What Some Eminent Physicians Say About Alcohol
SIR ANDREW CLARK, great London physician: "I am speaking solemnly and carefully, in the presence of truth; and I tell you that I am considerably within the mark when I say that, going the rounds of my hospital wards to-day, seven out of every ten owe their ill health to alcohol." DR. LORENZ, famous Austrian surgeon: "I am a surgeon. My success depends upon my brain being clear, my muscles firm, and nerves steady. No one can take alcoholic liquor without blunting these physical powers which I must keep on edge. As a surgeon, I must not drink." PROFESSOR OSLER, "Principles and Practise of Medicine": "It was formerly thought that alcohol was in some way antagonistic to tuberculous disease, but the observations of late years indicate clearly that the reverse is the case, and that chronic drinkers are much more liable to both acute and pulmonary tuberculosis." T. D. CROTHERS, M. D., Hartford, Connecticut, superintendent Walnut Lodge Hospital: "The latest and most authentic statistics show that over ten per cent of all mortality is due to the abuse of alcohol, and fully twenty per cent of all disease is traceable to this cause; also, that over fifty per cent of insanity, idiocy, and pauperism springs from this source. All authorities agree that from seventy-five to ninety per cent of all criminality is caused by the abuse of alcohol." DR. WILFRED T. GRENFELL, missionary to deep sea fishermen, Labrador: "We find that the perils of the harbor are far greater than the perils of the sea; that more lives are ruined and more misery and suffering are caused by the vices of the port than by the shoals and hidden rocks along the coast." "It [intoxicating liquor] is far and away the most serious danger the seaman of this day has to contend with." DR. CLOUSTON, quoted by Dr. Horsley in his "Alcohol in the Human Body": "From the medical and scientific point of view, we have this great physiological fact before us, that the first thing alcohol does in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred is to affect the mental working of the brain of the man who imbibes." SIR THOMAS BARLOW, M. D., K. C. V. O., British Medical Journal, April 1, 1905: "Wine is not, as is supposed, 'the milk of the aged'; it tends to produce cardiac weakness, muscular and rheumatoid pains, and deterioration of the fine arterioles and blood-vessels. Alcohol is also responsible for much insanity and mental disorder." SIMS-WOODHEAD, M. D., professor of pathology, university of Cambridge: "A man under the influence of small quantities of alcohol has no right to believe his own senses. He can not trust them to give him correct facts, and he can not rely upon his judgment for the interpretation of facts."