Congress of 1876, adverse to the use of alcohol as food or medicine.
Early in their work, the women of the "Union," seeing how largely the
medical prescription of alcohol was hurting the cause of temperance, and
being in possession of the latest results of chemical and physiological
investigation in regard to its specific action on the body, sent
delegations to various State medical associations at their annual
meetings, urging them to pass resolutions defining its true status as a
food or a medicine and discouraging its use in the profession. With most
of these medical associations they found a respectful hearing; and their
presentation of the matter had the effect of drawing to the subject the
attention of a large number of medical men who had not, from old
prejudices, or in consequence of their absorption in professional
duties, given careful attention to the later results of scientific
investigation. As a consequence, many physicians who had been in the
habit of ordering alcoholic stimulants for weak or convalescent
patients, gave up the practice entirely; while those who still resorted
to their use, deemed it safest to be more guarded in their
administration than heretofore.


ACTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CONGRESS.

But the crowning result of this effort to induce the medical profession
to limit or abandon the prescription of alcohol, came when the
International Congress, one of the largest and ablest medical bodies
ever convened, made, through its "Section on Medicine," the brief, but
clear and unequivocal declaration already given in a previous chapter,
and at once and forever laid upon alcohol the ban of the profession.

Official communications were addressed to this body by the National