Personal Experience of a Physician

by John Ellis

CHAPTER III.

THE DANGERS THAT RESULT FROM THE ALLOPATHIC TREATMENT OF DISEASES.

This treatment of diseases, more in the past than at present, consists largely in giving and applying remedies in disease-creating doses. The antiphlogistic treatment consists of blood-letting and the use and application of reducing remedies which directly or indirectly lessen the inflammatory or febrile action; but it is manifest that while it may lessen the activity of the diseased symptoms it also lessens the vitality of the system as a whole, and consequently its power to resist and overcome the existing diseased action; so that it is a serious question whether in many cases more is not lost than gained, and it is certain that, owing to the loss of blood and strength, convalescence will be more tedious. Then the use of remedies which cause active diseased action is not always safe. My own mother, at the age of 51 years, while in delicate health, was taken with a severe pain in her side. A physician was called. She thought an emetic would do her good. The physician gave her one, and she died during its operation, or immediately afterward. Her physician was so affected by this sudden and unexpected result that he had to go and lie down. At that time I was but 10 years old.

In typhoid fever there is a tendency to irritation of the mucous membrane of the small intestines; and, as I have already stated, I am satisfied from observation that when cathartics are given during this disease this irritation is often most seriously aggravated, and death not unfrequently follows as a result.

But the greatest danger and evil which result from the Allopathic treatment of disease lie, not in the direction of the sudden deaths which sometimes result from the use of its remedies, but in the liability of patients to be led into the habitual use of a drug that has afforded them palliative relief during sickness, and the countenance thus given for the use of such drugs by the laity during health. Perhaps as a rule poisonous substances palliate the symptoms which they cause, or which follow their use. A cathartic remedy will palliate the costiveness which frequently follows the use of cathartic remedies. Opium will palliate the sleeplessness and suffering that follow when the patient leaves off the use of opiates which he has been taking for disease; and alcohol and all fluids and remedies which contain an appreciable quantity of alcohol will palliate the coldness of the surface, craving, and distress which follow when a patient who has been taking such remedies attempts to discontinue their use. And thus the patient is led to continue the remedy because it makes him feel better every time he takes it; and, consequently, he is led on as naturally as water runs down hill, until he becomes a slave to his appetite.

Now, cannot every conscientious and intelligent man see what an immense blessing to his fellow men it would be if all physicians were able to treat their patients as successfully by the use of Homoeopathic remedies and doses as by the use of the so-called Alcoholic stimulants and Narcotics, which are enslaving and ruining so many, and thus be able to discard and discountenance the use of all such remedies? How can honest, conscientious physicians disregard and treat with contempt the testimony of physicians who have been educated in the same schools with themselves, but who have used their reason and freedom to investigate the new practice and test the curative action of its remedies, when they assure them that they have treated their patients far more successfully by the use of Homoeopathic remedies than they ever have done by the use of narcotics, alcoholic and fermented drinks, and other Allopathic remedies? How can physicians disregard the testimony of multitudes of patients who have been thus cured?

Why should not every physician study Homoeopathy and test the remedies on the sick? He can do it cautiously; he has all of his old remedies by him; what has he to lose? If they do not relieve his patient's sufferings more safely and promptly, he is not obliged to continue to use them. Is it a sensible and rational course for any one to allow himself to be so strongly confirmed in the views of prominent professors, teachers, and books, that he cannot without prejudice examine new truths and new methods of treating diseases, and even new theories? Should not a man strive to keep abreast of the age in which he is living? Take it, for instance, in regard to the action of alcohol on living structures. No other man has ever experimented so carefully, patiently, and thoroughly as has Dr. Richardson, of England, and the results of his experiments appeal to the common sense and observation of every unbiased man. He shows conclusively by its action that it should never have been given in a vast majority of the cases of disease where it is given by physicians; yet what attention is paid to his testimony and demonstrations, which every disinterested physician can see to be true if he will?

Dr. Richardson has also shown conclusively that alcohol paralyzes the minute capillary vessels, so that while the blood is forced into them through the arteries by the heart, it does not flow out of these minute vessels into the veins as rapidly as it does during their healthy action; consequently these vessels are congested and unnaturally distended with blood; the face and surface of the body become red, owing to the presence of an unnatural quantity of blood in these vessels. Nor is this all. The heat of the body is generated by changes going on in the blood and flows with the blood, and consequently the surface of the body becomes, from the presence of this excess of blood, unnaturally warm; but the heat is rapidly radiated from the surface, consequently the body, as a whole, becomes cooler. Dr. Richardson found by careful experiment that, while the surface was warmer, internally the body was cooler and less able to stand the cold; and he also substantiated the truth of his experiments by experiments on pigeons.

