THE USE OF ALCOHOL IN MEDICINE. S 7 



After I took my degree in medicine I passed at once into the 

 army, and my first cases of independent medical practice were 

 in a battery of artillery in the Punjab. After a year or so with 

 this corps I served two years in an infantry regiment without a 

 senior surgeon, all this time acting to the best of my lights, but 

 entirely independent and uncontrolled. At the end of this 

 period, and about my fifth year of service, a senior surgeon joined 

 the regiment with power of superintendence. He was an able 

 and a kind man, and it was not at all in a spirit of unfriendliness 

 that, going into dinner one night, he said to me, " I was in your 

 ward this afternoon and found a bad case of delirium tremens in 

 which you had omitted to order stimulants; however, I have 

 made it all right." I replied, " I have no case of delirium tre- 

 mens at present." He said, " Yes, a bad case, which will prob- 

 ably not survive, and so you had better take care." After some 

 consideration I at length made out the case he referred to, and 

 replied, " That man has no delirium tremens and will certainly 

 be at duty in a week." We thus had a difference of opinion. I 

 begged him, however, to leave the case in my hands, which he 

 did, and the man was at duty in fair health in a week. It was, 

 in fact, a discovery to him, an old soldier, that delirium tremens 

 could be treated successfully without stimulants; and, I must 

 add, it was a discovery to me that, although I knew there was 

 such a disease in the regiment, I had actually treated cases of the 

 ailment myself without knowing it. That delirium tremens can 

 be, and ought to be, treated without stimulants is now a common- 

 place of practice. I speak of the year 18CG. At that time the 

 treatment consisted chiefly in administration of stimulants and 

 opium, and I take no great credit to myself for breaking away 

 from the traditions of the profession. I simply did not treat the 

 disease by name. It would now be called " alcoholic poisoning." 

 I looked on recovery as a matter of course, recorded the case as 

 debility, sometimes from drunkenness, but more generally omitted 

 the remark as likely to draw down the attention of the command- 

 ing officer to the offender. On the occurrence of the above incident, 

 however, my attention was directed to the subject. I continued 

 my treatment. My two colleagues continued theirs, and, although 

 we were seldom without a case of delirium tremens, no case of 

 any severity occurred among my patients. I need not say that 

 the matter was often warmly debated. In those days Aitken's 

 Practice of Physic was, as it still is, the chief authority in the 

 medical service, and it was with keen delight that in the new 

 edition of that year I found the treatment of this disease laid 

 down : that, as it proceeded from an irritation of the nervous 

 system by alcohol, the first condition of cure was to remove the 

 cause, to forbid alcohol, and to give food in all possible ways, as 



