Part 9 (1/2)
”29. Look out for spontaneous ignition of oily rags, oil-painted canvas rolled up, wet iron filings.
”30. In entering mines not used, always try for gas before venturing into them.
”31. Do not be careless in any way whatever in connection with fire. The losses in the United States, in 1889, by fires as a result of carelessness amounted to nearly $100,000,000, while in San Francisco for the same year we find that fully 80% of the losses can be attributed to the same source.”
=Alcohol.=--Felix L. Oswald, M.D., gives some very good ideas in _Good Health_ on the alcoholic habit. ”'Reform,' says an able political writer, 'is ever unpopular. All wrongs lie in the consent of the wronged, and what with the fierce support of those who thrive on the abuse, and the dull, heavy, ignorant conservatism of the ma.s.ses, * * *
it is a sad delusion to suppose that the cause is won when the argument is made.' An unquestionable preponderance of power, they argue, favors the side of the liquor venders, and in this world, at least, always finds a way to a.s.sert itself as right. The last link of that syllogism, however, is a rule with occasional exceptions. No unqualified evil has ever succeeded in maintaining its supremacy, and the evils of the alcohol vice are offset by no benefits. Alcohol has been called 'negative food,' because its physiological influence torpifies the functional energy of the digestive organs, and thus, for a time, renders the toper insensible to the cravings of hunger. The same effect, however, can be produced by a stunning blow, and we might as well claim that the interests of political economy could be promoted by a fierce war, because a knock-down stroke with the b.u.t.t-end of a musket is apt to lessen the appet.i.te of the afflicted soldier. No real benefit can result from the lethargizing effect of a poison dose, the r.e.t.a.r.dation of the digestive functions being in every case a morbid and abnormal process, avenging its repet.i.tion by the fatty degeneration of the tissues and the impoverished condition of the blood. * * * During the horrible flood which a few months ago devastated the two richest provinces of the Chinese Empire, a number of vile marauders eked out an existence by fis.h.i.+ng out wreckage and plundering floating corpses. The idea of mentioning the profits of these wretches as a compensating offset to the horrors of a public calamity would justly consign its propounder to the custody of a lunatic commission. Yet, by an exactly a.n.a.logous line of argument, many of our political economists continue to defend the legal sanction of the liquor traffic. Nay, it might be seriously questioned if the total loss (by fire or water) of a billion bushels of grain would not be financially and morally preferable to their conversion into a life-blighting poison. According to the statistics of the Treasury Department, the alcohol drinkers of the United States (representing hardly one-fifth of the alcoholized nations of Christendom) spent during the last ten years a yearly average of $370,000,000 for whisky, $58,000,000 for other distilled liquors, $56,000,000 for wine, and $140,000,000 for ale and beer; together, $624,000,000 a year. That enormous sum has been far worse than wasted. It has been invested in the purchase of disease. It has been devoted to the development of idiocy, crime, and pauperism. It has turned blessings into a concentration of curses. The general recognition of these facts will seal the doom of the liquor traffic.”
Dr. C. E. Spitka expresses some results of science investigating strong drinks:--
”Alcoholism among the ancients was therefore mainly or exclusively known in its acute phases, the drunken frenzy in which Alexander the Great killed c.l.i.tus being a familiar example. With the introduction of tobacco and playing cards, the saloon, the cellar-dive, and the bar-room usurped the place formerly held by the inn. The enlargement of cities deprived their inhabitants of rustic sports, and led to their seeking in other and more dangerous channels an escape from mental and physical strain, and a variation of routine monotony. It is generally conceded by those medical writers who are unshackled by prejudice that a certain amount of alcohol can be ingested with perfect impunity. That amount has been accurately determined by Dujardin-Beaumetz in the course of experiments made in the abattoirs of Paris. Transferring the result of his experiments to the human species, he concluded that a man weighing 120 pounds could take the equivalent of two ounces of alcohol a day for years without injury to any organ of the body. But when the amount taken daily exceeds the toleration-point, prolonged abuse is followed by results which are as sinister as they are insidious. In the dead-house of the Philadelphia Hospital, Formad found that, of 250 chronic alcoholists, nearly 99 per cent had fatty degeneration of the liver, 60 per cent had congestion or a dropsical state of the brain, the same proportion an inflamed or degenerated stomach, while not quite 1 per cent had normal kidneys. Of 17 children of drunken fathers observed by Voisin, 3 were idiots, 2 confirmed epileptics, 1 suffered from a congenital spinal disease, and the remainder died in early life with convulsions. Of 11 children similarly descended, cited by Dagonet, 9 died in the same way. Of 117 such births recorded in Alsace-Lorraine, 13 were still-born and 39 died of convulsive disorders shortly after birth.
