Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/384

376 "Few physicians now credit alcohol as a food (that is, as a tissue builder) or as having any valuable medicinal qualities. In fact, it is considered by many to have a destructive rather than a constructive quality. I believe it should never be put into the human body."—, St. Paul, Minn.

"The medical profession is learning that alcohol has been much abused in the treatment of the sick, and is largely discarding it. I hardly find occasion to prescribe it once a year."—, Sec'y State Board of Health, Hampton, Va.

"The use of alcohol as a beverage or therapeutically, is in either case a habit of the user. The stimulation is but temporary, the reaction leaving the nerve cells of the individual with less resisting power than before the ingestion of alcohol. * * * Never permit a verbal or written prescription of yours to give rise to the use of a habit forming drug."—From a lecture to students in Omaha Medical College by J. M. Aiken, M. D., Clinical Instructor and Lecturer upon Nervous and Mental Diseases.

'The use of spirits as a stimulant in diseases, except in a very limited circle, is a mere empiricism for which no good reasons can be given. The teachings of medical men are no more to be followed blindly and without question. The tests of alcohol as a tonic, as a food, as a stimulant, as a retarder of waste, are all negative. There is no reliable evidence to support these claims, but a constant accumulation of facts to indicate the danger from the use of spirits. To give alcohol or any other drug without some rational theory in accord with the scientific researches of to-day is unpardonable."—, Hartford, Conn., Editor of the Journal of Inebriety.

"Many physicians prescribe alcohol only because it is the desire of the patient, and because patients refuse medicine which the physicians would rather use."—, Boston, Mass.