Word: alcohols
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Many physicians still prescribe modest doses of whisky for heart patients in the belief that alcohol increases the blood flow to the heart muscle by dilating blood vessels. But does it? Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and at the University of Mississippi found that a few shots slowed up blood flow in dogs' hearts, and a few more forced the heart to work harder. Moving from animals to humans, investigators at the New Jersey College of Medicine found that men who took six or seven drinks over two hours suffered reduced pumping action...
What are these beneficial uses? Most people who take a drink or two before dinner, and even many of those who take three or four at a noisy cocktail party, know some of the basic facts. Alcohol is a relaxant (it appears to act as a stimulant only because it masks fatigue); and because it relaxes first the "most civilized" functions of the brain, it tends to banish worry. It makes people more tolerant of each other's foibles. It loosens tongues, and may dissolve some legal and moral restraints. But Dr. Chafetz is chary of the widely held...
...effects of their accustomed drink. Equally shameful, he believes, is the average physician's refusal to use liquor as a medicine. It is, he asserts, not only the oldest of medicines but one of the most effective. It was the first and for long the only useful anesthetic. Alcohol is good in many cases of high blood pressure and heart disease, because it relieves the pain of angina and makes a low-salt diet more palatable. Because alcohol is the only drug that is also a food, Dr. Chafetz suggests that it might be given to some patients instead...
Chafetz goes so far as to suggest that alcohol-in suitable dosage, of course -may be as good for children as for adults. He recommends abolishing age limits and allowing teen-agers to drink publicly, so as to get rid of furtiveness...
...doubt the heady spirit of Dr. Chafetz' book will be misrepresented and abused. But he puts himself squarely on record: "The person who drinks to get drunk is a fool and probably does not enjoy liquor anyway. He likely drinks for oblivion, with alcohol only the means to attain it." The civilized drinker stops far short of drunken oblivion...