THE LANCET ON INCREASED

Otago Witness, Issue 2362, 1 June 1899, Page 62

THE LANCET ON INCREASED

DRINKING.

THE CHANCELLOR, OF THE EXCHEQUER AND BEER-

DRINKING. (The Lancet, April 1.) BEER CONSIDERED AS jf TEJOTRANCE DRINK

Our object to-day is not to make any definite suggestions of our own, but to direct attention to a very remarkable suggestion which has been lately made by no less an authority than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was the guest of the Country Brewers' Association, and he told them that an unprecedented amount of beer had been produced last year, and that the production was increasing yearly. " There must be few babies and fewer teetotallers in the United Kingdom," said Sir "Michael Hicks-Beach, for " for every member of our population 31 gallons of beer are drunk in the year." He rejoiced at the fact, and hoped that the increase would continue. "The people of the United Kingdom would be better off if more beer and less spirits were drupk." In short, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach evidently regards beer as a sort of temperance drink, the consumption of which should be encouraged as a means of diminishing the consumption of spirit. It is true that he spoke with gratitude of receiving £12,000,000 last year from the tax on beer, and with hope of receiving half a milling more in the current year, but Sir

Michael Hicks-Beach is much too good a man to speak so jauntily of his receipts from beer if he did not believe that he was speaking in the interest of the sobriety and virtue of the nation. A COMMON BTJT MISTAKEN VIEW OF EEERDF.IXKING.

There are some politicians who coyld not have spoken of beer as a temperance drink without exciting a suspicion that they were joking or practising on the credulity 6f thoir audience. But this is not the case with Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. Can this view be entertained as a practical suggestion for the diminution of excessive drinking? It i? certainly entertained . by a large section of the public, and it is perhaps true that excess in drinking beer is le^s acutely injurious than excess in drinking spirit, but it must not be forgotten that the amount of beer drunk already is enormous, and that it i« productive of unmistakable harm in the class-es which consume it. The rheumatism and gout of the working clpsse^ are often an outcome of their consumption of beer. Too much beer produces manifold forms of etyspepsia and visceral derangement. It tends, too. in the quantities we are referring to as used by the people after very eirly years, to produce various degenerations, in the direction of senility, of tissues, glinduJar, nervou«, and ■vascular.

" Tho poor man advancing in years," pays Sir Henry Thompson, " =hows signs of damage to his constitution from continuous toil with inadequate food, the supply of which is often diminished by his expenditure for beer, which, although not eeldom noxious, he regards as the elixir of life, never to be missed when fair occasion for obtaining it is offered. Many of this class! are prematurely crippled by articular di°ea^e and become inmates of the parish workhouse or infirmary."' Few medical men will deny the truth of the«e word?. MEDICAL OPINION" ARAINST THE CHANCELLOR

OF THE EXCHEQUER

Besides, is the issue so clear as the Chancellor of the Exchequer puts it? Does the consumption of more beer r<-r-lly mean the consumption of lcs spirit? Fe-.v medical. men will admit Mich an opinion. We certainly know of no instance in which a spirit-drinker was saved by more copious potations of beer. The remedy, if not worse than the disease, is but one phade better. Beer-drinkers are by no means froe from the vico of spirit-drink-ing, and Pie ceri&inJy not unfrequently the subjects of cirrhosi''. V» r »> commend the-;e medical faot^ to too consideration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and of all who aro disposed to regard beer in tho light of a temperance drink, ov as an alternative to the use of spirits. We may remind them that this view ha^i once or twice pie vailed in legislation '■vith very doubtful effect?.

A SKBIOCa WARNING TO THE GOVKBNSIFKT.

One of tho objects of the frea beerhouse logislalion of 1830, ns tl-.o secretary of the present Royal Commission on the Licensing Laws, Mr Sydney Peol, points out, was to discourage the drinking of spirits by encouraging the consumption of beer. But it failed signally. It would be disastrous if any new legislation were to be attempted on this principle. \i the medical aspects of the case do not impress thopa w«o regard the co/inumption fit mote beer a-; likely to a'^ate the drunkenness of the nation, tbsj- v/iil perhaps look ot th« moral aspects of beer drinking as they may be studied in the proceedings of coroners' courts and police courts, where death and crime and brutality are often associated with excesses in beer. Thure is qno other point of enormous importance which cannot fail to strike -statesmen, and evon Chancellors of the "Kxchcquoi — that wade by Sir Heniy Thompson in the extract which ye have given above — viz., the effect of puch an enormous expenditure on beer by tho working classes in curtailing the power to purchase the other necessaries of life and_ the consequent physical and social depression of their families. We need not labour these points to justify our contention that any incro-jsed consumption of beer, however good for the bi ewers and the national exchequer, will not conduce to a sobriety orjo a diminution of the disease and misery produced by alcoholism. We are apparently on the eye of new legislation on this subject. It is immensely important that we should know what we are doing, and realise the causes of failures of previous effoil-s of the kind.