I cannot close this chapter without again earnestly calling the attention
of all physicians to the great danger to life which results from giving
alcohol in any form to patients in very critical cases, or as they are at
or approaching the crisis in their disease, in fevers and in inflammatory
diseases, such as pneumonia, etc.
Since writing the preceding pages, in fact, since most of them were in
type, my attention has been called by notices in our papers to the fact
that champagne was given to a starving man, and that a few drops of brandy
were mixed with the milk given to a child in a similar condition, or
suffering from marasmus; and within a week a physician who has traveled
extensively and lectured before medical, theological, and literary
organizations, and who has frequently been in consultation in critical
cases, described in my hearing several cases of pneumonia which he visited,
which were, as he expressed it, drunk. When asked by the attending
physician what he would suggest, he always replied, "Stop giving your
patients alcoholic liquids;" and with a single exception, out of a large
number, and that was a complicated case, recovery followed. While
practicing in Detroit I was called to see a prominent citizen who was
suffering from typhoid fever. His physicians had told his family that he
would die, but that the "stimulants" they were giving him might keep him
alive a few hours. I found him delirious, with cold, clammy extremities and
almost pulseless. I stopped his "stimulants" at once and gave him
Homoeopathic remedies and nourishment, and the next day he was out of
danger. No more dangerous treatment has ever been adopted than to give a
patient in a critical stage of disease alcohol in any form or quantity.
Every intelligent physician ought to be able to see that this is true. I
repeat, alcohol paralyzes the minute capillary vessels and veins (look at
the face of the drinker) on the surface of the body, in the brain (look at
a drinker's words and actions), stomach, lungs, and kidneys, and congests
them with blood, through which the structures are nourished with food and
drink and purified by the removal of decomposed and effete substances.
Cannot every one see that these vessels, when thus paralyzed and congested,
cannot perform their duty as well as they can in a natural state? Then,
again, the temperature of the body is lowered internally and its heat
wasted from the surface. What patients in the critical stages of disease
require are warmth applied, if needed, to the surface of the body and
limbs, and hot water (not scalding hot, of course), milk, unfermented wine,
and other simple, easily digested articles which will nourish and
strengthen the body taken internally.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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