ALCOHOLIC POISON,
tion. Can it benefit a person already weak with
, overlabor? Says Dr. Edmunds, “A stimulant is
that which gets strength out of a man.” Such a
process could not be very beneficial to a person
already debilitated.
But a weary man fecls better after taking wine ;
why is that the case? Alcohol diminishes sensi-
bility, as chloroform does. It is a narcotic. The
weary man feels better after taking wine because
he does not know that he is weary, that his tis-
sues need repair. If he continues to labor, he
continues to wear out his tissues, and increases
the necessity for rest, even though he may not
know it. When the narcotizing influence of the
alcohol is removed, he will be made painfully
conscious of the fact by a degree of prostration
far greater than he would have suffered if he had
taken no alcohol.
So with the sick. If a man is debilitated by
disease, by a long-continued fever, for example,
his system is weary with the task of expelling
impurities from the body. Now if aleohol is ad-
ministered, it is expelled as the other impurities
have been. It renders the exhausted organs no
ald ; 1t imparts no force; it simply imposes an
additional task. Such aid is surely not desirable.
Who would think of relieving an overburdened
horse by adding another burden to his load ? No
sensible man, certainly. If fever patients recover
after taking great quantities of wine and brandy,
it is in spite of the alcohol, and not by the aid of
it; for it has been proved in hundreds of instances
ALCOHOLIC MEDICATION, 89
that fever patients do far better without brandy
than with it.
Twenty years ago, when a man had fever he
was puked, purged, bled, and salivated, under the
notion that he had too much vitality—too much
life—some of which must be got out of him. The
plan of abstracting vitality was so successful that
_ thousands of fever patients were killed who
might have lived half a century if they had been
so fortunate as to have had only an old woman
for a doctor, or a harmless homeopathist.
In later times there has been a most remarka-
ble revolution in the treatment of fevers. Calo-
mel, emetics, purgatives, and the lancet are no
longer employed in treating fevers. Instead of
depleting their patients, or robbing them of their
vitality by the barbarous methods of olden times,
“regular” physicians have adopted the theory
that in fever the patient has too little vitality,
and so they attempt to increase his vital force by
potations of brandy, wine, and other alcoholic lig-
Ors.
Of course, this practice is founded upon the
theory that alcohol supplies force ; but we have
already proved that alcohol does not supply
force to the hody, but that it exhausts, abstracts,
and paralyzes. This, then, cannot be the proper
agent to employ when an addition of force 1s re-
quired.
aye Dr. James Edmunds, of England, “ I be-
lieve, in cases of sickness, the last thing you want
© Aleoholiv Poison. 7