Habits that Handicap: The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the RemedyTowns, Charles Barnes
Science
Habits that Handicap: The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the Remedy
Towns, Charles Barnes
Alcoholism; Opium abuse -- United States; Tobacco use
It is quite impossible to make an intelligently satisfactory mental or
physical diagnosis of any patient brought to me until he has been entirely
freed from the drug which he has been taking. As soon as this has been
fully accomplished, it is possible to consider the case carefully. It is
also necessary to make an invariable rule that no person entering my
institution for treatment shall be permitted to come into contact with any
other person who is there for treatment, for there can be nothing
psychologically worse than the discussion of symptoms and the exchange of
experiences among people under treatment. It is also a rule that in the
institution physicians employed in the establishment shall not become
intimate with the patients or spend with them any time not necessarily
devoted to professional investigation and attendance.
Nurses also must be as businesslike as possible in all their relationships
with patients, and must do as little hand-holding and sympathizing as
possible even in the cases of ultra-nervous women patients. It is a
principle of the average sanatorium to encourage the "sympathetic" nurse.
Wittingly or unwittingly, the old-time sanatorium made a practice of
manufacturing habitual sanatorium inmates. The most hopeless cases I have
ever seen have been those who have become inured to wearing sanatorium
stripes. Such will never change their tailor till their pocket-book
becomes empty.
Another detail of my treatment not easily compassed in the average
sanatorium is to consider every case as an individual case, to be dealt
with individually. In private practice this is often overlooked, and to
this I also attribute many failures in treatment. The individuality of
every case must be borne in mind not only throughout the treatment itself,
but afterward, during the period of recuperation. The case itself is sure
to indicate in some measure the further treatment which should be followed
in the period immediately succeeding the patient's discharge from my
institution, and very frequently indicates, in fact, the necessity for
consultation with other specialists and for a surgical operation. After
the patient has been relieved of drugs comes the time to begin the
necessary physical upbuilding by means of exercise. Although I may have
seemed to condemn the sanatorium, I must add now that some institutions
are specially qualified to assist in this building-up process. Some
health-building institutions that devote their entire attention to
strengthening their patients by means of physical exercise are doing
wonderfully good work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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