Fritz Wilhelm Woll

“ Is it any wonder that women of the spirit of the Crusaders, having once had their attention thoroughly aroused to the danger of alcohol in medicine, should begin to examine this stronghold of the enemy to discover, if possible, whether or not, his fortress, the medicine-chest, was impregnable? Greatly to their joy they found that the medical profession was not a unit in commending alcoholics as remedial agencies, that all along since alcohol came into common use there have been physicians who distrusted, and opposed it. ”

“ We all know that proper food is wrought into our bodies; the action of animal life occasions a constant waste, and new matter has to be taken in, which, after digestion, is carried into the blood, and then changed; but poison is incapable of this. It may indeed be mixed with nutritious substances, but if it goes into the blood, it is thrown off as soon as the system can accomplish its deliverance, if it has not been too far enfeebled by the influence of the poison. Such a poison is alcohol—such in all its forms mix it with what you may. ”

“ In his fall from health to physical and mental disintegration, the cocaine fiend undergoes a terrible experience. When not in the temporary heaven that the drug provides, the victim is in the lowest depths of an inferno. He suffers from insomnia, anorexia, and gastralgic pains, dyspepsia, chronic palpitations, and will-paresis. He is a terror both to himself and others. The life of the man is a living death. He knows it, and with this knowledge staring him in the face, he rushes for the drug, and is happy for a brief period under its influence. ”

“ There is no substance which acts as a substitute for alcohol, nor is anything like it wanted. The human body is a water engine, as I have often described it, and alcohol plays no part in its natural motion. The idea that when it begins to fail, a stimulant has to be called for, springs merely from habit, and if, whenever any of the symptoms of fainting you speak of occur, the person merely lies down on the side or back and drinks a glass of hot water, or hot milk and water, all that can be done is done. ”

“ In my experience I have known of men filling drunkards' graves who learned to drink taking some advertised bitters as legitimate medicine. It would be hard to estimate the number of young brains ruined, and the maturer opium wrecks from nostrums of this nature. I could write a volume on the mischief that is being done every day to body, mind and soul, all over the land, by the thousands of miserable frauds that are being poured down the throats of not only ignorant people, but, alas, intelligent ones, too. ”

“ As long as life lasts this buying and selling is forever going on, and this is why the blood is forever on the move, sweeping restlessly from place to place, bringing to each part the thing it wants, and carrying away those with which it has done. ”

“ It is impossible to convince the mass of the people that what is life-giving as medicine can be death-dealing as beverage. The two stand, or fall, together. Hence there is no more important question before the medical profession, and the people generally, than that of the action of alcohol in disease, and, as a goodly number of the most distinguished and successful physicians of Europe and America declare it to be harmful rather than helpful, it behooves thoughtful people to carefully study the reasons they assign for holding such an opinion. ”

“ Wherever the blame really has lain, one thing is now clear, that alcoholic intoxicants are very rarely useful as a medicine; are at the best dangerous remedies; and that, other things being equal, the less they are resorted to the better for the chances of the patient's recovery, the better for body and brain, the better for physical, intellectual and moral well-being. Alcohol does not nourish, but pulls down; does not stimulate, but depresses; does not strengthen, but excites and exhausts. ”

“ In this go-ahead century it is no wonder that many are but too ready to experiment with a drug which professes to be able to remove fatigue, and to enable a man to go on working when, without its aid, weariness had become unendurable. Cocaine claims all this; and it is most dangerous just because, for a time, it seems able to keep its promise. That is how victims to cocainism are made. Let us be honest with our overworked patients, who want us to help them with drugs; let us tell them that rest is the only safe remedy for weariness. ”

“ In all prohibitory amendment, and no-license campaigns, the cry of "Useful as Medicine" has been the hardest for temperance workers to meet, for they have felt that they had to admit the statement as true, knowing nothing to the contrary. Indeed, thousands of those who advocate the prohibition of the sale of liquor as a beverage, use alcohol in some form quite freely as medicine, and are as determined and earnest in defence of their favorite "tipple" as any old toper could well be. ”

“ The question of excess occurs in sickness as well as in health, and all the more because its determination is so difficult and the evil effects so indisputable. The dividing line in medicine, even between use and abuse, is so zigzag and invisible that common mortals, in groping for it, generally stumble beyond it, and the delicate perception of medical art too often fails in the recognition. ”

