The Regulation of Midwifery

Abstract

is serving the purpose of food or fuel, since destruction of drugs by oxidation is one of the common methods employed by the animal organ- ism to rid itself of poisonous agents.Faust n has shown that tolerance for morphine, i. e., the power of the human system to withstand the effects of increasing quantities of morphine, is due to the ability on the part of the system to destroy the drug.Through tolerance the system gradually acquires the power to destroy over two hundred times the quantity of the drug which was originally the fatal dose.This is also true of cocaine.Does it follow from this that morphine and cocaine are foods?Alcohol differs from the true food principles in one very essential point, -it cannot act as a tissue builder; it is, therefore, not a food and there is no reason why it should not be classed with substances like morphine and cocaine, which are deleterious to the system, but the oxidation of which in the body nevertheless yields a certain amount of energy.In pneumonia and the other acute infectious diseases the increased destruction of nitrogenous constituents is of great moment.The use of alcohol does not influence this proteid waste except perhaps to cause still greater disturbance of a metabolism which is already seriously affected by the disease.Many careful experimenters have shown that alcohol lowers the resistance of the system to disease and other forms of intoxication, but clinical facts are more convincing to the public.It has been estimated by various authors that alcoholism is present as a contributary cause in from 66 to 80% of all patients in hospitals for consumption.12Chronic alcoholic poisoning is a subject of such vast dimensions that it can be merely touched upon in a paper like the present.The chronic diseases which are caused by a longcontinued use of alcohol are for the most part the result of changes produced in the cells them- selves through the local irritant action of alcohol.These diseases are among the most hopeless and distressing known to medicine; the heart, the liver, the digestive system, the kidneys, the blood vessels, the brain, in fact, each and every one of the organs, the functions of which are most vital to the system, is attacked slowly but surely and damaged beyond repair.And this damage may occur in consequence of a long-continued and steady consumption of even so-called moderate quantities of alcohol.With many physicians the use of alcohol in their practice has become merely a confirmed habit which they are loth to abandon even though they may feel that there is no justification to continue it.At a recent medical meeting a physician was heard to make the following typical statement: " I know the pharmacolo- gists all say that there is no indication for the use of alcohol, that it does not act as a stimulant, and that sort of thing, but I have always used alcohol and I am going to keep on using it just the same."This attitude on the part of practitioners offers a serious obstacle to the campaign of popular education concerning the true nature of alcohol.The delusion that alcohol may be of benefit to the system as a stimulant is firmly rooted in the mind of the layman, and the family doctor is the only one who can convince him that he is wrong.