Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why: What Medical Writers SayAllen, Martha Meir
Science
Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why: What Medical Writers Say
Allen, Martha Meir
Alcohol -- Physiological effect; Temperance
"It is important that patients should know that the sweats are
greatly aggravated by opium in any form, and hence are increased
by cough mixtures of any sort which contain this drug. Very
simple remedies are often effective to relieve the most
distressing cough, such as gargling of water in the throat,
holding bits of ice in the mouth, taking occasional sips of
strong lemonade, and similar remedies. As a general rule,
patients run down and the disease progresses much more rapidly,
after beginning the use of opium in any form. Sometimes it is
best that the cough should be encouraged instead of being
repressed. When the patient expectorates very freely, the cough
is a necessary means of relieving the chest of matters which
would seriously interfere with the functions of the lungs if
retained, by filling up the bronchial tubes and air-cells. The
kind of cough needing relief is an irritable, ineffective cough,
unaccompanied by any considerable degree of expectoration. Loaf
sugar, honey or a mixture of honey and lemon juice, and other
simple, familiar remedies are often effective in relieving such
a cough. * * * * *
"It is perhaps needless to add that the numerous quack remedies
for consumption advertised in the newspapers are wholly without
merit. There is no known drug which will cure this disease, or
in any certain degree influence its progress. Numerous remedies
have been recommended as curative, but not one has thus far
stood the test of experience."
DISPLACEMENTS OF THE UTERUS:--These conditions are not among those for
which alcoholic liquors are likely to be advised by a physician, but
women frequently resort to Lydia Pinkham's Compound and other alcoholic
preparations in the vain hope of finding the relief so positively
promised in the nostrum advertisements. Women are sometimes seriously
injured by using the nostrums specially advised for uterine weaknesses,
for this reason: a drug which may be of service in an anaemic condition
of the womb may do much damage in an inflamed or engorged condition, yet
the nostrum vendors advise their preparations for all alike, without a
word of warning as to possible dangers.
Ordinary displacements may be recovered from by cleanliness of the parts
and by exercises which strengthen the muscles in the pelvic region. The
writer has known a considerable number of women who have been restored
to health by exercises after months, in some cases, and several years in
others, of weakness and misery. One of these women was a close relative
of a celebrated specialist in women's diseases. He said he could not do
any more for her, and gave permission for her to try the exercises,
which were given her by a well-equipped teacher of physical training.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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