Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/428

420 "So, when the patient turns up with an overworked and exhausted organ of some sort within him—be it what it may—heart, brain or stomach—the true physician prescribes, first and chiefly, not drugs, but rest.

"Now, this is generally the advice the patient doesn't want. His desire is for a bottle of something, no matter how nasty it may be, which shall ' fix him up,' and let him go on doing what he has been doing previously. Common-sense is always at a discount, and never more so than in this case. The tired brain-worker doesn't want to stop. Give him something to whip up his brain and his body, something to drive the spurs into them. 'What I want,' he says, 'is a really strong tonic'; though, if he knew that before, what was the use of coming to the doctor? Or he would like to be told to take a glass of whisky-and-water when he is tired, which is the maddest and most disastrous advice that could be given.

"The man who has been ill-treating his stomach, eating too much or too well, also demands a tonic—something to give him an appetite so that he may eat more. And his poor over-wrought stomach is all the time crying out for rest.

"So it is all along the line. The possessor of an inflamed and swollen knee prays for a liniment to rub into it which will cure it straight away, and is highly disgusted when told that he will have to lie up for a week or two.

"Again, for the tired stomach the cure is starvation. Let the person live on his own fat, and a little milk-and-water for a few days, and his stomach will take courage again and return to work with renewed zest. But it is the most difficult thing in the world to persuade the patient or his kind relatives of the truth of this. There are many diseases in which, for a short time at least, the less food the sick person has the better. But the relatives are always much wiser than the doctor. They insist 'that the strength must be kept up,' and would like to force the patient to eat more than he does when well.' You will let