I will allow Canon Wilberforce, of South Hampton, England, to describe his experiment. While attending a reception during his recent visit to New York he was asked the following question:—

Dr. E. P. Thwing: "I would like to ask the Canon, as a physician, if the feeling as to alcoholic medication in England has changed for the better; for instance, the aspect of the British Medical Association toward this subject?"

Canon Wilberforce: "I believe that is one point in which we are going furthest ahead. I think that the whole aspect of the medical question is changing, mainly under the influence of that distinguished man of science, Dr. Richardson. He is one of the leading scientific minds of Great Britain. He has been successful in his experiments and as bold as a lion in his utterances, and he is leading scientific thought in this direction. He has proved over and over again, to use a common phrase, that from the monarch on the throne down to the maggot in the cheese, every healthy being is better without alcohol. The other day he was staying with me. I have the greatest possible objection to experimenting upon living animals, but he described to me an experiment on pigeons. It was not a very painful experiment; indeed, there are some people who, I am afraid, would like to have the experiment made upon them. He tried to induce the pigeons to take peas soaked in alcohol. They refused to do so at first; but after a while they were pleased, and they selected the peas saturated with alcohol. One cold night he turned the pigeons out, and on the following day, when he was examining them, strange to say, all those pigeons that ate the alcoholized peas were frozen to death, and those that remained teetotalers were perfectly safe and sound."

The drinking of alcoholic liquors generates no heat, it simply holds the heat in the congested blood-vessels upon the surface of the body, where it is wasted, and thus the temperature of the body as a whole is lowered.

The greatest mortality which results from the use of intoxicating drinks does not result from what is recognized as drunkenness, but from what is recognized as moderate but steady drinking. The drunkard after his sprees usually has seasons of abstinence, during which he has a chance to recuperate or regain strength and vigor, and consequently drunkards often live to an advanced age; but the steady drinker has no such seasons of rest, but his face, by its almost constantly congested appearance, shows the condition of his internal organs; for the effect of alcohol is to paralyze the minute capillary vessels throughout the body and fill them with blood, which produces redness upon the surface and a sensation of warmth. The separation of waste and worn-out materials and their removal is largely effected through these minute blood-vessels, and it is through them that nourishment reaches all the structures of the body; consequently, the almost constant state of congestion of these minute vessels, which results from regular, moderate drinking, interferes very seriously with this change or purification and renewal of all the structures of the body. As a result, while some drinkers die from drunkenness, many more die from apoplexy, paralysis, laryngitis and bronchitis, heart failure, fatty degeneration of the heart, diseases of the stomach and liver, Bright's disease of the kidneys, etc., and especially from an inability to either resist or withstand epidemic, contagious, or inflammatory diseases, or even mechanical injuries.

There are life insurance companies that give special privileges to total abstainers over moderate drinkers (they never insure drunkards). Such companies find that they can give a bonus of from 17 to 23 per cent. to total abstainers as compared with moderate drinkers.

I remember very well attending the family of a brewer. He was standing by when I advised his wife not to drink beer, for it was not good for her, as it would increase her debility and retard her recovery. With astonishment and great emphasis he exclaimed: "Tell me that beer is not good for her!" Striking his chest with his fist, he said: "Just look at me and see what beer has done for me!" He was born in Scotland, and manifestly inherited a good, strong constitution. I replied to him: "You are a large, strong man, but a little too fleshy; what beer has done for you time will tell better than I can." A few months, perhaps a year or two, after that conversation, I was riding up a street which led toward his residence when I was called in a hurry into a saloon to see a man who was said to have fallen down "in a fit." On reaching his side I found the above brewer dead upon the floor. Without much question he died of heart failure, from fatty degeneration caused by the steady use of beer. I never heard of his being intoxicated.

Dr. W. B. Carpenter, who stands at the very head of the physiologists of our century, says:—

"That the taking of alcoholic stimulants is in any way useful in keeping up the heat of the body, may now be considered as a myth altogether exploded."

