“The mortality of pneumonia in the Massachusetts General Hospital, between the years 1822 and 1889, comprising 1,000 cases, was 25 per cent.; but a gradual increase in mortality had been noted from 10 per cent. in the first decade of the seventy years represented by this report, to 28 per cent. in the last decade.
“According to the report of the Supervising Surgeon General of the U.S. Marine Hospital Service for 1888, the number of cases of pneumonia treated between 1880 and 1887 was 1,649, with 311 deaths—nearly 19 per cent.
“The Cincinnati Hospital reported for 1886 a mortality rate in pneumonia of 38 per cent.
“The mortality rate in the Cook County Hospital, Chicago, for 1889, according to Dr. Heltoin, relating to 80 cases of pneumonia, was 36 per cent.”
Only a five per cent. death-rate in typhoid fever without alcohol, and from sixteen to twenty-two per cent. with alcohol; only a twelve per cent. death-rate in pneumonia without alcohol, and from 19 to as high as 38 per cent. with alcohol. Such are the comparative death-rates given by Dr. Davis. They should be committed to memory by every opposer of the use of alcohol, as they show clearly that people have many more chances for recovery, other things being equal, in the diseases mentioned, if alcohol is not used than if it is.
It is worthy of mention in this connection that Cook County Hospital contains in its report for 1897 the following items: Number of patients 19,536; cost of liquors $80.00; per cent. of deaths from all causes, 5.7. The cost of liquors is only .004 for each patient. This shows a decided advance in the disuse of alcohol, when so very little is used in a great hospital, with so large a number of patients.
Dr. A. L. Loomis, in the [treatment] of 600 typhus fever cases on Blackwell’s Island in 1864, excluded alcoholics, with the result of reducing the mortality rate to only six per cent. whereas it had previously been twenty-two per cent., in Bellevue Hospital from which the patients had been removed.
In Battle Creek Sanitarium no alcohol is used in any disease, simply because the management believe better results are obtained by the use of other agencies. In the October, (1893) number of the American Medical Temperance Quarterly now Bulletin of the A. M. T. A., Dr. J. H. Kellogg gives statistics of deaths from various diseases in the Battle Creek Sanitarium. The total of these statistics is as follows: la grippe, 827 cases, 4 deaths—or two per cent.; scarlet fever, 83 cases, 2 deaths—less than three per cent.; 333 cases of typhoid fever, 9 deaths—or 2.7 per cent.; 82 cases of pneumonia, 4 deaths—or 4.9 per cent. These exceptional results are not attributed solely to the non-use of alcohol. The nursing and surroundings were of the best. But these results certainly show that the use of alcohol as a remedy in acute diseases is not necessary, and that patients have a much better chance for life, other things being equal, where alcohol is not used than where it is.
Dr. Kellogg says of the surgical cases:—
“In a hospital of 100 beds, connected with the institution, more than 3,000 surgical cases have been treated, to whom alcohol has never been administered except in connection with chloroform anæsthesia; my uniform custom being to administer an ounce of brandy or whisky five minutes before beginning the administration of the anæsthetic, when chloroform is used.