Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/262

254 "The Garfield Memorial Hospital, at Washington, reported for the year 1889, 22 cases of typhoid fever, with 5 deaths or—22 per cent.

"In the Pennsylvania Hospital the mortality rate in pneumonia for the years 1884-1886, was 34 per cent.

"The mortality of pneumonia in the Massachusetts General Hospital, between the years 1822 and 1889, comprising 1,000 cases, was 25 per cent.; but a gradual increase in mortality had been noted from 10 per cent, in the first decade of the seventy years represented by this report, to 28 per cent, in the last decade.

"According to the report of the Supervising Surgeon General of the U. S. Marine Hospital Service for 1888, the number of cases of pneumonia treated between 1880 and 1887 was 1,649, with 311—deaths nearly 19 percent.

"The Cincinnati Hospital reported for 1886 a mortality rate in pneumonia of 38 per cent.

"The mortality rate in the Cook County Hospital, Chicago, for 1889, according to Dr. Heltoin, relating to 80 cases of pneumonia, was 36 per cent."

Only a five per cent, death-rate in typhoid fever without alcohol, and from sixteen to twenty-two per cent, with alcohol; only a twelve per cent, death-rate in pneumonia without alcohol, and from 19 to as high as 38 per cent, with alcohol. Such are the comparative death-rates given by Dr. Davis. They should be committed to memory by every opposer of the use of alcohol, as they show clearly that people have many more chances for recovery, other things being equal, in the diseases mentioned, if alcohol is not used than if it is.

It is worthy of mention in this connection that