Again he says:—

"Now, it is the result of many observations that the introduction of alcohol specially deranges the vaso-motor system; this derangement showing itself alike in disturbance of the heart's action, and in relaxation of the capillary vessels, which become filled with blood, especially in the nervous system and in the skin. This causes one to feel that warmth and exhilaration which is the first effect of the introduction of these disturbing agencies, and which are appealed to as evidence that drink does us good. Well, what are the facts? The fresh glow is simply the result of relaxation of the capillary vessels of the skin, allowing a large quantity of blood to come to the surface, so as to give the feeling of superficial warmth. But if a larger amount of blood comes to the surface, it robs the parts within; and the feeling of genial warmth gives way to a general depression, especially when we are exposed to severe cold. The temporary exhilaration of the nervous system, too, is followed by a corresponding depression. Hence a person feels 'sick and sorry' the next morning after taking alcoholic stimulant."

As to alcohol giving strength, it is well known that it supplies no substance to the tissues; therefore it meets no want, and consequently can give no strength. Every one can see that blood-vessels, when paralyzed and congested with blood by alcohol, cannot perform their function in the metamorphosis of the tissues of the body, or of conveying nourishment to them and removing worn-out, effete substances from them, as during health. If you would see the legitimate effects of alcohol, look at the permanently congested face of the steady drinker, or his "rum blossoms," and remember that the capillary vessels of his brain and other internal organs are in a similar state, and then say if you think he has been strengthened by alcoholic drinks.

I remember very well when a young man, when a neighboring farmer was sick and unable to gather his hay, that the young men in the neighborhood set a day when they would meet and gather his hay for him. When, on the day set, we met in the field, and the neighboring young men noticed that my brother and myself had no bottle of cider brandy with us, they exclaimed with delight, "We will lay you out before noon." A spirited contest with our scythes commenced in good earnest. But they did not lay us out; they were glad to seek and lie in the shade of trees to rest, while we were able to continue our work. It is well known that men who are preparing themselves for, or engaging in, feats requiring great strength and endurance are beginning to find that they must let intoxicating drinks alone. It is something marvelous to see with what tenacity so many physicians hold on to the idea that fermented wine, beer, brandy, and whiskey are strengthening. This idea comes, to a great extent, from the custom which prevails of giving such drinks to patients who are recovering from fevers, acute diseases, and from the effects of other debilitating causes. Many physicians have been so accustomed to give these drinks to patients, under such circumstances, that they have not the slightest idea how much better they would do without them.

A few years ago I met a German woman whose husband I knew well, and had reason to fear that beer drinking was doing him great harm. I said to her that, on her husband's account, she should never let another drop of beer enter her house if she could help it. "Why," she exclaimed, "I cannot do without beer. I suffer so much during and after confinement, and am so weak, and have so little milk for my child, that my doctor says that I must have beer to give me strength." She was then expecting to be confined within a few months. I replied to her by saying: "I have attended a great many more patients during confinement than your physician has ever attended, and after the first three years of my practice, I never gave to a single patient beer, fermented wine, whiskey, or brandy, or any other intoxicating drink. Now, if you will follow my advice, you will have a very different time from what you have ever had before; and my advice is that from this time forth you do not taste a single drop of beer, wine, or any other intoxicating drink." She said she would follow my suggestions. I met her again when her child was a few months old, and she looked like another woman. She came up to me and said: "Well, Doctor, I have followed your advice strictly. I have not tasted beer, wine, or any other intoxicating drink, and I never before had such a comfortable time during my confinement. I never was so strong or gained my strength so rapidly. I never had so much nurse for my child, and I never had such a good-natured baby before." She was the mother of several children.

Such are the results of the two methods of treatment.

There is no surer way to retard and often prevent recovery than to give patients drinks or even remedies which contain an appreciable quantity of alcohol. Where the tendency to recovery is strong they will recover sooner or later in spite of the treatment; but in some cases the physician may keep a delicate, nervous patient sick as long as he gives alcohol in any form; and in the most critical stage of typhoid fever, pneumonia, and other diseases where the patient needs nourishment, and that impurities should be removed, there is no more dangerous treatment than to give alcohol in any form, which interferes with these processes by paralyzing and congesting the capillary vessels. Hot water and nourishment, cautiously supplied, are what such patients require, not alcoholic stimulants.

The habit of taking either opium or morphine in our country has very generally resulted from the prescriptions of physicians. The patient may obtain palliative relief from its use, but suffers when he attempts to leave it off; consequently, without fully realizing the danger which he incurs, he continues the remedy until he is enslaved.

