Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors.

Date:
[1874?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    reside, which contains only 1,800 inhabitants, I was called upon to see 500 cases of typhoid fever. Every one of those 500 cases was treated without one drop of alcohol. And now the question is, did I lose more patients out of that 500 than I should have done had they been treated with alcohol ? The statistics of the death by typhoid fever amount to from sixteen to twenty-five per hundred. I lost during that year four per cent., and therefore the fact is established that fever—typhoid fever, one of the worst fevers we have to treat—may he treated, and treated successfully, without the use of intoxicating drinks.” The length to which this letter is extending warns me that I must no longer upon this occasion trespass upon your columns. I believe I have said enough to convince your readers that, in stating that “ men die sometimes because doctors give them brandy,” I have neither empirically advanced my private opinion as against the dictum of the whole profession, nor made a wholly unsupported statement, nor merited the sarcastic allusion of Dr. Maclean to “ intemperate advocates of temperance principles.” I have merely echoed the sentiments and adopted the opinions of an increasing and influential section of the honourable medical pro- fession. Further, I must be allowed to remark that, as I utterly disbelieve the fact of alcohol alone standing between a man and death, so also I wholly differ from the learned doctor in his opinion that “Physicians have, as a body, done more to support the cause of temperance than any other class of men in this realm.” I believe the exact opposite to be the fact. He and his most learned colleague are honourable, noble ex-