BEER WORSE THAN WHISKY. 113 of murders deliberately planned and executed without passion or malice, with no other motive than the acquisition of property or money, often of trifling value, are perpetrated by beer drinkers. We believe, further, that the hereditary evils of beer drinking exceed those proceeding from ardent spirits. First, because the habit is constant and without paroxysmal interruptions, which admit of some recuperation; secondly, because beer drinking is practiced by both sexes more generally than the spirit drinking; and, thirdly, because the animalizing tendency of the habit is more uniformly developed, thus authorizing the presumption that the vicious results are more generally transmitted. It will be inferred from these remarks that we take no comfort from the substitution of malt drinks for spirituous liquors. On the contrary, it is cause of apprehension and alarm that, just as public opinion, professional and unprofessional, is uniting all over the world in the condemnation or the common use of ardent spirits, the portals of danger and death are opening wide in another direction. It gives me great pleasure now to insert the following personal letter from the chief medical examiner of the New York Equitable Life Insurance Company, whose opinions, from his great ability, long experience and responsible connection with one of the leading life insurance companies of the world, as well as his caution and conservatism, are entitled to profound respect: Medical Department of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, 120 Broadway, NEW YORK, July 8, 1887. DEAR SIR-Yesterday you called in to see me, and requested me to give you the result of my observations in regard to the use of alcohol. Please remember, in conjunction with these remarks, that my life has been spent in a crowded city, and the observations and deductions made are made from contact with brain workers, and not with men who earn their living by physical labor. Please remember also that I do not wish these observations to apply to dyspeptics, or to men recovering from severe diseases, or to men who have inherited weak physical constitutions. I wish to be considered only as remarking on the use of alcohol in the case of the ordinary brainworker who possesses, by inheritance, a good physique. In my judgment alcohol is a poison, and belongs, with the other valuable poisons, upon the shelf of the druggist, and is to be used only upon the advice of a good common-sense physician, and to be discontinued after the emergency has passed for which the physi cian prescribed it. To speak chemically, alcohol is a concentrated hydrocarbon, and needs a great deal of physical labor to dispose of it in the animal economy. I have noticed that men who are given to the daily use of alcohol degenerate faster than those who abstain from its use. They are more liable not only to chronic degenerations-such as fatty livers, fatty kidneys and the likebut they are also more liable to be attacked by acute diseases, and acute diseases are much more likely to prove fatal to the users of alcohol than to those who do not use it. Take for illustration a young friend of mine, who commenced the use of alcohol about the age of twenty-one years. He died after two days illness from suppression of the urine. When I came to examine his body, after his death, I found that all his internal organs belonged to a man of the age of seventy years and not to a man of forty, the age at which he died. I have noticed that steady users of alcohol are very much more apt to die between the ages of forty and fifty years of some acute disease than those who do not use it as a beverage. Of course you understand that I recognize the value of this article as a drug. Physicians would often be at a loss to know what to do in certain acute and chronic cases, if they could not give their patients this article as a medicine. I admit that it is a disputed point whether alcohol is a food or not. In my opinion, judging from cases of severe illness which I have carried through, it does act in the place of food under certain favorable conditions, but, as you desire to know its effects upon a person who uses it as a daily beverage, my object is to only mention such. There is another point in regard to the use of alcohol which I think is worthy of consideration. This climate of ours is a very stimulating one; it develops a great amount of nervous energy, and is in itself a sufficient stimulus for the ordinary individual. Whoever, therefore, uses alcohol is simply overstimulating his nervous energy. I have said nothing as yet concerning the danger which every one undergoes who uses alcohol regularly-the danger of becoming a chronic and excessive user of the article in question. Of course you know that any man who uses alcohol to excess destroys his general morals, and, if he once gets the appetite, there is nothing on the earth, or above it, or under it, that he will not do in order to gratify this morbid appetite. He will lie or steal, or see his family go to the devil with perfect equanimity, provided he can satisfy this inordinate craving for alcohol. As regards life insurance, we strive not to accept any one who exceeds Anstie's limit, which is (as you know) that a man must not take more than an ounce of pure alcohol in twenty-four hours. We are particularly averse to accepting any one who has ever overindulged in the use of this article. LIFE INSURANCE METHODS. 