Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/386

378 "Alcohol finds no place in my remedial list. It has been banished, not from sentiment, but from knowledge secured by scientific investigation."—, New York City, one of the founders of the Red Cross Hospital, New York.

"No sound, scientific argument can be offered for the medical use of alcohol, either internally or externally. It is a toxic substance which ought to be retired from the materia medica, and placed in the catalog of obsolete drugs along with tobacco, lobelia, and like useless but highly toxic drug substances."—, Superintendent Battle Creek Sanitarium, Battle Creek, Michigan.

"The majority of medical men, without making any searching investigation into the abundant recent literature upon the subject of alcohol, are disposed to regard it with less and less favor as the years go by, while those who have closely followed the thorough investigations into the physiological action of alcohol recently made by scientists, have repudiated it altogether. * * * It is a lack of information upon this subject together with the fact that alcohol has been used as a therapeutic agent for hundreds of years, during which it has formed the basis of all tonic or stimulating treatment that gives alcohol its present hold upon a part of the medical profession."—, M. D., Portland, Oregon, formerly professor in Milwaukee Medical College.

"Alcohol may fill an emergency when better means are not at hand, but, apart from this, I know of no use in the practise of medicine and surgery for which we have not better weapons at our command. There is but one reason for the continued use of alcohol men use it because they love it."—,. Chicago, Editor Journal of Clinical Medicine.

"If alcohol had become a candidate for recognition years ago instead of centuries ago it is safe to say that its application in medicine would have been very much more limited than we find it at the present time. Its wide therapeutic use is to be attributed in part to fallacies and misconception