CHAPTER XII.
WHY DOCTORS STILL PRESCRIBE ALCOHOLICS.
Workers in the department of Medical Temperance of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union are told repeatedly by the better class of physicians that they would be glad often not to prescribe alcohol if patients and their friends would not insist upon its use. There is a deep-rooted prejudice in favor of alcohol as a remedy in the minds of the great multitude of people, and they are ready to distrust as fanatical, or incompetent, any physician who does not use it. Dr. Norman Kerr, a well-known physician of England, says, that during a ten years' residence in America, he found people unwilling to pay him as much for his services as they were willing to pay one who prescribed alcoholics. Even those who were abstainers from liquors as beverages distrusted him for not using these things as medicines. Indeed, this prejudice goes so far with many that they will refuse to employ a non-alcoholic physician, if they know him to be such. In consequence of this latter fact, there are great numbers of skilful physicians who say nothing about alcohol lest they be con-
