Treatment of Alcoholism

AFTER having chosen the remedy best indicated by the somatic and psychical symptoms which the drunkards present, it is generally necessary to give this remedy only in the 200th dilution. This sometimes provokes a slight aggravation for a few days. This aggravation, which is good sign, is usually followed by a partial or complete cure. But the aggravation should not be too great, nor continue for several weeks as I have noted it, for instance, after one single dose of Sulphur 5000th, in a few inebriates, not in all, or then the patient is not always able to react, and the aggravation retards, or even prevents the cure. when the aggravation manifests itself, the remedy should be permitted to act for three, four, six, eight or twelve weeks, after which partial or complete cure takes place.

It is prudent to administer at first the 200th dilution, and then the 600th, 1000th, 2000th, 4000th, 6000th, 10,000th, 16,000th.

In order to avoid aggravations, a single dose should be administered at once, for if this dose were to be dissolved in a glass of water and a teaspoonful given once or twice a day for several days in succession there would be great danger of producing an aggravation would sometimes last for days, weeks and months, and the cure would be retarded.

Between the divers remedies or dilutions administered there should be intervals as variable as the effects produced and the person treated, But, as I do for the patrons of my free dispensary, the physician, should receive every three weeks a visit from his consultants, either at his office or at his dispensary. That is the best method of watching the case and directing the most rapid and efficacious treatment.

But this treatment will produce no result unless the efficaciousness of the high dilutions administered shall have bee verified by the physician in his daily practice, whether these high dilutions come from the homoeopathic pharmacy of from the physician’s private medicine case. The high dilutions of the remedies are the indispensable instruments for the cure of drunkenness. Without this instrument there are no cures.

To make the treatment of drunkenness and, generally speaking, of psychical diseases as efficacious as possible, the following condition is very useful and, indeed, I might say, generally indispensable, No reproaches should be addressed to the person under treatment, even though he might deserve them richly, and in conversation no allusion should be made to his vices or failings. Reproaches and allusions sour the temper, while remedies sweeten it by developing reason, the sentiment of duty, and will power sufficient to accomplish it. Thus, for instance up o date I have cured of their vice all the licentious married men whom I have treated except three, two especially whose wives overwhelmed them with reproaches and snappish innuendoes.

After having noted how indispensable it is, in order to bring about their cure, not to heap reproaches upon drunkards, I understand why in the numerous colony of insane people at Gheel, Belgium, scattered as boarders among the families of from twelve to fifteen villages in this canton, insane people who before had been violent and dangerous in other establishments, because they were restrained and roughly handled, became gentle and in offensive among the inhabitants of this canton, who, under the fortunate religions influences which have been perpetuated among them for eight hundred yes are accustomed to treat with the greatest Christian forbearance these beings, bereaved of their reason, whom they leave in complete freedom, treating them as their own children.

There is another condition which generally favors the efficiency of the treatment of drunkenness and other vices: it s to treat knowledge, for some, indeed, take pleasure in these vices and do not wish to be cured of are being treated for these failings, some desire to assist in their own cure and do so awkwardly. They are sometimes disposed to prevent it by the natural spirit of opposition; others still, anxious concerning the result of the treatment, unconsciously prevent its full effect. When, on the contrary all these vicious people are treated without their knowledge, there is produced in them a natural evolution toward good under the influence of the remedies, which dissipate a more or less irresistible impulse of the passions, and I repeat it, develop reason, the feeling of duty and the will power necessary for its accomplishment.

Generally, drinking women consult for themselves or through a third person the physician who can cure them of their passion. As for men, the contrary is generally true, for they take pleasure in vice and do not wish to be cured of it. Hence it s necessary to treat them without their knowledge in almost every case. Women, therefore, more easily than men, can be made to follow certain rules of hygiene which may diminish or extinguish the taste and thirst for alcoholic drinks. Thus, for instance, in the United States, in the asylums for the treatment of the inebriety of wealthy people, they can be cured of this vice only by compelling them to give up the use of meat altogether. The physicians in the these asylums, who make no use of the remedies that can cure drunkenness, are entirely right in depriving the inebriates of meat, for meat increases thirst. If you entirely deprive of meat children and adults, you will see both less thirsty and drinking much less, even in the heat of summer. What I would say concerning the disadvantages of met applies only to the lean part, for the fat, the marrow of the bones and all fatty matters (oil, butter,. cream, milk) diminish both thirst and hunger.

