Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/368

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ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE.

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 class 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. Hirschfield, 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 assessed 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 association 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