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
"Throughout these experiments, with few exceptions, it will be
seen that the alcoholized animals not only showed the effects of
the inoculations earlier than did the non-alcoholized rabbits,
but in the case of the streptococcus inoculations, the lesions
produced (formation of miliary abscesses) were much more
pronounced than are those that usually follow inoculations with
this organism.
"With regard to the predisposing influence of the alcohol, one
is constrained to believe that it is in most cases the result of
structural alterations consequent upon its direct action on the
tissues, though in a number of animals no such alterations could
be made out by microscopic examinations. I am inclined, however,
to the belief, in the light of the work of Berkley and
Friedenwald, done under the direction of Professor Welch, in the
pathological laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University, that a
closer study of the tissues of these animals would have revealed
in all of them structural changes of such a nature as to
indicate disturbances of important vital functions of sufficient
gravity fully to account for the loss of normal resistance.
"Following up Dr. Abbott's experiments, Dr. Delearde, working in
Calmette's laboratory in the _Institut Pasteur_ at Lille, made a
series of observations which are, from many points of view, of
very great interest and importance as he attacks it from an
entirely new standpoint, one that will, I hope, ere long, be
taken up by those working in this country. It has already been
demonstrated that 'alcoholics' suffer far more seriously from
microbic affections than do those of sober life, and it is now
accepted that amongst them the mortality from this class of
disease is higher than amongst those who are not accustomed to
take alcohol regularly or to excess.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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