“ If you assent, he tells his friends you have changed his brandy or whisky to wine; if you dissent, he says you have left your duty as a doctor undone, in order to become an advocate for abstaining temperance, about which he is as competent a judge as you are, and he won't pay fees for that advice. He pays to be cured of his disease, not to be dragooned into a system peculiar in its tenets. ”

“ We all know that if his supply of air be cut off a man will die in a few minutes. His food is no use to him unless he gets oxygen from the air to combine with it; while he usually has stored up in his body an excess of food matters which will keep him alive for some time if he gets a supply of oxygen, he has not stored up in him any reserve, or, if any, but a very small one, of oxygen, and so he dies very rapidly if his breathing be prevented. In ordinary language we do not call oxygen a food, but restrict that name to the solids and liquids which we swallow ”

“ Bioplasm is living matter; it is structureless, semi-fluid, transparent and colorless. It is the only matter that can grow, move, divide itself and multiply, the only matter that can take up pabulum (food) and convert it into its own substance; and is the only matter that can be nourished. The bioplasm in the cell gets its nourishment by drawing in of the pabulum through the cell wall, and in that way building up the formed material while it is being disintegrated on the outer surface. This process is continually being carried on, and is what is meant by nutrition. ”

“ IS ALCOHOL FOOD?
So well agreed are all the scientific investigators that alcohol has no appreciable food value that it would seem foolish to spend time upon a discussion of alcohol as food were it not that the idea of its "supporting the vitality" in disease, in some mysterious way is deeply rooted in the professional, as well as the popular mind.
Foods are substances which, when taken into the body, undergo change by the process of digestion; they give strength and heat and force; they build up the tissues of the body, and make blood ”

“ If a food is deemed as a substance which, taken into the body, is assimilated and used either to build or repair body structure, or to be oxidized in the tissues to liberate the energy used by the tissue in its normal activity, then alcohol is not a real food.
"But, if alcohol is not a real food, what is the significance of its oxidation? It has been long known that the liver produces oxidases and that it is the site of active oxidation of mid-products of katabolism of toxins and of other toxic substances. ”

“ Itself born, perchance, under the influence bred under it, how shall it immediately be transformed? Why disobey the influence? It is in the interest of the doctor to obey, in a worldly sense of view; but more—it is in his nature to obey. The strong bands of nature and interest go hand in hand. Is it wonderful that the genius of a professional man so situated should, according to the quality of his genius, uphold, root and branch, the role of his nativity? ”

“ There is good reason to believe that the numerous remedies that have been recommended from earliest times as antidotes for animal poison are worthless, as they have not the properties commonly ascribed to them. The paucity of remedies is so great that alcohol is the one which comes most quickly to the mind of those who have been taught in the traditions of the past, and who are not fully aware of its action on the human system. We shall endeavor to show that the action of alcohol is not helpful, but on the contrary is really detrimental ”

“ If alcohol is a destroyer of bodily force, as any ordinary observer of drinking men can readily see, it is a problem beyond solving, how it is going to give force to, or sustain vitality in, the patient hovering between life and death. Too often has it been the means of hastening into eternity those who, but for its mistaken use, might have recovered from the illness affecting then.
Food gives heat to the body.
Alcohol does not, but really robs the body of its natural warmth. ”

“ When the physician ceases to prescribe alcohol as a medicine, the drink problem will have reached the final stage of its solution. Mankind will eventually learn that safety lies not so much in skillful doctors, or in some wonderful 'new remedy,' as in daily obedience to the laws of health. A small amount of prevention is of more worth than all the power of cure."—Dr. C. H. Shepard, Brooklyn, N. Y.
" My observation has been that there is a decided tendency among educated physicians to give less alcohol than formerly in the treatment of disease. ”

“ The first appreciable effect of the alcohol after entering the blood is that of an anæsthetic; that is, it diminishes the sensibility of the brain and nerve structures, in the same direction as ether and chloroform. And, as the brain is the material seat of man's consciousness, the alcohol renders him less conscious of cold or heat, of weariness or pain, and less conscious of his own weight or of any external resistance. Consequently, when under the influence of small doses, he feels lighter and less conscious of any external impressions, and thinks he could do more than without it. ”

“ The use of alcoholic beverages rests not on argument but on habit, custom. To those whom it affects personally it is an absolute monarch. It makes its own empire. By the very action which it has upon the body of those who receive it into themselves it rules and governs. ”

