PRESENT-DAY MEDICAL MANAGEMENT OF ALCOHOLISM

Abstract

In recent years there has been an increasing awareness by physicians, social scientists, and laymen that alcoholism is a medical problem and that it is a vast one. Several million persons in the United States alone are subject to this syndrome. With the introduction of new drugs and the advance of psychiatric knowledge and techniques and with the advent of Alcoholics Anonymous, the former gloomy prognosis of alcoholism has been replaced by an attitude of hopefulness and interest that is entirely justified. A variety of excellent papers on specialized aspects of alcoholism have appeared in recent years, but, as is often the case, the literature leaves the physician who deals with alcoholics only occasionally in the difficult position of having to make his own synthesis from these various sources. It is our aim to fill this gap by discussing the day to day medical management of alcoholism. It must be