A TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL.
o to! The anti-alcoholic manifesto lately put forth by the two hundred and fifty first-class Doctors is already producing the effect which a demonstration, fortified with names some having handles to them, seldom fails to produce on a portion of the generally intelligent British Public. It has caused "a movement." The Daily News announces that:—
"A movement has been started to establish a hospital in London 'for the treatment of diseases apart from the ordinary administration of alcoholic liquors.'"
The object of the movement does not appear from the words in which it is stated quite so clearly as the thinking persons who may attach importance to it must desire. Do not, in fact, most Doctors, as it is, treat diseases "apart from the ordinary administration of alcoholic liquors?" Are not all patients but those labouring under diseases of debility, as a rule, enjoined by their medical attendant to abstain, totally or comparatively, from wine, beer, and spirits? In hospitals, where this abstinence can always be enforced, the treatment of diseases apart from the ordinary administration of alcoholic liquors is especially usual. Do the enlightened promoters of a movement for the establishment of a hospital, whereat diseases shall be so treated still more especially, mean to say that, in that new institution alcohol, in diseases in which it has hitherto been wont to be ordinarily administered as a tonic or stimulant requisite for their cure, shall not be given—and if so, why? Because alcohol is a poison? Then why stop at alcohol? Why not also proscribe, instead of prescribing, opium, henbane, hemlock, deadly nightshade, arsenic, and prussic acid; and indeed—for what active medicine is not a poison in an over-dose?—nearly every article in the Materia Medica?
Truly the great Two-Hundred-and-Fifty Against Alcohol, themselves even, leave some room for question as to their meaning when they proclaim that "it is believed that the inconsiderate prescription of large quantities of alcoholic liquids by Medical Men for their patients has given rise, in many instances, to the formation of intemperate habits." Believed by, and of whom? By the Two-Hundred-and-Fifty Doctors of their Profession at large, or by Society in general of it, including them? One would like to know who the believers are, in order to be enabled to appraise the belief, and it would also please one to be informed whether or no the belief includes a confession, which the Two-Hundred-and-Fifty make for themselves. Did you, gentle reader, in the course of your experience, ever happen to meet with a victim of the Bottle who dated his intemperance from taking port wine or brandy, prescribed for him when convalescent, for example, from typhus fever?
One can indeed understand and appreciate the advice that "alcohol, in whatever form, should be prescribed and administered with as much care as any powerful drug," and peradventure this will create another movement, a movement of a speculative nature, for the manufacture of graduated physic glasses, of various sizes, to replace the sherry, champagne, hock, and claret glasses now in use at table: a minim-glass to be the new glass for liqueurs and brandy. This practical improvement in Social Science may be shortly introduced by some of our leading medical men at their own tables. And when they exhibit alcohol, in whatever form, perhaps, in future, they will always take care to combine it with something very nauseous; gin, for instance, with the most horrible of bitters. This will effectually prevent the administration of alcohol from originating the formation of intemperate habits.
Doubtless, on the whole, the Two-Hundred-and-Fifty have spoken wisely; but the echo of their speech in some quarters has sounded like cackle, and the "movement," which their utterance has set on foot among gregarious persons, very much resembles the march of an analogous kind of birds, under leadership, across a common.