Martha Meir Allen

Martha Meir Allen was a Canadian-born temperance organizer and writer who challenged the medical use of intoxicating substances. Alcohol appeared in 1900 under the much fuller title Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why, What Medical Writers Say. Allen compiled physicians’ arguments, historical material, and discussions of hospitals, pharmacy, nursing, and patent remedies to support care without that substance. The original edition identifies her as superintendent of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’s Department of Medical Temperance. Her advocacy included examining proprietary remedies and publicizing their undisclosed ingredients, linking consumer protection with a broader reform campaign. A 1910 revision later appeared; the volume circulated in medical libraries and reform networks. Allen presents herself less as an original medical authority than as an organizer of professional testimony for general readers. The shortened title Alcohol therefore represents a large documentary work about changing medical practice, public health arguments, and women’s institutional activism at the turn of the twentieth century.