Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why Part 33

"Converted men relapse into evil ways through coquetting with sin; and cured inebriates relapse to drink, and drugs, through the use of proprietary medicines, with which the domestic market is flooded. Tonics, compounds, nerve remedies, bitters, vitalizers, appetizers, balsams, pectorals and kindred nostrums contain, with few exceptions, from 7 to 50 per cent. of alcohol, or opium in varying quant.i.ties, each preponderating in kind, as the effect is designed to be stimulating, or sedative. The active principle of some of the best known catarrh remedies is cocaine, and a few manufacturers are honest enough to so announce on the labels covering their goods; more do not, and leave the victims to discover the truth after they have paid the penalty of ignorance, and developed the cocaine habit. Wholesale legislation, as well as vigorous education, is needed along these lines, and while considering means of betterment, the reputable citizen, the clergyman, and others of good moral repute, whose names are so generally used to herald the efficacy of so-called remedial inventions, should not be overlooked for ethical attention.

"For the information of those of our readers, who are not familiar with the nature and use of toxic drugs, we here refer briefly to the prominent characteristics of a few most dangerously potent for evil, and seductive in kind.

OPIUM AND MORPHINE:--"Gum opium, the dried milky exudate from the green capsules of the white poppy, and its product--morphine--are the most reliable drugs known for the relief of pain. The dose of gum opium in medicine is from 1/4 to 1 grain. It contains from 8 to 14 per cent. of morphine, which is its princ.i.p.al alkaloid. Opium is a much more stable, and stronger, sedative than morphine. The c.u.mulative effect of repeated medicinal doses is frequently observed, and is followed by dangerous symptoms. It is both a sedative and hypnotic, and, if given in large doses, quiets the brain, and excites the spinal cord. Small doses have little perceptible effect upon the circulation, but, under the influence of large doses, the pulse is r.e.t.a.r.ded, and the respiration becomes fuller, deeper, and slower. In poisonous doses the pulse may become rapid, and great depression follow, the respiratory centres are paralyzed, thus causing death. If taken in from 2 to 4 grain doses it produces deep comatose sleep, full breathing, full pulse, dry skin, and contracted pupils. If the dose is sufficiently large, the sleep will be more profound, the patient can hardly be roused, and if awakened quickly, he sinks back into slumber. The face may be swollen, and reddened, and the lips deeply tinged with blue. At this stage the breathing may be characterized as puffing.

Respiration may be from 8 to 10 per minute, perhaps be reduced to 4, 2 or 1, and as the toxic effect is more marked, it becomes shallow, the pupils are contracted, and the patient is so thoroughly narcotized that nothing will arouse him, the heart ceases to beat, and he dies by respiratory failure, or paralysis of the pneumogastric nerve.

"Morphine, extracted from gum opium by a slow and expensive process, is used much less in proprietary medicines than is tincture of opium, which is more easily manufactured.

"A medicinal dose of sulphate of morphine is from 1/8 to 1/4 of a grain. One grain is a dangerous dose, and 2 grains are liable to prove fatal. Morphine is a true narcotic. It is a sedative, lessens tissue change, and weakens every function of the body.

TINCTURE OF OPIUM, OR LAUDANUM:--"Laudanum, or the tincture of opium, is a mixture of gum opium with alcohol and water, the solution consisting of equal parts of alcohol and water. Each ounce contains 5-1/2 grains of powdered gum opium and half an ounce of alcohol, and is equal in alcoholic strength to one ounce of strong whisky. The ordinary medical dose is from 12 to 15 minims, or from 25 to 30 drops. It is much used as a domestic remedy for pain from any cause, such as ear or toothache, indigestion, insomnia, summer complaints with children or adults, and is often used in poultices over painful sores or swellings. It is also used in many medicines for throat and lung troubles, in nearly all medicines for painful chronic diseases, and in many of the well advertised spring tonics, as well as in nearly all the compounds that are offered for sale for blood troubles, or as alteratives. The opium in laudanum acts the same as morphine, or any other of the thirty preparations of opium, officially recognized by the medical profession.

PAREGORIC:--"Paregoric of standard grade is half alcohol, which is as strong of alcohol as high proof whisky. It contains a little opium, some benzoic acid, oil of anise, and camphor. The dose is from 15 to 60 drops.

