| MEDICAL INTRO |
| BOOKS ON OLD MEDICAL TREATMENTS AND REMEDIES |
THE PRACTICAL
HOME PHYSICIAN AND ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MEDICINE The biggy of the late 1800's. Clearly shows the massive inroads in medical science and the treatment of disease.
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ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN BODY In fact alcohol was known to be a poison, and considered quite dangerous. Something modern medicine now agrees with. This was known circa 1907. A very impressive scientific book on the subject. |
DISEASES OF THE SKIN is a massive book on skin diseases from 1914. Don't be feint hearted though, it's loaded with photos that I found disturbing. |
Part of SAVORY'S COMPENDIUM OF DOMESTIC MEDICINE:
19th CENTURY HEALTH MEDICINES AND DRUGS |
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EFFECT OF ALCOHOL UPON THE TISSUES OF CHILDREN |
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233 |
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“The stern forbidding of the use of both alcohol and tobacco under the age of puberty would shield the nervous centres from two of their most deadly enemies.”—Dr. Guthrie Rankin, Contemporary Review, February 1906.
“Children should never know the taste of any alcoholic drink, and stimulants ought to be absolutely forbidden during school life. In adolescence they impair self-control and are a source of danger. At all ages when taken to relieve feelings of weakness or faintness, serious danger of falling under their influence is close at hand.”—The late Sir William Broadbent, Bart., M.D., F.R.S., K.C.V.O., Physician-in-Ordinary to H.M. King Edward VII. |
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234 |
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CHAPTER XIV
EFFECT OF ALCOHOL UPON THE TISSUES OF CHILDREN
Metabolism in Children.—The chemical tissue changes in adults, to which reference has already been made, is a relatively slow matter when compared with the rapid meta bolism occurring in the case of children, which we must now describe.
Considered scientifically, the phenomenon of growth in a child is very remarkable, and is worthy of much more con sideration than is usually accorded to it, for the body in childhood is practically a mass of cells whose protoplasm is undergoing or striving to undergo rapid and constant expansion and multiplication—the success obtained depending upon a proper supply of oxygen, food materials, rest, exercise, and sunshine. Now the body of an adult has no such heavy demands pressing upon it as regards growth ; it merely has to provide for its repair and renewal of energy. In childhood matters are far otherwise, for every child has to face the strain and effort of building its body out of itself, and only when it is fully supplied with the requisite materials and the requisite time for rest (far more of these being needed in proportion to its size than is required by an adult) is this “building” accomplished to perfection. Effective growth is entirely dependent upon vigorous protoplasmic activity and anything which tends to lessen this protoplasmic activity brings, of course, the sum total of the development accomplished below the level of what was otherwise possible.
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236 ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN BODY chap.
Effect of Alcohol upon the Growth of Children
As has already been shown (Chap. III.), alcohol, even in dilute solutions, has a depressing effect upon the vitality of protoplasm, and as all protoplasm is essentially of the same nature, it is more than likely that the growing tissues of children should be just as sensitive to the action of this drug as the plants and animals described in Chapter III. Evidence is steadily accumulating which suggests that the stunted frames and weak development of many poor children is at any rate partly due both directly and indirectly to the action of alcohol. It acts adversely by lowering cell vigour, thus hindering the child’s normal rate of growth, and also by directly irritating the stomach and liver, whereby the child’s power of absorbing nourishment becomes impaired.
Professor Kassowitz, from his large experience of children’s diseases in Berlin, directly attributes many of the cases of loss of appetite and digestive failure to the small amounts of light wines given to children by their parents at meal times. Many of these wines are astringent and constipating, and by no means such simple drinks as they seem. In this connection we would suggest that some of the white pasty faces so frequently seen abroad in the children of all classes may be connected with their habit of taking wine. Though many parents of the present day, and especially during the last ten years, realise how harmful alcohol is to the young, we believe that in every country in Europe there are still many children whose bodies are more or less damaged and whose growth is impaired by the taking of alcoholic drinks. It must be remembered that organs thus injured in early life probably never reach their perfect development, and that in adult life, in consequence of such injury, the individual exhibits neither the full physique nor the normal longevity of his race.
One organ appears in childhood to be peculiarly susceptible to the action of small doses of alcohol, viz. the liver.
Of late years medical attention has been called to the state of the liver in some of the children who have been given small amounts of alcohol by their parents, or with their medicines (in the form, for example, of “ steel wine ”), and most doctors |
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EFFECT ON TISSUES OF CHILDREN |
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237 |
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XIV |
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are now very much on the alert with regard to this sensitive ness of the liver to small or repeated doses of alcohol in childhood. With regard to liver disease in children, Sir T. Barlow has more than once spoken strongly.1 Before the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration (1903), he stated that it was—
“. . . immensely difficult to give statistics, but easy to give illustrations. In a boy aged about ten years, who was under my observation for several weeks, there was well-marked evidence of gin - drinker’s liver with abdominal dropsy. He had for a long time carried to his father, who was a cabman, his daily meal, of which some spirit was one of the con stituents. The cabman had given the boy little sips of spirit, and he had got to like it.
“Again, a boy, aged between four and five years, was brought to me with abdominal dropsy and enlargement of the liver. He had been given a certain daily quantity of beer for several months. The beer was dropped, and suitable remedies were given. The dropsy rapidly subsided, and subsequently the liver slowly lessened in size, and the boy recovered.
