“There is in the jail at Elizabeth, N. J., a woman who was arrested while participating in wild drunken orgies with a gang of tramps in the woods near the town. She appears nothing but a besotted hag, but was only a short time ago a dutiful wife of a respectable man, and the mother of three beautiful children. Her father, who is said to be living in a village in New York State, is a highly respected minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Her children are in an asylum, and her husband is a wanderer in the West. The cause of her ruin was beer, prescribed for her by the family physician as a tonic. At first she refused to take it, having always been a teetotaler, but persuaded to obey the physician, she soon acquired a taste for the drink that speedily developed into the overmastering appetite, which has brought her and hers to this sad condition.”
ALCOHOL AS A SEDATIVE.
Dr. J. J. Ridge says in the Medical Pioneer, April, 1893:—
“Alcohol, chiefly in the form of spirits, is often given to procure sleep and to relieve pain, such as that of neuralgia, dyspepsia, colic and diarrhœa. It is as a sedative that alcohol is so insidious and seductive in cases of chronic disease, as, if frequently resorted to, the drink craving is almost certainly developed. Hence the importance in many cases of rather bearing the ills we have than of flying to others that we know not of. It is clear that other narcotics, such as opium, morphia, chorodyne, chloral, are open to the same objection, and the victims of these drugs are terribly numerous. * * * * * In many instances some form of dyspepsia is the cause of the sleeplessness, palpitation or other uneasy feeling for which a sedative is desired, and when this is cured the symptoms vanish.”
A prominent minister in a large American city was afflicted with insomnia a few years ago, and, after trying various remedies, was advised by a physician to try whisky “night-caps.” He became a hopeless drunkard. A young medical student in New York appealed to one of his professors for aid in overcoming aggravated insomnia. The professor advised whisky and morphine! The advice led to the ruin of the young man.
ALCOHOL AS AN ANTIPYRETIC.
“By the power of alcohol to retard the evolution of heat in retarding molecular changes in the tissues, the liquids containing it may be used as antipyretics when the temperature is too high, and to retard the processes of waste when these are too rapid. But the antipyretic influence of alcohol is so feeble in comparison with the proper application of water to the surface, or with the internal administration of sulphate of quinia, salicylic acid, digitalis, etc. that no one thinks of using it for antipyretic purposes.”—Dr. N. S. Davis in Principles and Practice of Medicine.
PROFESSOR ATWATER’S CONCLUSIONS UPON ALCOHOL AS A FUEL-FOOD.
In 1899 a decided sensation was caused by the announcement that Prof. Atwater, of Middletown, Conn., had proved that alcohol is a fuel-food equal in value to carbohydrates and fats. The study later of Prof. Atwater’s report of his investigations led to prolonged discussions among medical men interested in the alcohol question, and his theory that alcohol is a food because it is oxidized in the body was vigorously opposed by many scientists of high standing. Professor Abel, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, an investigator of alcohol who worked with the Committee of Fifty, said on this point:—