Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why by Martha Meir Allen (warren buffett book recommendations txt) 📕
"It sloweth age, it strengtheneth youth, it helpeth digestion, it cutteth phlegme, it cureth the hydropsia, it healeth the strangurie, it pounces the stone, it expelleth gravel, it keepeth the head from whirling, the teeth from chattering, and the throat from rattling; it keepeth the weasen from stiffling, the stomach from wambling, and the heart from swelling; it keepeth the hands from shivering, the sinews from shrinking, the veins from crumbling, the bones from aching, and the marrow
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“There are two specific dangers in regard to these wines. They are ordinary wines, either port or sherry for the most part, and therefore strongly alcoholic. The user of them is in considerable danger of cultivating a taste for alcohol, and certainly, there is the greatest possible danger to any one having had the appetite, of reviving it.
“The dose is an elastic one, it can be repeated with considerable frequency three or four times a day.
“What would be said of growing girls or youths having recourse three or four times a day to the wine bottle? This is exactly what they are doing when coca, and the so-called food wines are placed in their hands as medicine. They like the pleasant taste, there is the call of habit and appetite, and so there arises the greatest possible danger of a general liking for alcoholic liquors being set up. The ailing man or woman of set years is in similar danger, for they are having recourse to alcohol when their powers of mind and body are to some extent exhausted, and they are thus less able to resist the fascination for alcohol that may so quickly be brought into existence.
“Another element of danger is that the recourse to coca and kola is an attempt to get more out of the body, and the mind, than nature intended. Overwork, overstrain, worry, all produce exhaustion of physical and nervous power. Nature pulls us up by asserting herself, and we feel run down and seedy, and, perhaps, quite unwell. What is wanted is rest, proper diet, and change. These would quickly be restorative, and once again we should be fit for the duties of life.
“In a busy age there is the strongest possible temptation to seek a restorative by some occult method, rather than to give the rest and refreshment that nature demands. It is upon this that the whole trade in these so-called restoratives depends.
“There is no food quality in alcohol, cocaine or kola, but there is in them all a narcotizing influence that in its lesser stages is hurtful, and in its greater stages disastrous.
“The cocaine habit may be cultivated as easily as the alcohol habit, and the two forms of disease, alcoholism and cocainism, are by no means rare. The great factor in each of them is the loss of will power, and when that is accomplished the descent to complete moral and physical ruin is quite easy.
“A pure and simple life, in accord with the laws of health and hygiene, is the panacea both for the maintenance, and the restoration of health, and that is what we should strive to aim at, rather than having recourse to drugs that are not only ineffective, but positively dangerous.”—United Temperance Gazette.
In Dr. Milner Fothergill’s Practioners’ Hand-book of Treatment, fourth edition, the following statement is made:—
“Coca wine, and other medicated wines are largely sold to people who are considered, and consider themselves, to be total abstainers. It is not uncommon to hear the mother of a family say, ‘I never allow my girls to touch stimulants of any kind, but I give them each a glass of coca wine at 11 in the morning, and again at bedtime.’ Originally coca wine was made from coca leaves, but it is now commonly a solution of the alkaloid, in a sweet and strongly alcoholic wine. This is really the gist of the whole matter; coca wine is largely consumed by people who fondly believe themselves to be total abstainers, and who are active enough in denouncing those who take a little wine, or a glass of beer at their meals. The sooner their delusion is dispelled the better for themselves, and for the unfortunate children over whom they exercise supervision.”
Another physician tells of seeing a distinguished ecclesiastical dignitary, a sworn foe of alcohol and its congeners, giving his young child a generous daily allowance of one of these wines.
The user of coca wines runs a double risk—an alcohol craving may be revived, or created; and, at the same time, cocainism may be set up, and nothing but physical, mental and moral ruin follow.
The British Medical Journal of January 23rd, 1897, says:—
“There can be no doubt that in many parts of the world cocaine inebriety is largely on the increase. The greatest number of victims is to be found among society women, and among women who have adopted literature as a profession; and there is no doubt that a considerable proportion of chronic cocainists have fallen under the dominion of the drug from a desire to stimulate their powers of imagination. Others have acquired that habit quite innocently from taking coca wines. The symptoms experienced by the victims of the cocaine habit are illusions of sight and hearing, neuromuscular irritability, and localized anæsthesia. After a time insomnia supervenes, and the patient displays a curious hesitancy, and an inability to arrive at a decision on even the most trivial subjects.”
Dr. F. Coley says later on in the article before referred to:—
“There is another combination which, though utterly absurd from a therapeutical point of view, is not in itself quite so dangerous as coca wine. It will probably do a larger amount of mischief, however, because more people take it. I refer to the various preparations, so largely advertised, which profess to be compounded of port wine, extract of malt, and extract of meat. To the medically uneducated public this doubtless seems a most promising combination: extract of meat for food, extract of malt to aid digestion, port wine to make blood. Surely the very thing to strengthen all who are weak, and to hasten the restoration of convalescents. Unfortunately what the advertisements say—that this stuff is largely prescribed by medical men—is not wholly untrue.
