Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/305

Rh , practice their profession if they were debarred the use of alcohol, and who look on the advance and the growth of scientific abstaining principles—which they cannot avoid recognizing—with positive dread. The extremists on this side are indeed extreme in their fanaticism. They shut their eyes to the most obvious facts, and do not hesitate in their blindness to misrepresent the most obvious truths. They affirm that under the influence of total abstinence and, by inference, because of total abstinence, the yearly decreasing death-rate of the population is accompanied by reduction of vitality; that people who live long are more enfeebled than those who live short lives and merry; that under abstinence from alcohol fearful diseases are being developed; that the total abstainers have less power for resisting disease than the moderate temperate; and that under the current system of advance towards total abstinence, a very small advance yet by the way, diseases of a low type have developed and extended their ravages."

It is only physicians of large conscientiousness, or of great independence of character, who will dare to go counter to the prejudices of the people.

Consequently, it is necessary to educate the people in the teachings of those physicians, whose eminence in the profession has permitted them, or whose conscientiousness has driven them, to expose the delusions concerning the medical value of alcoholic beverages. When the people cease to believe in alcoholic remedies, physicians will no longer prescribe them. But while the majority desire the "physicians' prescription" as a cover for indulgence, there will be found physicians willing to give such prescriptions.

That the prescription of alcohol by physicians is