The Practitioner. January. (Macmillan.)—The greater part of such a periodical
as the Practitioner does not come within the competence of a layman to discuss, but there is a strongly worded comment by the editor on the late manifesto about the medical use of alcohol which calls for some notice. We had supposed, in common with the rest of unpro- fessional mankind, that the great London physicians and surgeons, reviewing, as they do, a very great part of the medical practice of the country, had found themselves constrained by the nature of their obser- vations to utter a protest against a growing evil. But wo read here, "The Secretary of the Temperance League puts pressure on the editor of the British Medical Journal, and the latter gentleman proceeds to put pressure (exceedingly difficult to resist) on a number of eminent professional men." Is that so? We turn to another point. We cannot but think that the editor is altogether astray when he thinks that the second paragraph of the manifesto, "that many people immensely ex- aggerate the value of alcohol as an article of diet," will "undoubtedly be taken [by the public, it must be understood] as a confirmation of the now obsolete doctrine of Lallemand, that alcohol is treated by the
organism as a merely foreign stimulant, and is not decomposed therein." The public knows nothing about the theory, which indeed is, if anything, ignored by the paragraph in question, stating, as it does, that alcohol
V is an article of diet, though a very much overrated one. On the general
question we cannot join with the editor in his condemnation of the
document. We will give one instance of what seems to us a certain recklessness in the prescribing of alcohol :—" You must take port wine," says a medical practitioner to a lady patient. "How much ?" she asks. " Oh ! a glass at eleven o'clock, two at luncheon, and a couple more at dinner." But does he say what he means by a "glass"? Yet he must know that it is a variable measure, ranging in capacity from one-seven- teenth to one-eleventh of a quart (we speak of glasses in ordinary use for such a wine as port ; a claret-glass holds sometimes one-eighth or even
more). Would he prescribe any other drug in such a loose way ?
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