“I do not suppose that any physician of anything like front rank would make such a mistake. But busy general practitioners may be excused if they prove to be a bit oblivious of physiology, and so become attracted by a formula which is more plausible than sound. In the first place, we all know that extract of meat is not food at all. From the manner of its production, it cannot contain an appreciable quantity of proteid material. It consists mainly of creatin, and creatinin, and salts. These are, it is needless to say, incapable of acting as food. Extract of meat, and similar preparations, have their uses however; made into ‘beef-tea,’ their meaty flavor often enables patients to take a quantity of bread, which would otherwise be refused; or lentil flour, or some other matter may be added. In this way, though not food itself, it becomes a most useful aid to feeding. It is besides, a harmless stimulant, especially when taken, as it always should be, hot. It should be needless to add that to combine extract of meat with port wine is simply to ignore its real use. The only intelligible basis for such an invention must be the wholly erroneous notion that extract of meat is a food.”
The prices asked for “secret nostrums” are said by chemists to be ofttimes far beyond the value of the materials. Of one article the New Idea, a druggists’ paper, says:—
“It retails at $1.50 per bottle. Such an article could be put up for less than fifteen cents, including bottle, leaving by no means a small margin for the profit of its manufacturers.”
The same paper says of a cure for catarrh, neuralgia, etc. sold in the form of a small ball:—
“This cure costs $2.50 per ball. A handsome profit could be made upon it at 5 cents a ball.”
Some proprietary preparations are not harmful, but are positively inert. The Mass. State Board of Health in report of 1896 gives Kaskine as an example of these. Although sold at a dollar an ounce it was found to consist of nothing but granulated sugar of the fine grade used in homeopathic pharmacy, without any medication or flavoring whatever.
Dr. Edward Von Adelung in an article in Life and Health, Dec., 1897, tells of a well advertised cure for consumption, the analysis of which showed it to be composed of water, slightly colored by the addition of a very small quantity of red wine, and two mineral acids, muriatic and impure sulphuric, in quantities just sufficient to lend it a taste! He says:—
“Fortuitously I had the opportunity of observing the influence of this remedy on a consumptive who took it regularly, and who was so enamored of its favorable action that he gave up his business to conduct an agency for its sale. It was not long after he had entered upon his new vocation that I received word of his death, due to pulmonary hemorrhage.”
The “returned missionary” fraud has been exposed by different druggists’ papers, among them the New Idea. The “missionary” would advertise a “free cure,” if people would send to him. The “cure” would be in the form of a prescription. There being no drugs in any drugstore bearing the names given in the prescription, the dupe was expected to pay an exorbitant price for them to the philanthropic “missionary.” In one case of this kind the “medicinal plants brought from South America, the only place where they grew,” were upon examination by chemists of the New Idea found to be ordinary drugs, not one of which comes from South America.
The same paper tells of another “South American” fraud, 60,000 bottles of which were said to be sold in Detroit in a few weeks, by an itinerating vendor.
A certain liver, and kidney, and constipation cure, sold in the form of herbs, is said by New Idea to be chiefly couch grass, and senna leaves. Yet it sells for 25 cents for a small package.
To this paper the public is also indebted for the information that a kind of wafer advertised to “cure in a few days all coughs, colds, irritation of the uvula and tonsils, influenza, bronchitis, asthma, sore throat, consumption, and all diseases of the lungs and chest” was found to consist wholly of sugar and corn starch!
Medical World recently told of the investigation of “H——” by Prof. John Uri Lloyd of Cincinnati. It was advertised as a plant discovered by a doctor traveling in Florida. Its juices were said to be antidotal to snake poisoning, and would also cure the opium habit. Prof. Lloyd found it to be a liquid consisting of a solution of sulphate of morphine and salicylic acid, in alcohol and glycerine, with suitable coloring matter.
Another fraud exposed by New Idea was a “cure” for the peculiar ills of women. The cure is put up in the form of little oblong blocks about a half inch in length.
“A circular accompanies them, and is well calculated to produce alarm in the young. It is another sample of the demoralizing documents which unscrupulous quacks are continually circulating among the laity, in order to create alarm, and profit by this alarm.”
After giving a description of the diseases peculiar to the sex it is stated that all of these are curable by using eight dollars worth of this wonderful medicine.
New Idea continues:—
“The cure consists, according to our examination, of nothing but flour, made into a paste and allowed to harden in the form of small oblong blocks. Evidently the quack relied upon the faith-cure principle, and his auxiliary treatment, as set forth in the rules of living given in the circular.”
While these inert preparations are of the nature of frauds, they will not injure the health, nor make drunkards, or opium fiends, as the disguised preparations of whisky and morphine are likely to do.
That the use of patent medicines has made many drunkards
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