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Grappling with the Monster

Creator: Arthur, T. S. (Timothy Shay), 1809-1885
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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 of alcoholic drinks in my practice, and with such good results, that, were I sick, _nothing_ would induce _me_ to have resource to them--_they are but noxious depressants_."


MEMOIR, &C. In the following Narrative of "Old Elizabeth," which was taken mainly from her own lips in her 97th year, her simple language has been adhered to as strictly as was consistent with perspicuity and propriety. I was born in Maryland in the year 1766. My parents were slaves. Both my father and mother were religious people, and belonged to the Methodist Society. It was my father's practice to read in the Bible aloud to his children every sabbath morning. At these seasons, when I was but five years old, I often felt the overshadowing of the Lord's Spirit, without at all understanding what it meant; and these incomes and influences continued to attend me until I was eleven years old, particularly when I was alone, by which I was preserved from doing anything that I thought was wrong. In the eleventh year of my age, my master sent me to another farm, several miles from my parents, brothers, and sisters, which was a great trouble to me. At last I grew so lonely and sad I thought I
As a non-professional writer, we cannot go beyond the medical testimony which has been educed, and we now leave it with the reader. We could add many pages to this testimony, but such cumulative evidence would add but little to its force with the reader. If he is not yet convinced that alcohol has no food value, and that, as a medicine, its range is exceedingly limited, and always of doubtful administration, nothing further that we might be able to cite or say could have any influence with him. CHAPTER VI. THE GROWTH AND POWER OF APPETITE. One fact attendant on habitual drinking stands out so prominently that none can call it in question. It is that of the steady growth of appetite. There are exceptions, as in the action of nearly every rule; but the almost invariable result of the habit we have mentioned, is, as we have said, a steady growth of appetite for the stimulant imbibed. That this is in consequence of certain morbid changes in the physical condition produced by the alcohol itself, will hardly be questioned by any one who has made himself acquainted with the various functional and organic derangements which invariably follow the continued introduction