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.

    11/172 (page 7)
    And first, Professor Maclean himself admits that the question of the use of alcohol in disease is not con- sidered settled by the faculty. Where doctors differ, who, Sir, shall decide ? I presume, in that case, private judgment ma be allowed some scope. In advancing proof that non-professional men are justified in holding an opinion contrary to the dogmatic assertion of Dr. Maclean, that “in a vast variety of diseases and injuries there are certain stages of ex- haustion when alcohol is the one thing which stands between the patient and death,” my only difficulty is to select out of the vast mass of medical evidence at my disposal. (I may here remark that the name and address of any medical man whose opinion I may quote is privately at the disposal of Dr. Maclean, and the quotations may be verified by him.) And first, I have often before me a letter from an able, intelligent physician, once well known in this neighbourhood, and to whose present sphere of work the Hants Advertiser has penetrated. He says (I quote literally his words)—“ Doctors often dose men to death with brandy.” “ The influence of alcoholic stimulants should be regarded in the same light as that of such potential drugs as prussic acid, and other dangerous spirits. I differ” (he continues) 11 in toto from Dr. Maclean when he makes so sweeping an assertion that ‘ in a vast variety of diseases and injuries there are certain stages of exhaustion when alcohol is the one thing which stands between the patient and death.’ ” I have also received, since the appearance of Dr. Maclean’s letter in the Hants Advertiser, a letter from the son of a medical man of eighty-six years of age,