Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/268

260 were so far relieved that a few days' change in country air seemed all that was required to induce full restoration. Comparing the experience of the treatment of acute rheumatic disease without alcohol with that which I have previously observed with alcohol, I can have no hesitation in declaring that it is of the greatest advantage to follow total abstinence absolutely in this disease. The pain and swelling of joints is more quickly relieved under abstinence, the fever falls more rapidly, there is less frequent relapse, and there is quicker recovery. In brief, the experience of treament of rheumatic fever minus alcohol, presents to me as much novelty as it does pleasure, and I am convinced that if any candid member of the profession could have witnessed what I have witnessed in this matter, he would agree with me that alcohol in rheumatic fever, however acute, is altogether out of place. I am also under the conviction, though I express it with great reserve, that in acute rheumatism, treated without alcohol, the cardiac complications, endocardial and pericardial, are much less frequently developed than where alcohol is supplied."

Dr. Pechuman in Alcohol—Is It a Medicine; published in 1891, says:—

Dr. T. D. Crothers, in the January, 1899, Bulletin of the American Medical Temperance Association, gave the following Hospital Statistics, showing a decline in the use of spirits in hospitals:—