On alcoholism, the various forms of alcoholic delirium and their treatment / by V.Magnan ; translated by W. S. Greenfield.
- Valentin Magnan
- Date:
- 1876
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On alcoholism, the various forms of alcoholic delirium and their treatment / by V.Magnan ; translated by W. S. Greenfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![advantage. Lastly, coffee or a little quinine wine taken uniformly after meals, not before, and esjie- cially not in the morning on an empty stomacl], may bo used with profit and will perhaps be accejded later on by the patients as their ordinary and sufli- cient stimulant. Some drunkards sincerely believe that they need a stimulant, that their disordered stomach is incapable by its own powers of fulfilling the work of digestion, and they have recourse to strong drinks to give it tone and vigour; they cannot be convinced by reasoning, but as they some- times feel the benefit of these bitter drinks they finish by forming the habit of taking them. Our excuse for entering into details of apparently so little importance is found in the necessity there is for insisting on all means, little or great, which combat drunkenness. Confinement in an Asylum. But, besides the thera- peutic treatment which finds its means in the materia medica, there is another very important question well worthy of engaging our attention, I speak of sequestration or confinement, and the duration of this confinement. And, firstly, is it necessary to confine all patients attacked with alcoholic delirium ? Put in so general a way, this question could never be answered. It is just for the solution of these emi- nently practical questions that a classification of persons affocted with alcoholic delirium into distinct groups is indispensable. As to the second and thii’d groups which we have recognized :—(the second, patients with slow conva- lescence and ready relapses; the third, patients pre- disposed to delirium); it is evident that sequestration is an absolute necessity; but with regard to mem-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24906876_0114.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)