Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. ?THE ALCOHOL THEORY. Is Alcohol Useful Or Harmful In A Healthy Body? It remains to consider some recent theories in opiosition to total abstinence predicated on The Supposed Utility Of Alcohol ra The Human System. We will not attempt to exhaustively trace the history of the progress which has been made in the knowledge of the properties and effects of alcohol. Going back only a few centuries, we find distilled spirits regarded as the water of life, and, under this supposition, introduced as a remedy for almost all the physical ills of life. Since that time, alcohol has occupied a large place in materia medico,. In this country, Dr. Benjamin Gush was one of the first physicians to break from the alcohol regimen in medicine, though even he only partially dissented from it; yet this dissent became more marked and decided during the last thirty years of his life. After the Temperance Reformation was fairly launched on its career, in 1826, the attention of medical gentlemen was more fully directed to the question of the effects of alcoholic liquors on the physical constitution. Powerful testimonies against alcohol were given by the leading medical societies in the United States prior to 1835; and numerous essays were written and published on this subject by Reuben D. Muzzey, M.D., of New Hampshire, Dr. Kittridge, and others. As early as 1827, the Massachusetts Medical Society resolved " to discourage the use of ardent spirits," and '' to discontinue the employment of spirituous preparations whenever they could find substitutes." They also said, " the uses of wine in fevers, etc., is often carried too far." TheMedical Society of New Hampshire, the Hartford Medical Society, (Conn ), the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Philadelphia, and others, nine in all, in ...