# Medicinal use for ethyl alcohol

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicinal-use-for-ethyl-alcohol/742544>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 9, 2016, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicinal-use-for-ethyl-alcohol/742544 "2016-01-09T01:20:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2016, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicinal-use-for-ethyl-alcohol/742544/4 "2016-01-09T01:46:12Z")

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Doctors sometimes order an alcoholic beverage for a patient, as an appetite stimulant or sleep aid. It doesn’t happen much, but I can assure you that every hospital pharmacy has some beer, wine, or even stronger stuff on hand, and many nursing homes do too. We logged it in the C-II file, along with morphine, cocaine, OxyContin, etc.

Incredibly, at one time it was even used intravenously to stop preterm labor. :eek: It worked, too. I’d read about it, and a pharmacist who had dispensed it for this reason said that the next day, the women obviously needed treatment for hangovers.

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