One drunken father had 7 still-born children in succession; another lost 8 of 12 by convulsions. It is not alone as a direct result of inebriety that a defective nervous system is thus transmitted. Even in his sober intervals, he whose nervous system has been shattered by alcohol is liable to have a degenerate or diseased offspring. Of 18 children recorded as born under these circ.u.mstances, Voisin found 8 epileptic and 10 idiotic. As if to prove beyond the possibility of a doubt that such degeneracy is due to the alcoholism of the parent, and to that alone, two French investigators, Mairet and Combemale, performed a series of experiments on dogs, by which they showed that the same result which the chronic inebriate is accused of producing in his offspring, through selfish indulgence, can be produced at will in the offspring of lower animals by compulsory induction of the same vice in them.”
An English investigation, just completed, puts in tangible form the effect of the use of alcohol, from observations covering 4,234 cases in all walks of life. This report shows that, with men over twenty-five, the intemperate use of alcohol cuts off ten years from life, those who never drink to excess, or use no liquor, living, on the average, ten years longer than those who do. Indulgence, if carried to excess, doubles diseases of the liver, quadruples those of the kidneys, and greatly increases the number of deaths from pneumonia, pleurisy, and epilepsy.
It is not often appreciated how many people die annually from the effects of strong drink. Dr. Norman Kerr, an eminent physician of England, believing the statement of temperance people to be extravagant, that 60,000 people die annually from the effects of strong drink, began as early as 1870 a personal inquiry, in connection with several medical men and experts, expecting to quickly disprove the same. According to their deductions, the latest estimates of deaths of adults annually caused through intemperance is, in Great Britain, 120,000; in France, 142,000; in the United States, 80,000--or nearly a half million each year in three countries aggregating a population of 112,000,000.
_Excessive Beer Drinking._--In the earlier part of our work we endeavored to impress on our readers the necessity of regularity and the avoidance of excesses. The last week of 1889 in New York City saw two prominent brewers buried, and two others of the guild were near death.
None of them were, or are, over forty-seven years old. Kidney and heart disease were the causes of death in the case of the first two. Similar ailments have marked the other two gentlemen for the grave. The question arises, Was it beer or champagne that caused these diseases? In this connection the statement a physician of Bellevue Hospital once made is not amiss. These are his words: ”The worst cases of alcoholic ailments coming under our observation are those resulting from excessive beer drinking.”
In appearance the beer drinker may be the picture of health; but in reality he is most incapable of resisting disease. A slight injury, a severe cold, or a shock to the body or mind, will commonly provoke acute disease, ending fatally. Compared with other inebriates who use different kinds of alcohol, he is more incurable and more generally diseased. It is our observation that beer drinking in this country produces the very lowest kind of inebriety, closely allied to criminal insanity. The most dangerous cla.s.s of ruffians in our large cities are beer drinkers. Intellectually, a stupor amounting almost to paralysis arrests the reason, changing all the higher faculties into a mere animalism, sensual, selfish, sluggish, varied only with paroxysms of anger, senseless and brutal.
That men are the s.e.x most addicted to stimulating but injurious habits is sadly growing less true, and women are finding recourse too often to poisonous invigorators. If one-half of what the doctors are saying all over the country is true, there may soon be a greater need of a temperance reform among the women than there ever has been among the men. Strong drink, however, is not the monster by which the women may be enslaved, but a strong and poisonous drug equally baneful in its effect.
This drug is antipyrine. It is a white powder, slightly bitter, and soluble in water. Until about a year ago it was prescribed for fevers only, but a French medical college recommended it for headaches and other pains and disorders, and in this way it has gained its grasp on so many thoughtless and nervous women.