115 Reformed drunkards we avoid for the simple reason given above -that a man once having yielded to the appetite seldom has the moral stamina to live a life with even a moderate use of alcohol. Trusting that the above will satisfactorily cover all that you desire to know concerning the general use of alcohol, I remain Very truly yours, EDWARD W. LAMBERT, M.D., Hon. H. W. BLAIR. The evidence based upon statistics and the business practice of life assurance companies, and by comparison of abstinent and non-abstinent individuals and associations can be increased indefinitely; but further accumulation is useless, for if the American people believe not what is already written, neither will they believe though one rise from the dead. CHAPTER VIII. ALCOHOL IN MEDICINE. Considerations which Influence Physicians to Prescribe it- Difficulties they Encounter - Declarations of Noted Medical Bodies Evidence that Physicians were the Early Advocates of Moderation-Resolutions of English Bodies - The Views of Dr. Stillé- A Physician who thinks Alcohol Sometimes Useful, Necessary and Indispensable - The Opinions of Dr. Davis on the other side-His Dissection of the Arguments for Alcohol - Review of Various Investigations - Letter from Dr. Hargreaves - Dr. Palmer's Statement of the Case - Varying Opinions and how they are Sustained Dr. Rembaugh's Position-Dr. Wilder's Letter Important Conclusions. U PON the vexed question, whether alcohol be a medicine indispensable or useful, I do not propose to enter. It is enough for the purposes of this case against the traffic in alcohol as a beverage to know that alcohol is not a food, and that arsenic, prussic acid and strychnine are medicines. The most powerful poisons are stimulants and narcotics and alcohol is the worst of them. Scientific investigation and the labors of a learned profession, chastened and restrained in practice by the growing intelligence of the people, may be left to settle what shall be classed with materia medica. We must know enough to select our food-that at least is the act of the layman; but we have a right to rely upon the doctors for our physic; that is what they claim to know about, for which they are responsible, and we, the people, pay-some times. But that physician can hardly claim to be true to his patient and his profession who follows the routine of practice in the selection of remedies, who administers a medicinal poison when a food medicine would be an equally efficacious remedy, and especially strict should be his caution not to countenance, save in the direst emergency of his practice, the use of an agent which, like alcohol, is, in every other situation, the public and private enemy of us all. There is now a rapidlygrowing opinion among many of the ablest and most advanced THE PHYSICIANS' POSITION. 117 members of the profession, increasing I think nearly in the proportion that there has been independent and impartial personal investigation, that alcohol is never necessary as a remedy, and that its administration is objectionable generally on account of the patient, and always by reason of the countenance thus given to this hydra-headed monster. It is also true that, with hardly a dissenting voice, the verdict of the profession throughout the world is that alcohol is a potent and dangerous drug, which should be administered or used only by the direction of a competent medical adviser. It was not always so. There were hundreds of years when the practitioners of medicine followed, if they did not form, the drinking habits of society, and their present position is a great reform in their own body. When we consider that the still earlier doctors and chemists concealed the discovery of alcohol for three hundred years on account of the calamities which they foresaw it would bring upon mankind, if generally known, it is strange that so many of that same profession since those infinite calamities have come, and they themselves have so largely suffered from them, should be in love with alcohol and should recommend it to others. It shows the tremendous power of this king of evil, when, by reason of the clamor of universal appetite, the warning voice of science and of the healing art cannot be heard even by its own oracles-like a person so deaf that he never hears himself speak. It demonstrates also that the public can have the physic they cry for. The body of the profession will give soothing syrup when people will pay for soothing syrup more willingly than for anything else; and, until the people are sufficiently intelligent upon the subject to reject it themselves, the body of the profession will not be at too great sacrifice of personal ease and the sources of livelihood in fighting the popular demand for alcohol. In view of this fact we may well apply to the nation and the world the admonition, "Physician, heal thyself." Every profession must and ought to have, and in plain words will have, its bread and butter. It is a question which sometime will be considered, whether lawyers and physicians should not either be employed by the public and made pecuniarily independent, so that their labors and advice should be directed primarily |