On the medical injunction of stimulants, in disease and in health / by Dyce Duckworth.

  • Duckworth, Sir Dyce, 1840-1928.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the medical injunction of stimulants, in disease and in health / by Dyce Duckworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    cant temporarily prevalent, so surely shall we, sooner or later, see the error we have made, and come to repent of the yoke under which we have put our necks. I flatly refuse to believe that the broad stream of common sense and legitimate freedom in this, or any other like matter, has flowed for centuries in a wrong channel, and that we alone in our day are called upon not only to divert, but to dam it up for all future time. While I thus venture to express what I believe to be the calm and matured opinion, as well as the rational standpoint, of the profession, I am not here to decry the noble examples of total abstention from strong drinks set by the clergy and others in conspicuous positions. Such men and women may well go forth, if their health permit them, to special combat with the vice of drunkenness, fully equipped. We, as a body, are at all events unable to resist the evidence they bear to the effect that their principles alone, in many cases, enable them to reclaim drunkards, and achieve results that would otherwise be im- possible. Since writing this short paper, I have chanced to read an epitome of the medical evidence given before the House of Lords' Committee on Intemperance. In my humble opinion, that evidence was eminently satisfactory. But I feel constrained to offer objection to some of Sir William Gull's statements. In conditions of fatigue, Sir William is reported to have remarked, people might very well drink water, or take food, and would be very much better without the alcohol. To me, this seems a venturesome, if not an unfounded, opinion. The statement is, in any case, too bald. It is certainly not in accord with carefully acquired experience in many instances of fatigued conditions. For myself, I may assert that I am fully satisfied of the power of stimulants in states of bodily, cerebral, and cardiac exhaustion. I would not for one moment be understood to recommend recourse to alcohoUc stimulus in all cases of exhaustion; but I clearly recognise conditions—not of very common occurrence, certainly—of systemic fatigue which water will not allay, and in which the very idea of food, even to a naturally wholesome and strictly temperate man, at such a moment, is simply loathsome. For such an one to take a glass of wine is to be so far restored as wdthin a short time to be enabled to eat such a meal as without the preliminary stimulant he could cer- tainly not have faced. That is not an opinion ; it is a fact. Another statement of Sir William Gull was to the effect that when he per- sonally was fatigued, he ate the raisins instead of taking the wine.
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