In Chicago and many other places it is said that the habit is gaining with alarming rapidity, for the women take it for every ill, and cannot believe that its soothing effect can have any evil result until the habit is thoroughly fixed upon them. It produces different results under different circ.u.mstances, and, like many other preparations, varies according to the size of the dose. In large doses it has been known to produce complete relaxation, and at the same time a loss of reflex action, and death. In moderate or tonic doses it often produces convulsions. Its effect as a stimulant seems to be very much like that of quinine, and the physicians say that they do not understand why it should get the hold on women that it does.
The latest female vice is intoxication by naphtha. It is not drank. The fumes of it are simply inhaled, inducing, so the inebriates say, a particularly agreeable exhilaration.
_Remedies of Alcoholism._--Without much doubt, the best way to affect a cure is to regularly reduce one's amount of liquor each day until the system can do without it. A systematic decrease can always be carried through if the will power will back it. We add also some ideas that have been advanced by good judges: ”To dispel as quickly as possible the effects of intoxicants, one of the most effectual remedies is a small dose of sal volatile, or volatile salts, in a wine-gla.s.s of water--repeating the dose in half an hour. A dish of cold broth may answer the same purpose. The most speedy way, however, of effecting a cure, is by taking an emetic, following it with the sal volatile and water half an hour after.”
The Russian physician and publicist Portugaloff declares that strychnine in subcutaneous injections is an immediate and infallible remedy for drunkenness. The craving of the inebriate for drink is changed into positive aversion in a day, and after a treatment of eight or ten days the patient may be discharged. Even should the appet.i.te return months afterward, the first attempt to resume drinking will produce such painful and nauseating sensations that the person will turn away from the liquor in disgust. The strychnine is administered by dissolving one grain in two hundred drops of water, and injecting five drops of the solution every twenty-four hours. Dr. Portugaloff recommends the establishment of inebriate dispensaries in connection with police stations.
=Appet.i.te=.--Happy is the man who always possesses a good appet.i.te; unhappy is he who does not have this precious boon. The lack of it results largely from failure of exercise and the excessive use of condiments. In the first place, try to take an invigorating bath with a wet towel and rub hard. If you cannot endure even that, use a dry towel on the body until the friction brings the blood to the surface of the skin. Then give the mouth a careful cleansing by rinsing and tooth-brush. When you sit at the table, do so with a cheerful mood, eat slowly, partake sparingly of condiments, using salt mostly, and vinegar for an acid. Preface your meals with a walk long enough to get up a circulation, if it is dinner or supper hour, but do not tire yourself, and be sure to rest the last fifteen minutes before eating.
=Asphyxiation.=--A practical man, conversant with cases in which asphyxiation resulted from inhaling carbonic acid gas, gives some valuable hints for their recovery by simple remedies always at hand.
Fresh air to restore consciousness is the first important step. Then he gave apples, apple juice, or vinegar, to neutralize the gas and remove it from the stomach by eructations. Eggs broken into vinegar mixed and swallowed made a very effective drink. After removing the gas from the stomach, the patient was further relieved by a cup of strong, hot coffee, which speedily restored him to normal vigor. On two similar occasions, where a physician was called, he administered injections of carbonate of ammonia, and the man was ill for eight or ten days from the effects of the medicine. A little common sense is often better than physic.
=Bathing.=--We have already treated this subject to some extent, but we recommend the careful reading of Dr. C. H. Steele's ideas, part of which we embody here; also some other worthy opinions on this matter, of great importance to health.
”The use of water in the treatment of diseases dates back to remote antiquity. Savages resort to the surf and sweat-bath, and Hindoos and Mohammedans bathe because their religion commands them to do so.
References to the bath may be found scattered throughout the literature of Greece, and in Rome the magnificent buildings and lavish expenditure devoted to the public bath show it in the highest stage of perfection it has ever attained.”
”It is only within a few years past that the domestic bath has been accepted as a necessity. No home in England is complete without a bath-room, and no Englishman deems himself well unless he bathes daily.
The speaker said that a thermometer, whose use should be understood, should be permanently attached to every bath-tub.
”_Physiological Action of the Bath._--In considering the physiological action of the bath, it is first to be accepted that water of a temperature below that of the body abstracts heat from the skin, which abstraction continues indefinitely, only for a time checked by the renewed activity of the heat centers. In a bath the temperature of which is from 92 to 95, the body may remain indefinitely without any loss or gain of temperature, but after the bath a cooling takes place, owing to increased perspirations. If the water is between 77 and 86, there is, after the first shock, a positive rise in the temperature of the body.