“Alcohol finds no place in my remedial list. It has been banished, not from sentiment, but from knowledge secured by scientific investigation.”—T. Alexander MacNicholl, M. D., New York City, one of the founders of the Red Cross Hospital, New York.
“No sound, scientific argument can be offered for the medical use of alcohol, either internally or externally. It is a toxic substance which ought to be retired from the materia medica, and placed in the catalog of obsolete drugs along with tobacco, lobelia, and like useless but highly toxic drug substances.”—Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Superintendent Battle Creek Sanitarium, Battle Creek, Michigan.
“The majority of medical men, without making any searching investigation into the abundant recent literature upon the subject of alcohol, are disposed to regard it with less and less favor as the years go by, while those who have closely followed the thorough investigations into the physiological action of alcohol recently made by scientists, have repudiated it altogether. * * * It is a lack of information upon this subject—together with the fact that alcohol has been used as a therapeutic agent for hundreds of years, during which it has formed the basis of all tonic or stimulating treatment—that gives alcohol its present hold upon a part of the medical profession.”—John Madden, M. D., Portland, Oregon, formerly professor in Milwaukee Medical College.
“Alcohol may fill an emergency when better means are not at hand, but, apart from this, I know of no use in the practise of medicine and surgery for which we have not better weapons at our command. There is but one reason for the continued use of alcohol—men use it because they love it.” Dr. W. F. Waugh, Chicago, Editor Journal of Clinical Medicine.
“If alcohol had become a candidate for recognition years ago instead of centuries ago it is safe to say that its application in medicine would have been very much more limited than we find it at the present time. Its wide therapeutic use is to be attributed in part to fallacies and misconception regarding its pharmacology, and in part to a disinclination on the part of the average practitioner of medicine to depart from old and well-beaten lines.”—Winfield S. Hall, M. D., Professor of Physiology, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago.
“In its relation to the human system, alcohol is never constructive and always destructive.”—Prof. Frank Woodbury, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa.
“The clinicians who decide for the deleterious action of alcohol in infectious conditions have what evidence of an experimental nature we possess at the present time to support their impressions. The advocates of the continuous use of the drug have this evidence against them.”—Henry F. Hewes, M. D., Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.
“I am very glad that you are undertaking so important a work as this in connection with the terrible problem of alcoholism. Physicians need awakening in this matter; they need reform. The evil results of alcohol are unfortunately brought to my notice each day of my life as I pursue my vocation and my public duties as Health Officer, and a reform in prescribing so as to eliminate alcohol would undoubtedly have far-reaching beneficent effects.”—Edward von Adelung, M. D., Health Officer, Oakland, Cal.
“I am forwarding you a report of 303 cases of typhoid fever treated without alcohol, and my reasons for not using it. I believe the results will not suffer by comparison with those obtained in other hospitals where alcohol is used. Wishing you lasting success in your war upon the greatest evil of the times.”—J. H. Landis, M. D., Cincinnati, O.
“Only precise evidence that it (alcohol) is able to protect albumen from destruction can warrant its employment and establish its value as a food in the sick diet. And this evidence which is of determinative importance must be looked upon as having failed, according to the recent investigations of Stammreich and Miura (who both worked under von Noorden’s direction), as well as by Schmidt, Schöneseiffen and Roseman. The uniform result of all these experiments, arrived at by altogether different methods, is that alcohol does not possess albumen sparing power; that it even brings about an undoubted breaking down of albumen, and consequently it is entirely unequal to carbohydrates and fat.”—Dr. Julian Marcuse, a contributing editor of Die Heilkunde, a German medical magazine. See issue of July, 1900.