Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/215

Rh about it. A few days later blood-poisoning set in and in a short time his end came. ***** Some forty years ago a man named Whitney was teasing a rattlesnake in a Broadway barroom, was bitten by it, and, though whisky was poured down his throat by the quart, he soon died.

"Such results seem entirely unnecessary were the proper course pursued, and at the same time they are a fearful commentary on the medical resources of the day.

"The latest researches in regard to alcohol reveal it as a poison to the human system in whatever way it may be diluted or disguised. Its effect is always the same in proportion to the amount taken. It is impossible to habitually use it in any form, even in small quantities, without disease and degeneration resulting therefrom. When taken into the stomach the action is the same as with any other narcotic; the meaning of this word is to become torpid. It benumbs the nerves of sensation, and thus the vital resistance to any offending material is reduced, and while the patient feels less of any disturbance the real harm goes on with accumulated force because of the lack of vitality and non-resistance of the nervous system.

"When the body is in the throes of a vital struggle with a virulent poison it would seem, to any unprejudiced mind, the height of folly to further weaken the vital resistance by the administration of any narcotic, and especially alcohol.

"The eminent German, Professor Bunge, says: 'All the results which on superficial observation appear to show that alcohol possesses stimulant properties, can be explained on the ground that they were due to paralysis.' ***** Professors S. Weir Mitchell and E. T. Reichert, in Researches on Serpent Poison, make this notable statement: 'Despite the popular creed, it is now pretty sure that many men have been killed by the alcohol given to relieve them from the effects of snake bite, and it is a matter of record that men dead drunk with whiskey and then bitten, have died of the bite.'