Lectures on man : being a series of discourses on phrenology and physiology / delivered by L.N. Fowler.
- Lorenzo N. Fowler
- Date:
- 1880
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on man : being a series of discourses on phrenology and physiology / delivered by L.N. Fowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![that men invent, when they wish to stifle the voice of conscience, that so often tells them that an abstemious life is preferable to a life of dissipation. Many suppose that alcohol is absolutely needed as a medicine. This is a great mistake ; and if physicians could be disabused of the idea that stimulants are necessary to restore the patient’s health, we should have a fulcrum on which to rest a great moral lever which would over- turn the intemperate world. Dr. Carson, President of the Medical Association of Pennsylvania, and many other physicians, assert “that neither wine, malt liquors, nor alcohol are necessary for medicinal purposes, and that there are more harmless agents in the laboratory which have all the virtues attributed to alcohol.” If this fact could be impressed upon the minds of the people, one of the greatest hindrances to the progress of Temperance would be removed. If a person is at all debilitated, he is ordered by his physician “to take wine, brandy, porter, etc. The result is, that such a person, if he likes stimulants, will be sick nearly all the time. Even if the Maine Law or Permissive .Bill were strictly enforced, it would be impossible to arrest the down- ward strides of intemperance, so long as alcohol is sold and drunk as a medicine ; for the sick list will always be full if alcohol is the favourite remedy. If people breathed pure air, took sufficient exercise, and the right kind ot diet, they would not need any medicine, and then there would not be the temptation to use stimulants. Scores of men and women have become drunkards by taking alcohol as a medicine. It would be far better for a man to die of cholera or fever, than to recover ltiiand,]by yieldmg to the appetite for brandy, which he acquired duiing his illness, live to degrade himself and all his relatives, and finally die a drunkard s death. The stomach and alimentary canal of a man who has cholera, are inflamed by the disease, and it seems a singular practice to inflame them still more, by pouring into them the burning fire of brandy, which would augment the flames rather than extinguish them. Far better to put out the fire by hydropathic ap- pliances than to re-kindle it. The same is true of o^he/diseases T'tr be Srea% simplified. Banish alcohol from the - doneSb°PS’ aUd la f °r two*tbirds of tbe Temperance work will be No one becomes a drunkard by taking one glass. The process is gradual, and the steps are progressive but sure. A man who lived but a short distance from New York city came into town every morm Jtn fastened and riveted upon him so stronvlv tbit * i r blt break the chains.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28051567_0345.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
