and medicines. “The outcome of this practise, medically and morally, has been satisfactory to myself, and, I have reason to believe, to my patients also. “Whatever regrets I may feel for my former teaching and practise, I have no apology to offer for my inconsistency except that once given by Gerrit Smith: ‘I know more to-day than I did yesterday; the only persons who never change their minds are God and a fool.’ “Permit me to add that while there may be an honest difference of opinion regarding the efficacy of legislative enactments in overcoming or restraining the drink habit, there should be little doubt that a whole-hearted, persistent, precept-and-example effort of the medical profession exerted as individuals on their patients and the families of their patients, and as associations on the community at large, would do immeasurable good. “And the newspapers might aid materially in this beneficent work if, while they continue to spread before our households every day the details of the brawls and fights of drunken men and the horrible murders which they commit, they would discontinue advertising, without warning or dissent, side by side with the atrocities, the ‘innocuous beers,’ the pure malt whiskies, the genuine brandies, guaranteed to prevent and cure all manner of diseases. “Syracuse, N. Y., Jan. 15, 1898.”