“In England at present the use of large doses of alcohol seems to have greatly gone out of hospital practise, and opinion is certainly growing that not even small doses are required. Diseases of the stomach, liver, heart, and kidneys have appeared to me, in my practise, to be much more satisfactorily treated without beer, wines, or spirits.”—Dr. C. R. Drysdale, Consulting Physician to the Metropolitan Hospital, London.
“Alcohol is a functional and tissue poison, and there is no proper or necessary use for it as medicine.”—Dr. Frank Payne, Vice-President London Pathological Society.
“Of scarlet fever I have treated some 2,000 cases. I have never seen a case in which, in my opinion, alcohol was necessary; no case in which its administration was beneficial; but I have seen more than one case in which its action was directly injurious. * * * Alcohol in no case averts a fatal issue where such is impending. * * * The facts are dead against alcohol. In hospitals there has been an increase of 300 per cent. in the use of milk, and a decline of 47 per cent. in the use of alcohol. Progress in treatment of disease has gone hand in hand with disuse of alcohol. The use of alcohol formerly was the outcome of ignorance, a confession of weakness and defeat; to-day it is the expression of inability to discard the fetters of an outworn routine.”—Dr. C. Knox Bond, in Medical Times.
“For many years I have dispensed almost entirely with alcohol as an aid in surgical treatment. As a student I saw it used, almost as a matter of routine, for every kind of surgical malady except head injuries, and in my early years I naturally followed the practise of my teachers; but as soon as I made trial for myself of the effect of withholding alcohol, I found how entirely overrated its value was, and how gravely mistaken had been the teaching. It is commonly held, I believe, that alcoholic stimulants are of especial value in all forms of septic inflammation, such as erysipelas, pyæmia, septicæmia, and hectic fever. I believe that this belief is founded solely upon tradition unsupported by any trustworthy evidence, and untested by experiment or experience.”—Dr. A. Pearce Gould, F. R. C. S., Surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, London.
“I have not prescribed alcohol to my patients for more than ten years, and can affirm positively that they have fared well under this change of treatment. Since I formerly followed the universal practice, I am competent to make comparisons, and these speak unconditionally in favor of treatment without alcohol. As a preventive of waste I use among fever patients nothing but real foods; in addition to milk, particularly sugar, which can be administered to any fever patient in ample quantity in the form of fruit juices, stewed fruit, sweet lemonade, fruit ices, sugared tea, etc., concerning which hundreds of investigations have demonstrated positively that it prevents the waste of both albumen and fat. As a stimulant I employ, besides hydriatic methods, which at the same time abstract heat, almost nothing but camphor, and I can affirm that it is unconditionally preferable to alcohol for its prompt results and the absence of disagreeable after-effects (intoxication, benumbing). Pneumonia, especially, subsides without alcohol to perfect satisfaction, and I rejoice to agree in this respect with Aufrecht, one of the best authorities on this disease, who in his monograph in Nothnagle’s manual, acknowledges himself hostile to the use of alcohol in the treatment of pneumonia, and hopes that its use may be speedily abolished. For the reasons previously specified, I should like to see that extended to all use of alcohol in therapeutics. However, that can come to pass only when all thinking physicians clearly appreciate the fact that no substance is able to undertake the double role of a food and a poison, and, also, that for alcohol no nutritive, but only toxic properties can be claimed.”—Max Kassowitz, M. D., Professor in the University of Vienna, Austria.
“Besides its deleterious influence on the nervous system and other important parts of our body, alcohol has a harmful action on the phagocytes, the agents of natural defense against infective microbes.”—Prof. Metchnikoff, Pasteur Institute, Paris, France.
“Alcoholic liquors are, to my mind, not only not valuable, but distinctly disadvantageous, in the treatment of disease, except in rare instances, as for example in the initial chill of some acute infectious disease. However, I have almost given up the use of alcohol in the treatment of disease.”—Dr. D. L. Edsall, Professor of Therapeutics in the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
“As a rule which might well be regarded as universal in the practice of medicine, alcohol in the treatment of disease is an evil. In ordinary doses and in continuous use the sum of its reactions increases exhaustion, which may terminate fatally.”—Dr. John Van Duyn, Professor of Medicine in Syracuse, N. Y., University Medical School.
“In sixteen years of active practice I have not used alcoholics at all. I am medical director of the Scranton Sanitarium, and I have considerable trouble in trying to cure those who use alcohol, and to undo some of the work my fellow practitioners have unwittingly made.”—D. Webster Evans, M. D., Scranton, Pa.