COCAINE:--"Cocaine is an alkaloid of coca leaves, and is used in medicine in the form of hydro-chlorate. It is used locally in powder or solution to relieve pain. It is a strong local anaesthetic. The ordinary dose when used as medicine is from 1/4 to 1/2 grain, and is very unstable and treacherous in its effects. Some patients will tolerate large doses while in others small doses produce unpleasant effects. Deaths are recorded from the use of 1-7 to 1 grain.

CHLOROFORM:--"Chloroform is an anaesthetic, and death is often caused by a few inhalations. The dose internally is from 3 to 20 minims. It is not much used in medicine, except to control pain, and produce sleep. It is inhaled to produce mild slumber, or complete insensibility in surgical operations. Death may come suddenly, and without warning, at any time during its administration.

CHLORAL:--"Chloral, or hydrate of chloral, is an hypnotic. It is of but little value in medicine, except to control nervousness, and produce sleep. The dose is from 15 to 30 grains. It should be administered with caution, and only by the physician. It is made by pa.s.sing chlorine gas through pure alcohol, and gets its name from the first syllables of the two words, chlorine and alcohol. It produces death by inhibition of the heart's action, and by paralyzing the pneumogastric nerve.

BROMIDIA:--"Bromidia is the trademark of an hypnotic, the manufacturers of which give out to the public that each fluid drachm contains 15 grains of chloral hydrate, or 1 ounce to every 4 ounces of bromidia.

SULPHONAL:--"Sulphonal is a coal tar preparation, and is valuable in medicine as an hypnotic only. An ordinary dose to produce sleep is from 10 to 40 grains. If it is given in these doses for several days in succession it produces great weariness, an unsteady gait, and may involve paralysis of the lower limbs, with great disturbance of digestion, and scanty secretion of urine of about the color of port wine. There are a number of cases of death reported as resulting from acute, or chronic poisoning, by sulphonal.

PHENACETINE:--"Phenacetine is a product of coal tar, and an antipyretic, a drug that lessens the temperature in high fevers, and rapidly disintegrates the blood.

ANTIFEBRIN:--"Antifebrin, another of the coal tar preparations, is the registered name for acetanelid. Its effects are very similar to the effects of phenacetine, and it is used in fevers for lessening the temperature, and for neuralgic pains. The medicinal dose is from 3 to 10 grains. Unpleasant effects follow its continued use, such as great exhaustion, blueness of the lips, and a slow, labored pulse.

HEADACHE REMEDIES:--"The indiscriminate use of the many coal tar products and other hypnotics, such as sulphonal, phenacetine, antifebrin, chloral, bromidia, etc., under the guise of headache remedies is productive of much disaster, all being nerve paralyzants."

The public owe a debt of grat.i.tude to those physicians, and chemists, who give freely such valuable information as to the real nature and effects of dangerous drugs. While it is true that the popular belief in drugging is due to professional practice, yet it is also true that what the people know of the preservation of health, and of the danger of alcohol and other drugs is largely owing to the medical profession.

There is as much difference among the members of the medical profession as there is among the members of any profession; some are careless, selfish, unprincipled, un.o.bservant of the effects of various medicines; while others are anxious to teach the people how to avoid sickness, and gain strength. It is the latter cla.s.s who warn against the self prescription of drugs, especially those of the dangerously seductive, narcotic cla.s.s.

Yet, with all the warnings, few pay heed. Even highly educated, intelligent people seem possessed of a blind faith in the power of drugs. Every little ache or pain must have its sedative, be the future penalty what it may.

Were people to quit drugging themselves, avoid indigestible viands, eat at regular hours, chew well, stop eating when they have had enough, take a sufficiency of exercise, sleep and fresh air, with a hot bath once a week, and a cold "towel bath" each morning, laying aside all alcoholic beverages, tea and coffee, and tobacco, there would be very little sickness in the world. Over-eating leads to the drug habit for relief from uneasy sensations, so does improper food, or poorly cooked food.

It should be remembered that it is not possible to violate the laws which relate to the physical well-being, and then escape the natural penalty of transgression by swallowing a few doses of medicine. Remedies may postpone the results of physical transgression, and may even seem to prevent them altogether, but careful observation will show that the escape from punishment is only apparent. Sometimes a parent escapes, while his child pays the penalty of his transgression, in a weakly nervous system, which may lead to insanity, or other trouble.

CHAPTER XV.

TESTIMONIES OF PHYSICIANS AGAINST ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION.

