p. 43 | ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION by W. H. Wakeham

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 21, 1892

ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION.

By W. H. Wakeham

BY ELDER W. H. WAKEHAM.

Is not alcohol necessary as a medicine, and is it not a valuable aid to the wise physician? Possibly there are some facts which seem to emphasize an affirmative answer; but read what some able physicians say concerning the product of the still:—

Instead of being a valuable adjunct of the medicine shelf, alcohol is perhaps one of the most prolific sources of disease.—R. L. Bailey, M.D., L.L.D.

I am fully prepared to declare my belief, with those who have spoken to-night, that, as a whole, disease is very much more successfully combated without the use of stimulants than with them.—Dr. Henry Lancaster, M.R.C.S.

I have never, so far as I remember, for ten or twelve years, lost a single patient from typhoid fever, and have never given a single drop of stimulant therein. I have invariably had the happiness to see my patients recover far quicker than used to be the case in former days, when much stimulant was given. In fact, my own conviction is positive about this, that we should have far less disease if every drop of alcoholic drink were done away with to-morrow; and we should be able to treat the disease we have infinitely better without than with it.—Dr. J. J. Ritchie, M.R.C.S., of England.

The above I quote from the "Temperance Handbook." From the same source I find that Dr. L. M. Bennett reports five hundred cases of typhoid fever treated without alcohol, with a loss of only four per cent. The usual per cent. of deaths from this disease is from sixteen to twenty-five per cent. He states that it is his belief that there is no curable disease but what may be better cured without alcohol than with it.

A recent issue of the Health Monthly contains the following:—

The theory that whisky is necessary in the treatment of pneumonia has received a blow from Dr. Bull, of New York, who discovers that in the New York hospitals sixty-five per cent. of the pneumonia patients die with alcoholic treatment, while in London, at the Object Lesson Temperance Hospital, only five per cent. die.

The above statements concerning alcohol as a medicine are abundantly confirmed by the latest reliable scientific experiments. Happy the day when the use of alcohol in every form as medicine is entirely discarded.