With the exception of alcohol, I know of no more dangerous medicine to give during the critical stages of inflammatory, febrile, and other diseases than Allopathic doses of opium in any form. This anodyne, by its retarding, benumbing, and stupefying effects upon the body, often destroys the power of reaction at the critical stage of the disease when the vital forces should be left free to act, and consequently in many cases patients die who would not die if they were not under the influence of this drug. Patients will often go very near to the border line and yet rally if kept free from the so-called "stimulants" and narcotics, and simple, plain nourishment is cautiously given and the body kept warm.

Physicians are sometimes responsible for the habit of using tobacco among their patrons. It is generally in chronic cases of disease where tobacco is prescribed, and, as a rule, when it is once prescribed by a physician the patient never thinks of giving up the use of the remedy; nor, so far as I have known, are physicians who prescribe tobacco often, if ever, careful to direct patients to discontinue using the remedy as soon as the symptoms of the disease from which they are suffering are relieved. Of course, a physician who neglects to do this seriously neglects his duty. It is safe to say that few physicians ever prescribe the smoking or chewing of tobacco as a remedy for diseases who do not use the weed themselves, for they can generally find much better and safer remedies.

If a physician loves intoxicating drinks and has become a slave to them, he actually feels that they do him good every time he drinks, for by relieving the symptoms temporarily which they have caused they actually make him feel better; and what is more natural than that he should prescribe them for his patients? Here, then, it can be clearly seen that there is great danger in employing physicians who love intoxicating drinks, tobacco, or opium in any form; for they believe in the efficacy of these poisons, and they will often prescribe them when a physician not addicted to their use would not think of doing so.

I have alluded to some of the dangers which attend and the evils which often result from the Allopathic treatment of diseases. Every one can see that they are formidable enough and that they merit the serious attention of every lover of his race. The skillful homoeopathic physician is able to avoid these dangers and evils, for he does not use disease-creating or appetite-begetting doses of any remedy.

We notice that those having the management of our railroads are beginning to see that, for the protection of the property of the owners and lives of their patrons, it is not safe to employ men who drink intoxicating drinks at all; for it is well known that large numbers of those who drink are sooner or later sure to become unreliable and careless. Is it not time that physicians should cease to accept as students, and that our medical colleges should cease to graduate and send forth as physicians, men who drink intoxicating drinks? Should not medical professors and teachers have as much regard for the health and lives of men, women, and children as the managers of our railroads?

Again, it is well known that the use of tobacco tends to prevent development, impair health, and to make men moody, if not careless, and it not unfrequently leads them, especially when young, to disregard the rights and feelings of others. We see men and boys smoking wherever it is not strictly prohibited, even lighting their cigars and cigarettes as they leave our elevated railroad stations, and walking down the stairs before ladies and gentlemen, thus compelling those who follow to breathe the atmosphere which they have polluted. As a fair illustration of the spirit so frequently manifested, I will describe a little incident which occurred in my presence. A young man, perhaps twenty years old, stood in a line of men approaching the paying teller's window in one of our banks, vigorously smoking his cigar. An elderly gentleman behind him asked him if he would be so kind as not to smoke. The young man immediately straightened himself up in a most self-important manner and exclaimed: "What do you think I care if it is offensive to you?"

In our railroad cars smokers have to separate themselves from wives, children, and friends and go by themselves into a smoking-car or apartment, and why? simply because tobacco smoke is unpleasant to every man, woman, and child who is not accustomed to it; and the smoker's breath often smells so strong of the smoke when his cigar is gone that it is exceedingly unpleasant to sensitive persons. Why should our medical colleges graduate young men to go forth for the purpose of attempting to heal sick, sensitive, and nervous patients, who smoke or chew tobacco, and thus are unpleasant to many and a bad example to all? Have we not enough cleanly young men, of good habits, to supply all the physicians we need in our country? A smoking physician, by his breath and bad example to the young, may do a vast deal more harm than he can ever do good as a physician in the world.

The use of an intoxicating wine as a communion wine in so many of our churches, and the efforts of so many clergymen to justify its use, together with the prescription of intoxicating drinks by physicians, are the chief supports which to-day sustain our distilleries, breweries, and saloons, and the prevalent drinking habits and consequent drunkenness. Let all of our clergy, churches, and physicians withdraw their patronage and sanction of intoxicating drinks, and it would not be many years before the manufacture and sale of such drinks would be prohibited throughout the length and breadth of our land. That day will surely come, for a new age is opening up before us very different from the past. The Lord is coming at this day in the "clouds of heaven" with power and great glory. Old things are passing away and all things are being made new—new heavens and a new earth.