"In abandoning the use of alcohol it should be clearly understood that we abandon an injurious influence, and escape from a source of disease, as we do when we get into a purer atmosphere. _There is not the slightest occasion to do anything, or to take anything to make up for the loss of a strengthening or supporting agent._ No loss has been incurred save the loss of a cause of disease and death."--DR. J. J. RIDGE, of London Temperance Hospital.

Sir. B. W. Richardson, M. D., said of the London Temperance Hospital:--

"No alcohol is administered, and no subst.i.tute for it. Any drug with similar action would be bad; warmth and suitable nourishment are relied on to keep up the system. We know that people who take alcohol often feel better; this is from the narcotic action. The pain may be stilled, and the disease forgotten, but it has not been removed; its symptom has been narcotized."

Another writer says:--

"I am asked for a subst.i.tute for brandy, and frankly and gladly I tell you there is no subst.i.tute, for I have no knowledge of any agent equally pleasing to the palate, and yet so destructive of life."

Dr. Norman Kerr, President of the Society for the Study of Inebriety, England, says:--

"My own experience of thirty-four years in the practice of my profession has taught me that in nearly all cases and kinds of disease the medical use of alcohol is unnecessary, and in a large number of instances is prejudicial and even dangerous.

Having given an intoxicant, in strictly definite and guarded doses, probably on the whole only about once in 3,000 cases (then usually when nothing else was available in an emergency), and having had most varieties of disease to contend with, my death-rate and duration of illness have been quite as low as my neighbors. The experience of the London Temperance Hospital and other similar inst.i.tutions, the current reports of that hospital being now reliable scientific records, amply support this experience.

"The chief peril of narcotic drugs has always appeared to me to lie in their disguising the real state of the patient from himself as well as from his doctor and his friends. If there is any serious ailment, such as cholera or fever, the sufferer may seem to be and may feel better. He is not better. He is actually worse--made worse by the alcohol, and not unseldom, after the evanescent alcoholic disguise and deceptive improvement has faded, it is found that the malady itself has been progressing, unseen and unsuspected from the delusive aspect of the alcohol, steadily toward a fatal termination, which might, in many cases, have been averted but for the true state of the patient having been completely masked.

"Wherever the blame really has lain, one thing is now clear, that alcoholic intoxicants are very rarely useful as a medicine; are at the best dangerous remedies; and that, other things being equal, the less they are resorted to the better for the chances of the patient's recovery, the better for body and brain, the better for physical, intellectual and moral well-being. Alcohol does not nourish, but pulls down; does not stimulate, but depresses; does not strengthen, but excites and exhausts.

Alcohol is the pathological fraud of frauds, degenerating while it claims to be reconstructing, enfeebling while it appears to be invigorating, destroying vitality while it professes to infuse new life."

A medical writer in the Toledo, O., _Blade_ holds up in clear light the relation of the _materia medica_ and alcohol, and the opportunity of the physician to become a benefactor, and active temperance worker. His remarks follow:--

"One of the signs of the times in the temperance movement is the steady growth among physicians of a sentiment against the administration of liquor of any kind as a medicine. The accepted scientific view of alcohol is that it is a poison, and its administration should be as guarded as that of any other poison used as a medicine. Perhaps the hardest thing a physician finds in his effort to restore his patients to health without the use of liquors is the common, but erroneous, belief that they are 'strengthening,' and that the convalescent, by their use, reaches recovery more quickly. The error is in supposing that any alcoholic liquor is nouris.h.i.+ng, or strengthening. They are neither. Alcohol does not nourish, but it pulls down; it does not strengthen, but excites and exhausts, for every stimulation is necessarily followed by a period of depression, and this is inevitably unfavorable to the patient.

"There is a grave responsibility resting on the physician who prescribes alcoholic liquor. It may arouse in a susceptible patient a dormant, inherited tendency to drink. He may, by authorizing its use during the period of convalescence, fix a habit upon a patient of feeble will, which the latter will never be able to shake off. No physician who realizes this great moral responsibility will be willing to accept it habitually. He certainly knows that the best medical authorities agree that alcoholic intoxicants are rarely useful as a medicine; that at best they are dangerous remedies, and that the less they are resorted to, the better for both brain and body.

"In point of fact the physician who does his duty to his patient teaches him the error of the prevalent belief in the virtues of liquor in restoring the sick to health. He becomes an active temperance worker in effect. And he can do a n.o.ble and useful work in the rescue of those who are under the control of the drink habit. * * * * *

"Furthermore, every physician owes it to his profession to teach his patients the utter fallacy of the common belief that alcohol is an article of food value. It has no such value. The use of intoxicants in any quant.i.ty whatever, or at any time, is entirely useless and unnecessary. The continued use of them gradually induces structural degradations and functional derangements of the great bodily organs, thus leading to the gravest physical disorders."

