Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/161

This page has been validated.
 
ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE.
153

cold, and the hot enema are all useful. Keep the child wrapped warmly.

"Great care should be taken in returning to the milk diet. The milk should be thoroughly sterilized by boiling for half an hour, and should be mixed with some barley water so as to avoid the formation of large curds in the stomach. Cream, diluted with water, may be used instead of milk."

CONSUMPTION.

Dr. Koch, the celebrated German microscopist, pronounces consumption contagious, because during its progress a very minute bacterium is developed which may be transmitted from one person to another.

It is said that a person with healthy lungs might daily breathe millions of tubercle bacilli without any danger, and that the best preventive of this disease is to live much in the open air, or if this is impossible to spend ten or fifteen minutes a day in deep breathing exercises in the open air. "Fresh-air and disease-germs are antagonistic."

Alcohol, chiefly in the form of whisky, was for many years considered of great value in the treatment of consumption of the lungs. Indeed, it was looked upon not only as a curative, but also as a prophylactic, or preventive, of great service to those predisposed to this disease by reason of narrow chest and weak lungs.

Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson was the first medical scientist who showed plainly that alcohol, instead of being a preventive of consumption, is really