Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/230

222 be given, pro re nata without the slightest regard to the existing causes of the weakness, or the modus operandi of the so-called stimulant.

"This is proved by the fact that they group together as stimulants, and give to the same patient in alternate doses, remedies of directly antagonistic action, as alcohol and strychnine, or digitalis, etc.

"The accepted definition of a stimulant in medical literature, is some agent capable of exciting or increasing vital activity as a whole, or the natural activity of some one structure or organ.

"For instance, both clinical and experimental observations show that strychnine directly increases the functional activity of the respiratory, cardiac and vasomotor nervous systems, and thereby increases the internal distribution of oxygen, which is nature's own special exciter of all vital action. Therefore it is properly a direct respiratory, cardiac and vasomotor stimulant and indirectly a stimulator of all vital processes. But the same kind of clinical and experimental observations show that alcohol directly diminishes the functional activity of all nerve structures, pre-eminently those of respiration and circulation, and also of all metabolic processes, whether respirative, disintegrative or secretory. Consequently it not only acts as directly antagonistic to strychnine, but equally so to all true stimulants or remedies capable of increasing vital activity. Instead, therefore, of meriting the name of stimulant, alcohol should be designated and used only as an anaæsthetic and sedative, or depressor of vital activity.

"And a thorough and impartial investigation will show that its use in the treatment of typhoid and other fevers, while deceiving both physician and patient, by its anæsthetic effect in diminishing restlessness, both prolongs the duration and increases the ratio of mortality of the disease, by its impairment of vital activity in the organizable elements of both blood and tissues."

Equally interesting is the following outline of