Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/261

Rh my views of the value of alcohol in fever underwent, solely as a result of the experience there gained, entire modification. The conviction became forced upon my mind that in no case in which it was used did benefit to the patient ensue; that in a proportion of cases its use was distinctly hurtful; and that in a small but appreciable number of cases the resultant harm was sufficient to tilt the balance as against the recovery of the patient.'

"In plain terms, alcohol tended to the destruction of the patients. Dr. Bond's figures are :—

In May, 1890, Dr. Nathan S. Davis, read a paper before the American Medical Association upon the use of certain drugs in disease. Among the drugs mentioned was alcohol, and comparative death-rates were given in typhoid fever and pneumonia, between Mercy Hospital, Chicago, during a term of years when no alcohol was used in the medical wards, Dr. Davis being in charge of them, and some of the large metropolitan hospitals using alcohol. In Mercy Hospital without alcohol, the death-rate in typhoid fever was only five per cent.; in pneumonia only twelve per cent.

"Of 161 cases of typhoid fever treated in Cook County Hospital during 1889, 27 died, or one in six—nearly 17 per cent.

"According to the annual report of the Cincinnati Hospital for 1886, 47 cases of typhoid fever were treated during that year, with seven deaths, a mortality rate of 16 per cent.