“ Hence there can be no longer any question that alcohol renders the body more liable to conquest by invading microbes, less able to resist and destroy them. Alcohol, a toxine injurious to living cells, is destroyed or removed from the body as fast as nature can effect it, but while it remains, and while able to affect the cells at all, its action is detrimental to healthy growth and healthy life, and the less we take of such an agent the better for us. ”

“ That alcohol interferes with the passage of waste matter from the body is generally conceded. Indeed this is claimed by the advocates of its medicinal use as one of its virtues; the fact that less waste passes from the body being urged as evidence that there is less waste, that in some way alcohol preserves tissue from being used up in the natural way. Those who speak thus seem to think that they know better than the Creator how the body should be treated. He made the body so that in health, work, waste and repair should be equal to one another. ”

“ Indeed, all the investigators agree that alcohol in any dose capable of producing an appreciable effect, diminishes the function of the lungs in direct proportion to the quantity taken; and as the lungs are the only channel through which free oxygen reaches the blood, and such oxygen is the natural exciter of all vital activities in the living body, it is not possible to explain how alcohol, or any other drug that diminishes the function of the lungs can, at the same time, act as a cardiac, or any other kind of tonic. ”

“ All non-alcoholic writers assert that the continuous use of alcohol as a medicine is equally injurious to all the bodily functions as the employment of it as a beverage. Calling it medicine does not change its deadly nature, nor does the medical attendant possess any magical power by which a destructive poison may be converted into a restorative agent. ”

“ This is one of the most dreadful evils of alcohol, that it kills insidiously, as if it were doing no harm, or as if it were doing good, while it is destroying life. Another great evil of it is that it assails so many different parts of the body. It hardly seems credible at first sight that the same agent can give rise to the many different kinds of diseases it does give rise to. In fact, the universality of its action has blinded even learned men as to its potency for destruction. ”

“ I can say as a result of my own observation that beer-drinking has a very pernicious effect upon nearly every organ of the body. It produces disease of the stomach and digestive tract, of the heart and circulating system, of the kidneys and liver, and of the nervous system. In addition to this it lessens the vigor and vital resistance of the whole body, makes the beer drinker very much more susceptible to infection such as pneumonia, and other acute infections, and also lessens his ability to recover from illnesses of any kind. ”

“ One of the signs of the times in the temperance movement is the steady growth among physicians of a sentiment against the administration of liquor of any kind as a medicine. The accepted scientific view of alcohol is that it is a poison, and its administration should be as guarded as that of any other poison used as a medicine. Perhaps the hardest thing a physician finds in his effort to restore his patients to health without the use of liquors is the common, but erroneous, belief that they are 'strengthening,' and that the convalescent, by their use, reaches recovery more quickly. ”

“ What light, then, does true science throw on these important questions? All who know anything on the subject are aware that alcohol, instead of dissolving food, or aiding in its dissolution, is one of the most powerful agents in preventing that dissolution. On what principle, then, is it possible that its being mixed with the materials of food, in this case, can aid in their dissolution, so that they may more easily be changed into the fresh blood required to sustain and recover life in this child? ”

“ Drugs which hide such signals from us are a more than doubtful benefit. If it were possible for us to suppose that a fraction of a grain of cocaine could afford to exhausted nerve centres, and muscles, the nutriment which they require for their restoration, and at the same time eliminate the poisonous waste products, then it would be reasonable to prescribe the drug for use by all who are overworked, and perhaps suffering from the malnutrition consequent upon, 'nervous dyspepsia,' as well as mere want of rest. ”

“ It would be seen that there was such a tendency of disease to get well of itself, or by virtue of natural processes, of which people had at present but a very poor idea, that the art of physic would pass into directions how to live rather than into dogmatic assertions that particular means must be employed in addition to the common details of life for the process of cure. If therefore they learned in this hospital by their reduced death-rates the true lesson, the institution would have performed a double duty, and become one of the test objects in medicine, and in the field of disease. ”

“ Brandy is not a prophylactic. To the temperate it is an active, exciting cause. It is well known that a single act of intemperance during the prevalence of cholera, will often produce a fatal attack. The sense of warmth and irritation (called stimulation) produced by alcoholic liquors, has led to the erroneous notion that they may prevent cholera. But the contrary we have seen is the truth, for the effects of alcoholics are to reduce the temperature of the body, and instead of stimulating, they narcotize, and reduce the life-forces, and predispose the system to all kinds of disease. ”