The treatment of inebriety in the higher and educated classes : read before the Society for the Study of Inebriety January 1st, 1889 / by James Stewart.

  • Stewart, James, 1847-1906
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of inebriety in the higher and educated classes : read before the Society for the Study of Inebriety January 1st, 1889 / by James Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and other easily assimilated beverages, taken every hour and a half at first and gradually reduced in frequency. The sleepless¬ ness from which almost all inebriates suffer at first is best treated by a draught composed of twenty minims of the solution of bime- conate of morphia with ten to fifteen grains of chloral, alternated for a few nights with other hypnotics. I am in the habit of putting into the bed-room of any gentleman who suffers from de¬ pression and dread of impending death a small bed which I occupy myself for the first three or four nights. As the strength of body returns gentle exercise ought to be insisted on, increased gradually till at least eight or ten miles a day for a gentleman, or five miles for a lady, can be accomplished with ease. If the patient does not engage in literary work or has no hobby, such as painting, music, wood-carving, carpentry, or gar¬ dening, he ought to take up crystoleum work, photography, or some other easily acquired art or occupation. The first is specially useful, as the ladies of the family circle may join the gentlemen while at it. Photography is greatly liked by those who are induced to learn it, affording as it does an excuse for excursions to the country as well as occupation in the house. Gentlemen patients ought to be taken often to public meetings, and both ladies and gentlemen to concerts, cricket-matches and the like. Divertissements of one kind or another should, in fact, frequently be arranged for, the doctor always accompanying or a deputy on whom thorough reliance may be placed. The patient suffering from the “ drink-crave” ought, indeed, by one means or another, to have his or her mind constantly em- , ployed. The diet at the home should be plain but good, with i| the introduction of as few highly seasoned dishes as possible. Here I would take the opportunity to protest against the mis¬ taken idea, too common in the minds of many members of the medical profession, that by the exhibition of such drugs as capsicum you can destroy the craving for alcohol, or at least keep it under. You may perhaps smother it for a while by repeated doses of the perchloride of iron, or one of the class of drugs to which capsicum belongs, or possibly by what was for a while so much vaunted—a particular sort of bark, or the more re¬ cently recommended strychnine “cure”; but my experience leads me to the conclusion (supported by the testimony of the patients themselves) that you are by this treatment only substituting one enslavement for another. The same remark applies to some
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