The Journal-Lancet, Vol. XXXV, No. 5, March 1, 1915: The Journal of the Minnesota State Medical Association and Official Organ of the North Dakota and South Dakota State Medical Associations — John Shaqi
The Journal-Lancet, Vol. XXXV, No. 5, March 1, 1915: The Journal of the Minnesota State Medical Association and Official Organ of the North Dakota and South Dakota State Medical AssociationsVarious
Science
The Journal-Lancet, Vol. XXXV, No. 5, March 1, 1915: The Journal of the Minnesota State Medical Association and Official Organ of the North Dakota and South Dakota State Medical Associations
Various
Medicine -- Periodicals
There is too much sentiment, too much sympathy among friends,
relatives, courts, juries, and charity workers, as to the inebriate;
but once he gets to Willmar and is under a proper regimen, his
attitude changes totally toward himself and toward the world. After
one has watched the treatment at Willmar and has seen the benefit
these patients derive, he wonders why so many women and so many men
are sent to quack institutions for inebriety and drug habits. Willmar
costs the patient practically nothing, except a small per capita
borne by the State. The average quack institution charges $150.00 for
a cure, so called, whether the cure lasts for three days, or, as in
some of the more conservative (?) quack institutions, the period is
extended to ten days, and in the notoriously drink-habit cures, to
thirty days. This ought to appeal to a doctor forcibly, inasmuch as
all these claims of cures made by quack institutions are limited to
thirty days at the outside, an absolutely absurd statement, and, for
that reason, if for none other, we should all support and entertain
anything that tends to increase the efficiency of the State farm for
inebriates at Willmar.
One thing which Dr. Freeman wants to emphasize is the necessity at
times of forcible restraint in a building especially constructed
for detention cases. There is a small class of people who are,
perhaps, suffering from a disease state, who are irresponsible. Most
of them are common drunkards, who create all sorts of disturbances
and who really need discipline--who need to be detained forcibly
for a sufficient length of time to enable them to recover their
normal physical tone, and until they recover something of their
natural mental tone. If this could be incorporated in the rules and
regulations of the governing body of the inebriate farm it would make
a great increase in the total number of improvements and recoveries.
Dr. Freeman has emphasized the necessity of getting the physical
condition up to a high point. He has said all that is really needed
on the subject. I believe drugs and drink should be reduced rapidly
in almost every case. If you look over some of the literature of some
institutions that take these people, you will find they reduce the
morphine down from fifty grains to forty, and then to thirty-nine,
until, finally, after a period of so many weeks or months, they cut it
down to the two-hundredth of a grain, and give it hypodermically. You
can readily see the absurdity of that treatment. The average man can
have the total reduction made within thirty-six or forty-eight hours.
I hope you will take more interest in the inebriate farm, and see that
your legislator is interested as well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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