The use of tobacco, whether chewed or smoked, contributes also to the increase of thirst.

But it is clear that it will be impossible to make persons addicted to drink give u altogether the use of meat and tobacco, since one is obliged to treat them almost without their knowledge. It is generally advantageous to limit then to very regular meals, not very hearty ones; for instance, four daily meals, almost equal in quantity. When they are thus fed they are less thirsty, feel stronger, and are less inclined to have recourse to alcoholic drinks, either top quench their thirst or to brace up.

AFTER having explained the homoeopathic treatment of drunkenness, I think it well to make known another treatment of it, empirical in its nature, used by a homoeopathic physician in Mexico, Dr. Ezekiel de Leon, and published in 1883 in the Bibliotheque Homoeopathique, vol. 15, page 26.

This physician was consulted by a washerwoman 41 years of age, who had been addicted for the last twelve years to alcoholic drinks, and already p(resented the following serious condition: Epistaxis, petechiae, hemorrhage from the gums and the rectum, convulsions, etc. He had her to take every morning on an empty stomach, fifty centigrams of tartar emetic in ninety grams of branch, her favorite liquor. At the end of a few days the patient began to feel such a horror for alcoholic drinks that the very sight of them nauseated her. After the treatment had been suspended for twenty eight days it was resumed for a few days after which the cure was complete and permanent. To-day the patient has such a horror of alcohol that she cannot stand the odor of remedies which contain any. She has become industrious, actively attends other household duties, and presents no longer any signs of her former very grave nervous state.

Later, Dr. De Leon submitted to the same treatment seven drunkards belonging to different trades. Four were cured, one died because he had reached too advanced a period of alcoholism. In the other two, who suffered from hereditary dipsomania, the result was incomplete.

This emetic treatment, since it does not cure hereditary drunkenness, is inferior to homoeopathic medication. Still, when the latter does not act with sufficient speed, one might prescribed emetic dissolved in the alcoholic drinks preferred by the drinker. But in order to avoid al (even slight) poisoning by the emetic, it should be prescribed only in graduated dose of five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-give centigrams, and should not be pushed beyond a dose which produces vomiting or diarrhoea in the patient. To children, doses of one, two, three, five, ten centigrams only should be given, but always exclusively in their alcoholic drink, in order to disgust them with it by given it a nauseous taste.

In England this medication has been at times used in asylums for inebriates. The drink of the latter should be mixed with tartar emetic, which acquires the nauseous taste that aspires the inebriates with a distaste for alcohol, which has sometimes been persistent.

The practice of my dispensary has given me another indication for emetic. This remedy, administered in the morning in a cup of coffee or in soup., brings about a a nauseous state of the stomach which continues, and thenceforth takes away from drunkards the desire to drink during that say. The emetic should therefore be administered to them on Saturday, the weekly pay day, or on sundry, a day or rest, which is devoted to their libations. The emetic dissolved in a warm vehicle(such as coffee, soup, tea), induces nausea more thoroughly than when not dissolved in a warm vehicle, I have in this manner often prescribed with success tartar emetic to drunkards in whom most remedies had proved inefficacious for months and months. For instance, an inebriate, 68 years of age, who had been getting drunk three, four or five times week for thirty or forty years, remained sober for three months, during which he only got drunk once, and then but little. He was subject to diarrhoea, which was brought on by emetic in a dose of two and one-half centigrams. There were Homoeopathic indications for this remedy, it is necessary to try little by little what does is appropriate to each subject in order to avoid all poisoning.