In Cameron's "Hygiene" is this sentence: "In candor, it must be admitted
that many eminent physicians deny the efficacy of alcohol in the
treatment of any kind of disease, _and some assert that it is worse
than useless_."


ACCUMULATIVE TESTIMONY.

Dr. Arnold Lees, F.L.S., in a recent paper on the "Use and Action of
Alcohol in Disease," assumes "_that the old use of alcohol was not
science, but a grave blunder_." Prof. C.A. Parks says: "It is impossible
not to feel that, so far, the progress of physiological inquiry renders
the use of alcohol (in medicine) more and more doubtful." Dr. Anstie
says: "If alcohol is to be administered at all for the _relief_ of
neuralgia, it should be given with as much precision, as to dose, as we
should use in giving an acknowledged _deadly poison_." Dr. F.T. Roberts,
an eminent English physician, in advocating a guarded use of alcohol in
typhoid fever, says: "Alcoholic stimulants are, by no means, always
required, and their indiscriminate use may do a great deal of harm." In
Asiatic cholera, brandy was formerly administered freely to patients
when in the stage of collapse. The effect was injurious, instead of
beneficial. "Again and again," says Prof. G. Johnson, "have I seen a
patient grow colder, and his pulse diminish in volume and power, after a
dose of brandy, and, apparently, as a direct result of the brandy." And
Dr. Pidduck, of London, who used common salt in cholera treatment, says:
"Of eighty-six cases in the stage of collapse, sixteen only proved
fatal, and scarcely one would have died, _if I had been able to prevent
them from taking brandy and laudanum_." Dr. Collenette, of Guernsey,
says: "For more than thirty years I have abandoned the use of all kinds