ALCOHOL IN DISEASE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2298, 2 April 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

ALCOHOL IN DISEASE.

(Tub Lanckt.)

Od'k teetotal friends 'have had such a snt of the tide in their favour of lato years that they take badly any little sign in the opposite direction. They have seen .medical and physiological authorities one after another admitting that alcohol was dispensable in a hi rare number of diseases, nml that for ordinary purposes of health those fare bo.-t who take it with extreme moderation. Great phy.-ieiar.R hnvo taken their brandy or even their sherry in fwf.iC.s vnrrcx, and havo declared the inability of people with healthy organs to appropriate- more than a very snrill quantity. More than this is discharged us at best, useless and often injurious. All casual drinking, drinking at odd times and on empty stomachs, and for the mere sake of drinkinir; has been denounced us treason to tho finest organs of the body, and fraught for the mass of tho people with future and not remote mischief and trouble. Intelligent lay people of both sexes have been quietly dropping the habit of taking much" alcohol, partly from mortal considerations, but largely from the report of science as to its action, and largely too from the fact that their own sensations and experience concurred with the teachings of science. All this was surely enough to satisfy temperate abstainers. But there aro intemperate teetotalers, as we have already said, They will allow no virtue in alcohol. It is evil, and only evil, and that continually and in all cases. They: usurp the pluce of the physician, and dogmatise where doctors deliberate. The true friends of temperance should disown such advocates. They do immense harm ; they exclude thousands from the great army that is available against excess, and they put into an attitude of opposition the medical profession, which has enormous power to help all true social and dietetic reform. Our own attitude in this matter is well known. We take the evidence of every witnes who has common sense or special knowledge, and try to weigh it. Two witnesses are before us as we write. One (Dr. Collie, medical superintendent of the Eastern Hospitals), who has been courageous in advocating good wine, in proper quantities, in those hospitals. He has defined his views in a paper in the Practitioner, vol. xxxvii., No. 2. He admits that alcohol is not required in the mildest cases of fevers, nor in the severe if the patient be taking a sufficiency of food, nor generally in young aolults of the well-to-do classes. These are great admissions for Dr. Collie to make ; but in opposite circumstances he maintains it is more or less necessary, and we advise our readers to consider his opinions. Briefly, in the chief fevers, to which his authority applies, they are as follows : — In typhus, alcohol is rarely required for children or adults under thirty; but after that age it is required, and often in considerable quantities. It may be dispensed with early in convalescence, as solid food can be taken as soon as the temperature falls. In scarlet fever, alcohol is not requii'ed, as a rule, at any period of the disease. But in very poor children in early convalescence, with abscesses or brawny neck, alcohol in the form of port wine is indicated. He considers port, say four to eight ounces, good for children of the age of from four to six. For procuring sleep it is better than opium. In enteric fever the chief value of alcohol is during convalescence, where solid food cannot safely be taken for from ten to fourteen days from the return to normal temperatures. Alcohol is contra-indi-cated in cases of hemorrhage unless collapse has resulted. Burgundies and champagne of well-approved brands are, he thinks, the best forms. Let Dr. Collie's opinions be considered in their entirety, and before our teetotal friends reject them contemptuously, lot them pass through six weeks of the diarrhoea and fever of typhoid. The Bishop of Manchester is the other witness. He declares that after two year's experience of total abstinence ho broke down utterly. His medical man gave him the choice of giving up work or taking a .slight .stimulus ■with his meal*. The result justified the prescription, and the Bishop, instead of being a total alstainer, is a member of the Church of England Temperance Society, discontinuing ail but the measured and medical use of alcohol at meals. Those who exclude him as a fellow-worker would have excluded the Apostle Paul for his prescription to Timothy, forgetting his other great prescription to all men—to "live soberly, righteously, and godly."