“In 230 typhoid cases in St. Mary’s Hospital, Dr. Chambers reduced the ratio of deaths from 1 in 5 with alcohol to 1 in 40 without it. Dr. Perry, of Glasgow, found that of 534 cases treated with alcohol, 138 died, while of 491 treated without alcohol, only 9 died.”
In a recent text-book on medicine occurs the following:—
“English physicians use spirits in fevers, and all experience sustains the conviction that no substitute has been found for them.”
In a late number of the Temperance Record, Dr. Smith gives a different view of the experience of English physicians:—
“When Bentley Todd was at King’s College, and leading his profession, brandy was the rule in febrile cases. Then the mortality varied from twenty-five to thirty-five per cent. That the treatment was as fatal as the disease, experience demonstrates:—
“1. Professor W. T. Gairdner, of Glasgow, writing to the Lancet (1864), gave his experience as follows:—
| Fever cases treated. | Average of wine and spirits. | Mortality. |
|---|---|---|
| 1,829 | 34 oz. to each | 17.69 per cent. |
| 595 | 2½ oz. to each | 11.93 per cent. |
| 212 | none | 1 death only. |
| (young lives) | ||
“These were mostly typhus cases, but the rationale, so far as alcohol is concerned, is the same as in typhoid.
“2. At the British Medical Association in 1879, Professor H. MacNaughton Jones gave particulars of 340 cases of typhus, typhoid and simple fever. I append a summary:—
| Cases. | Deaths. | Mortality per cent. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Given brandy | 58 | 19 | 32.7 |
| Given claret | 51 | 2 | 3.8 |
| Given no alcohol | 231 | 4 | 1.7 |