“In the whole management of lung diseases,” remarks Dr. Hunt, “with the exception of the few who can always be relied upon to befriend alcohol, other remedies have largely superseded all spirituous liquors.  Its employment in stomach disease, once so popular, gets no encouragement, from a careful examination of its local and constitutional effects, as separated from the water, sugar and acids imbibed with it.”

TYPHOID FEVER.

It is in typhoid fever that alcohol has been used, perhaps, most frequently by the profession; but this use is now restricted, and the administration made with great caution.  Prof.  A.L.  Loomis, of New York City, has published several lectures on the pathology and treatment of typhoid fever.  Referring thereto, Dr. Hunt says:  “No one in our country can speak more authoritatively, and as he has no radical views as to the exclusion of alcohol, it is worth while to notice the place to which he assigns it.  In the milder cases he entirely excludes it.  As a means of reducing temperature, he does not mention it, but relies on cold, quinine, and sometimes, digitalis and quinine.”  When, about the third week, signs of failure of heart-power begin to manifest themselves, and the use of some form of stimulant seems to be indicated, Dr. Loomis gives the most guarded advice as to their employment.  “Never,” he says, “give a patient stimulants simply because he has typhoid fever.”  And again, “Where there is reasonable doubt as to the propriety of giving or withholding stimulants, it is safer to withhold them.”  He then insists that, if stimulants are administered, the patient should be visited every two hours to watch their effects.

It will thus be seen how guarded has now become the use of alcohol as a cardiac stimulant in typhoid fevers, where it was once employed with an almost reckless freedom.  Many practitioners have come to exclude it altogether, and to rely wholly on ammonia, ether and foods.

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