DOCTORS AND ALCOHOL.

White Ribbon, Volume 23, Issue 275, 18 May 1918, Page 10

DOCTORS AND ALCOHOL.

Among- the agents which produce degeneration of tissue, alcohol may be characterised as the most prominent of all, it having an especial action on the most highly developed tissues of the human body.- Prof. Cl. Sims Woodhead, Professor of Pathology, University of Cambridge, England. Alcohol is a poison having a specific affinity for the nerve centres of the* brain and paralysing those centres in the inverse order of their development, the last developed suffering first and most, and the first developed suffering last and least.—Dr W. A. Chappie. Even the moderate quantity of alcohol contained in a glass of wine or a pint of German beer is sufficient to paralyze, retard, or diminish brain functions. —August Fore!, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, University of Zurich. It is clear, in the light of experience and of recent research work, that alcohol should be classed in the list of dangerous drugs, along with morphine, cocaine and chloral. Or. the basis of experience, 1 appeal to my colleagues everywhere to abjure it> use.—Dr Howard A. Kelley, John Hopkins University. The seeming indifference of the public and the authorities appears incomprehensible when it is considered what havoc is wrought by alcohol. The harm done by alcohol is infinitely greater than that caused by all the infe. tious diseases put together.—Dr M. S. Gregory. Bellevue Hospital. It is a sin to give children wine or beer. It is criminal to teach that wine nourishes. The dreadful neurasthenia of our day is du" iust to this early use of alcohol. Those who say that alcohol is a poison are wholly right. -Prof. Nothnngel of Vienna. Alcohol’s only place now is in the arts and sciences. Medicine has rr ached a period when alcohol has been displaced by b< iter remedies. — Dr C. H. Mayo,