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
Dr. Harley, of the Royal Society of London, has made the subject of
alcohol and diabetes matter for considerable study. He says a small
quantity only of alcohol injected into the portal (liver) circulation of
healthy animals will cause diabetic urine.
"If any one doubt the truth of the assertion that alcohol causes
diabetes, let him select a case of that form of the disease
arising from excessive formation, and after having carefully
estimated the daily amount of sugar eliminated by the patient,
allow him to drink a few glasses of wine, and watch the result.
He will soon find the ingestion of the liquor is followed by an
increase of sugar. If alcoholics increase the amount of
saccharine matter in the urine of the diabetic, we can easily
understand how their excessive use may induce the disease in
individuals _predisposed_ to it."--DR. HARLEY.
Some physicians claim that in jaundice and certain other bilious
disorders even medicines prepared in alcohol are decidedly prejudicial
and aggravating.
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, and other writers draw attention to the effects of
alcohol in hindering the liver in its duty of destroying the toxic
substances generated within the system of a sick person by the specific
microbes to which the disease owes its origin, saying that the activity
of the liver in destroying these poisons is one of the physiologic
processes which stand between the patient and death.
The more this question is studied the more apparent is it that, other
things being equal, the sick person who is cared for by a non-alcoholic
physician has a much better chance of recovery than the one dosed by "a
brandy doctor."
EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE KIDNEYS.
"The kidneys, being the chief organs for the excretion of
nitrogen waste, are among the most important organs of the body.
Any defect in their healthy activity leads to serious
interference with the working of many organs, due to the
accumulation in the body of nitrogenous waste products. If both
kidneys be cut out of an animal, it dies in a few hours from
blood-poisoning, due to the accumulation of waste poisonous
substances which the kidneys should have got rid of. Serious
kidney-disease amounts to pretty much the same thing as cutting
out the organs, since they are of little use if not healthy. It
is always fatal if not checked, and often kills in a short time.
The things which most frequently cause kidney disease are undue
exposure to cold, and indulgence in alcoholic drinks."--Martin's
_Human Body_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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