“You offer no definite medical help along special lines?”
“No; we have none to offer.”
He showed me two cases in the general ward; one man in a strait-jacket was in the midst of delirium tremens, his face terribly suffused. He was in a pitiable state, and nothing was being done for him.
“What course shall we follow?” the physician inquired.
“Let me see his chart,” I requested. After I examined it, it became immediately apparent that the patient’s condition was due to lack of his usual drug. It was his third day in the ward.
“Nothing but sleep will save him,” I said, and suggested medication which was administered.
In three or four minutes the patient was relaxed and taken out of the strait-jacket. I made certain suggestions regarding general stimulation for the bowels and the kidneys, and diet. On the next day I found the patient improved after twelve or fifteen hours of sleep, and wholly free from delirium. His case had now become simply a matter of recuperation.
Another case had lived through several days of delirium tremens, which had been followed by a “wet brain”; the visiting physician considered this patient a fit subject for the psychopathic ward. I asked the patient questions about himself. He was sure that he had been out the night before and pointed out one of the internes as his companion during the hours of dissipation. His case was regarded at the hospital as almost certain to end in an asylum. I suggested treatment and within two days the man’s mind had entirely cleared up.
These instances of successful and prompt relief occasioned considerable surprise among the hospital physicians, who frankly admitted that they knew nothing to do except to keep the patients there under restraint, and, if necessary, feed them according to existing rules, to keep their bowels open and their bladders free, and hope for the best.
This was an institution which is supposed to represent the best medical learning in the United Kingdom. I found similar conditions existing in the great hospitals of London, Paris, and Berlin, so that the Scotch institution is not an exception to the general European rule. Everywhere I was frankly informed that the medical staff knew of nothing to be done in alcoholic cases beyond deprivation and penalization.