"I have demonstrated by actual experience that no form of alcoholic drink is necessary, or desirable, for internal use, either in health, or any of the varied forms of disease; but that health can be better preserved, and disease more successfully treated, without the use of such drinks.* * * * *

Simple truth compels me to say that I have never yet seen a case in which the use of alcoholic drinks either increased the force of the heart's action, or strengthened the patient. But I could detail very many cases in which the administration of alcoholics was quieting the patient's restlessness, enfeebling the capillary circulation, and steadily favoring increased engorgement of the lungs and other internal viscera, and thereby hastening a fatal result, where both attending physician and friends thought they were the only agents that were keeping the patient alive.

"I have found no case of disease and no emergency arising from accident, that I could not treat more successfully without any form of fermented or distilled liquors than with. It is easy to see that the anaesthetic properties of alcohol can be made available by an intelligent and skillful physician to meet a very limited number of indications in the treatment of some cases that will come before him. But the same intelligence and skill will enable him to select other remedies capable of meeting the same indications more perfectly, and, with less tendency to secondary bad effects. I have no hesitation, therefore, in stating that for the attainment of the highest degree of success in the management of all forms of disease, whether acute or chronic, we need no form of fermented, or distilled, alcoholic drinks. And whoever will boldly make the trial, will find that his patients, of every kind, will make better progress, on good air and simple nourishment, without any admixture of alcoholic liquids, than they will with such addition. In other words he will find that the supposed benefits of this cla.s.s of agents in medicine, are as illusory as they are in general society, and that the words of the wise man are worthy of careful consideration when he says: 'Wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging, and whosoever is _deceived_ thereby is not wise.'"--DR. N. S. DAVIS, Chicago, Ill.

"Dr. Hirschfeld, a well-known physician of Magdeburg, Germany, was recently arrested on a charge of malpractice. The specific charge was that he had refused to give alcohol to one of his patients who was supposed to need it. The doctor, like the more advanced German physicians, is discarding liquor from his practice, and made such a hot defence to the charge that the court not only discharged the physician, but a.s.sessed the cost of the defense against the prosecution."--_Bulletin of A. M. T. A._

Dr. Greene, of Boston, when addressing his brethren and sisters of the medical a.s.sociation in that city, upon alcohol, said in closing:--

"It needs no argument to convince you that it is upon the medical profession, to a very great extent, that the rum-seller depends to maintain the respectability of the traffic. It requires only your own experience, and observations, to convince you that it is upon the medical profession, upon their prescriptions and recommendations for its use upon many occasions, that the habitual dram-drinker depends for the seeming respectability of his drinking habits. It is upon the members of the medical profession, and the exceptional laws which it has always demanded, that the whole liquor fraternity depends, more than upon anything else, to screen it from opprobrium, and just punishment for the evils which the traffic entails upon society; and it is because the rum-seller, and the rum-drinker, hide under this cloak of seeming respectability that they are so difficult to reach either by moral suasion, or by law. Physicians generally have only to overcome the force of habit, and the prevailing fas.h.i.+on in medicine, to find an excellent way, when they will all look back with wonder and surprise, that they, as individuals, and members of an honored profession, should have been so far compromised."

"It will be asked, _Was there no evidence of any good service rendered by the agent in the midst of so much obvious bad service?_ I answer to that question THAT THERE WAS NO SUCH EVIDENCE WHATEVER, AND IS NONE."--SIR B. W. RICHARDSON.

"A prominent general pract.i.tioner expressed surprise that any one could do without alcohol in general medicine. He was persuaded to make a trial, by abandoning the internal use of spirits as medicine. A year afterward he wrote that his success in the treatment of disease had been equal to that of any year in the past, and that his cases recovered as well without alcohol as with it. In a recent medical meeting he remarked, 'I thought for many years that I could not do without spirits as medicine. I was mistaken. I am constantly treating cases of all degrees of severity without alcohol, and my success is fully equal to the average.'"--_Quarterly of A. M. T. A._

"Happily, the belief in alcohol is pa.s.sing away."--DR. C. R.

FRANCIS, late Professor of Medicine, Calcutta Medical College.