“The occasional administrations of gin to children for flatulence is very common amongst certain classes of the London poor. The production of fibroid changes, or, in other words, the hardening and toughening of certain of the viscera of a child during the period of development, may be very far-reaching in its ultimate effects.”
In association with this question of the adverse influence of alcohol given as an article of diet to children, we may quote the striking experience of Professor Demme, of Zurich, to the effect that in an epidemic of diphtheria, which occurred in the Jenner Children’s Hospital, the children who had previously been accustomed to the daily and ordinary dietetic use of alcohol showed themselves much less able to resist taking diphtheria, and succumbed to it in a greater proportion than did those children who had been brought up without alcohol.
Effect of Alcohol upon the School-Work of Children.— During the years of childhood no part of the body alters more rapidly or has greater capacity for growth than the brain. At birth its cells and fibres are of comparatively simple structure—and totally unlike the complex cells which are possessed by the adult. It is obvious that a brain built of badly grown cells, whose protoplasm is poor in type, can
1 The Use of Alcohol in Children’s Diseases (Address given at a Con ference of Medical Men), Church of England Temperance Society Publication Depôt, 4 The Sanctuary, Westminster. |
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238 ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN BODY chap.
never attain to that mental power which is the essential of successful living.
This failure in brain development, which is the fate of many a child, is to be explained on the ground of lack of nourish ment, sleep, and air, coupled with the practice of drug-taking (tobacco or alcohol), and other pernicious habits.
The declarations of nerve physiology, which tell us that small doses of alcohol cause a slight numbing of the higher powers of the brain, of course apply equally to children as to adults, and in a research 1 made in American schools as to the cause of mental inability, weariness, and failure to respond to teaching, it was found that these symptoms were not infre quently due to the alcohol supplied to the children in their homes and in public-houses.
Other investigations, such as those of Heude in Budapest, have shown indisputably that even in the case of children who have already long been accustomed to the regular use of alcohol, single doses of from four to seven ounces, i.e. eight to fourteen tablespoonfuls, of wine cause the mental powers to lessen in every direction, so that the ability to learn by heart, to calculate, and even to write, are diminished to a striking extent.
Professor Demme refers to the following experiment per formed by two capable and trustworthy men. They allowed their sons, between ten and fifteen years of age, to use wine for several months : after this, its use was discontinued for a similar period. In this way they continued to alternate for a year and a half. The wine used was a light table wine, and the older boy used 3½ ounces at the noon and evening meals, and the younger rather more than 2 ounces, in both cases diluted with water.
Observations showed very plainly that during the period they were taking the wine the boys were “ slacker,” sleepier, and less interested in intellectual work. Their sleep was more restless and broken, and therefore less satisfactory than during the period of abstinence. The difference was so great that both the boys asked their parents to be allowed to omit the use of the wine.
Alcohol and Breast-fed Children.—It is noteworthy that
1 “A Study of the Effect of Alcohol on School Children,” by T. Alex. M’Nicholl, M.D., The Medical Temperance Review, Aug. 1905. |
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XIV EFFECT ON TISSUES OF CHILDREN 239
breast-fed infants who are nursed by alcohol-taking mothers often have convulsions, and are very restless and irritable—all of which nervous symptoms subside when the mother is in duced to drink freely of milk and to abstain from alcohol.
This point is strongly enforced by Professor Kassowitz, of Berlin, who also states that when treating children who are delirious and seriously ill with pneumonia, influenza, and other diseases, he frequently finds that the delirium ceases when the alcohol which they may have been given medicinally is stopped ; and he pleads strongly for the disuse of alcohol in the illnesses of childhood, because of its narcotic and irritant effects.
The further influence of alcohol on the nervous system of children becomes a medical question.
For instance, the Lancet (August 1899) reports three cases of alcoholic paralysis (one in a child four and a half years of age, who had received from one-half to a tumblerful of beer daily since the age of six months), and points out that there is no doubt as to the cumulative and deleterious effects of alcoholic drinks when taken by children.
Alcohol a Cause of Immorality.—Finally, all parents and teachers ought constantly to bear in mind that one of the most frequent causes of evil habits and of sexual immorality among young people is the taking of alcohol. This is, of course, a direct consequence of the action of even small quantities in damaging self control, in perverting ideas and thoughts, and in exciting the emotions. A strong protest has been raised by Dr. Clement Dukes—than whom we have no greater authority on the subject of schoolboys—with regard to the pernicious practice of allowing them to take beer in con junction with other stimulating foods at supper-time.
“Beer is a drug which deadens the will-power and excites the animal instincts of the young ; its relation therefore to immorality is most momentous. . . .
“In plain English, a master who allows his pupils to drink beer at bedtime, and a parent who sanctions it, implicitly says to them :—
“ I give you this beer at bedtime, well knowing that it will blunt your intellect, deaden your conscience, and diminish your will-power ; and that at the same time it will excite your animal instincts.” 1
1 The Use of Alcohol in Youth and its Results in our Public Schools, by Dr. Clement Dukes, Physician to Rugby School (C.E.T.S. Pub. Depot, 4 The Sanctuary, Westminster). |
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240 ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN BODY chap. xiv
The same warning applies to young and still growing men and women when of college age, and for the sake of national morality as well as physique it is clear that in no form what ever should alcohol be used by the young either in childhood or adolescence. |
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