Of course the general reader may think this book merely a clever advertisement. In it I state that it is wrong to stop the use of morphine and alcohol unless the victims can be treated for the habit, and next I condemn doctors and sanatoriums for their useless methods of treatment, while lauding my own. Naturally, my reader may assume that my only motive is the selfish one of money.
Well, one may suppose what he likes, but the truth is that I urge every city and State to establish places that will drive me out of business. I urge physicians to take up this treatment and cure their own colleagues. I have no secrets. My methods have been published, and I am now devoting most of my time to legislative work from which I do not profit a cent.
APPENDIX
THE RELATION OF ALCOHOL TO DISEASE
BY
ALEXANDER LAMBERT, M.D.
Visiting Physician to Bellevue Hospital; Professor of Clinical
Medicine, Cornell University
Author of “Hope for the Victims of Narcotics”
In the simple heading of the subject-matter of this article there are contained such possibilities of facts and fancies, truths and errors, and wide differences of opinion, that it seems wise to define not only its meaning, but some of the words themselves. What is disease? To many people it is a definite, concrete thing which seizes one in its clutches, holds one captive or possesses one for a second time, and then if overcome releases its grip and one is free and in good health again. But disease is not an entity, even though some agents, as bacteria, are living organisms. It is the lack of some processes which these agents overcome, and others which they set in motion, as manifested by disturbances of various functions of different organs in the body that make up some of our diseases. Our bodies are often in a state of delicate equilibrium, and if some one gland fails to secrete, or secretes too abundantly, the resulting condition may become a disease. As health is a harmonious relationship between the various functions of different parts of the body, so disease is a disturbance of this harmony. The question of the relation of alcohol to disease becomes a question as to whether or not this narcotic if taken into the body can react on the various tissues and organs of the body to such a degree as to disturb the equilibrium of health. And, furthermore, can this disturbance of healthy equilibrium be permanent and the body acquire a lasting diseased condition?