Sir Astley Cooper says: "I never suffer ardent spirits in my house, thinking them evil spirits. If the poor could witness the white livers, the dropsies, or the shattered nervous systems which I have seen, the consequences of drinking, they would be aware that spirits and poisons are synonymous terms."

Again he says: "We have all been in error in recommending wine as a tonic.
Ardent spirits and poisons are convertible terms."

Dr. Benj. Richardson declares it to be his opinion that the administration of alcohol will become, like blood-letting, a thing of the past, that it is passing into the same position as blood-letting. He, as a student, was educated to bleed; he was educated in the employment of alcohol; he saw the effects of the application of these tested by comparison, and he has, in one instance as much as in the other, come to consider them as behind the age, and both as remedies belonging to a departed and deceived generation.—The Dawn (English), Nov. 19, 1891.

I cannot close this chapter without again earnestly calling the attention of all physicians to the great danger to life which results from giving alcohol in any form to patients in very critical cases, or as they are at or approaching the crisis in their disease, in fevers and in inflammatory diseases, such as pneumonia, etc.

Since writing the preceding pages, in fact, since most of them were in type, my attention has been called by notices in our papers to the fact that champagne was given to a starving man, and that a few drops of brandy were mixed with the milk given to a child in a similar condition, or suffering from marasmus; and within a week a physician who has traveled extensively and lectured before medical, theological, and literary organizations, and who has frequently been in consultation in critical cases, described in my hearing several cases of pneumonia which he visited, which were, as he expressed it, drunk. When asked by the attending physician what he would suggest, he always replied, "Stop giving your patients alcoholic liquids;" and with a single exception, out of a large number, and that was a complicated case, recovery followed. While practicing in Detroit I was called to see a prominent citizen who was suffering from typhoid fever. His physicians had told his family that he would die, but that the "stimulants" they were giving him might keep him alive a few hours. I found him delirious, with cold, clammy extremities and almost pulseless. I stopped his "stimulants" at once and gave him Homoeopathic remedies and nourishment, and the next day he was out of danger. No more dangerous treatment has ever been adopted than to give a patient in a critical stage of disease alcohol in any form or quantity. Every intelligent physician ought to be able to see that this is true. I repeat, alcohol paralyzes the minute capillary vessels and veins (look at the face of the drinker) on the surface of the body, in the brain (look at a drinker's words and actions), stomach, lungs, and kidneys, and congests them with blood, through which the structures are nourished with food and drink and purified by the removal of decomposed and effete substances. Cannot every one see that these vessels, when thus paralyzed and congested, cannot perform their duty as well as they can in a natural state? Then, again, the temperature of the body is lowered internally and its heat wasted from the surface. What patients in the critical stages of disease require are warmth applied, if needed, to the surface of the body and limbs, and hot water (not scalding hot, of course), milk, unfermented wine, and other simple, easily digested articles which will nourish and strengthen the body taken internally.

It is possible that in sudden, severe cases of hemorrhage, alcohol may sometimes rescue a patient from fainting and bleeding to death, by storing the blood in the capillary vessels of the brain and surface of the body temporarily while the bleeding vessels contract; but even in such cases other remedies, if at hand, may prove more reliable.

In cases of marasmus in children, if Homoeopathic remedies and nourishing articles fail to give relief, and the child becomes greatly emaciated, give the child cautiously salt fat pork, fried, but not to a crisp; give him a piece in his hand, too large for him to swallow, and see with what avidity he will chew and suck it. The fat in combination with the salt will supply a want in the child's system, and patients will often be restored by this simple treatment after other measures have failed.

Even if alcohol were a stimulant, as some claim, we can certainly see that to give it to a patient in a state of great exhaustion, either from lack of nourishment or from an inability to take nourishment owing to diseased action, is to most seriously endanger the life of the patient and often to destroy life; for alcohol gives no nourishment, and all unnatural excitement is necessarily followed by corresponding depression, which often carries patients in critical cases below the living point, and death follows.

I will close with the following from the Health Monthly:—"The theory that whiskey 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.—Ex."