POISON LIQUOR.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 20, 25 January 1927, Page 8

POISON LIQUOR.

U.S.A.'S TERRIBLE DEATH

TOLL

GOVERNMENT EXCORIATED

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FANCISCO, December

A frightful death roll resulted during Yuletide in the United States, owing to the populace all over the country indulging in participation of moonshine, or "Christmas booze," as it was designated, and, during the countrywide discussion of the terriffic toll of death, the United States Government was roundly excoriated for permitting the ollicial inclusion of poison in denatured alcohol. At the height of the national denunciations the Treasury decided to take the poison out of denatured alcohol. Garrard B. Winston, Under-Secretary, announced from Washington that the "dry" unit's chemists had been instructed to prepare formulae for industrial alcohol that would make it "nasty" and undrinkable, but not i poisonous. It was admitted that the action had been taken as a result of numerous deaths over the country from | drinking poisoned alcohol.

Two deputy medical examiners and a city magistrate in New York joined with Chief Medical Examiner Norris in accusing the United States Government of full moral responsibility for the liquor deaths, as the Christmas "booze" toll more than doubled itself in New York on December 27 —leaping from 11 to 23.

At the same time a careful check of hospitals revealed at least 100 persons irrespective of many more in the city and private institutions, suffering from the effects of Christmas drinking— either alcholism or poison from poor liquor, or both.

Seventeen lay dead in Manhattan alone from drinking holiday liquor, according to a statement from Dr. Alexander O. Getler, chief toxicologist of Bellevue Hospital. Deaths in King's County swelled to five, and in Queen's County other deaths were chronicled. Blindness and Paralysis. One of the victims in New York was a woman who died in twelve hours and altogether eighteen lives were lost in and around New York, the total being next day brought up to 23. The alcholic ward of Bellevue Hospital presented a sickening spectacle, it being crowded with 73 persons, ten of whom were near death, while the others faced living deaths in poss.'ble blindness, insnaity and partial or permanent paralysis. In King's County Hospital ten persons were in the alcoholic ward. For these liquor deaths and those persons who faced such horrible consequences as a result of drinking, Dr. Charles Norris, reiterating a statement made on December 26, charged that the United States Government was responsible through poisoning of ethyl alcohol to make it unirinkable.

"Holiday liquor is poison," Dr. Norris stated,, "because the bootlegger is unable to redistill the poison from the denatured alcohol. Although the Government J puts poison in alcohol to make it undrhikatle, it knows that the people are drinking it, and, knowing that, it must assume the moral responsibility for the deaths."

Magistrate Hirshfield, in New Jersey Avenue Court, Brooklyn, spoke in vehement corroboration. Addressing a prisoner brought before him for drinking, Judge Hirshfield said: "You ought to be glad you did not absorb enough of that poison to kill you like the others were killed. I cannot see any difference between the sacrifice of human life by burning at the stake or torturing to death to achieve an ideal.

"The real persons responsible for these deaths are the United States Senators, members of Congress and Federal executives. The taking of life in the same manner would be tantamount to murder and punishable under the laws as such if committed by anyone else." "Perpetrated Murder." Health Commissioner Harris, asserting the ( liinent's denaturing of alcohol u.. Uy led to many fatal disease;, > u the prohibition law and attacked it a.s impossible to enforce. The two deputy medical examiners under Dr. Norris went all the way with him in his charges, while Dr. Getler, toxicologist, announced after examining the bodies of the liquor victims that in fourteen of the sixteen deaths under his observation, it had been definitely determined tha,t death was due to not wool alcohol. This upheld the previous statement of Dr. Norris. "To determine what, if any, poisons are in the ethyl alcohol," Dr. Getler said, "a much more complicated analysis must be made, the results of which will not be known for some time."

He did say, however, that in previous analyses of ethyl alcohol the poisonous properties Dr. Norris mentioned had been found. Dr. Norris said that in its effort to make alcohol unfit to drink the United States Government doctored it with such poisons as pyridine, diethyl-phtha-for-maline and bichloride. It was these poisons, Dr. Norris contended, that the bootlegger was unable to remove by redistilling. Deputy Medical Examiner Marten, of Brooklyn and Queens, came out in vigorous corroboration of Dr. Norris. Dr. Marten said: "In my opinion when the Government denatures alcohol by injecting poisons in an effort to make it unfit to drink it knows that the same alcohol will be given to the people by bootleggers. When they die from drinking it the Government has really perpetrated a murder. Dr. Norris is absolutely right when he says that the deaths from alcoholism are caused by •this same poisoned liquor." Seven deaths from poisoned Christmas liquor were reported in one day in a !?d in Los Angeles a similar number of deaths were recorded from ° a " Be - Ixl Boston ten more deaths to poison alcohol were added on £ ber , 28 > "Me there were 70 suf drinking redistilled denatured alcohol and many of them were WH " P ?i, of death > and para! lysed in the municipal hospitals of Bos- . Twelve were incarcerated in padded cells of "cure" establishments of the same city. A new medical term of "Prohi maniacs" was created in San Francisco by Dr. C. B. McGettigan, president of the San Francisco Lunacy Board, to classify the hundreds in the Californian metropolis, who, during the past year, have exchanged normal, healthy lives for an asylum cot, a prison cell or a slab in the morgue as the result of drinking poisonous drink. Dr. McGettigan made the new classification in respense to the statement by Dr. Charles Norris, chief medical examiner of Manhattan, placing full responsibility for the deaths of 23 persons

in Xew York resulting from poisoned Christmas liquor, on the shoulders of the United States Government.

Joining Dr. McGettigan in condemning the Government for denaturing industrial alcohol by placing deadly poison in it, Coroner T. B. W. Leland made the amazing revelation that in the past 12 months the deaths of 28 San Francisco residents have been directly due to liquor manufactured from denatured alcohol. Dr. Leland also declared that in more than 200 other deaths poison liquor was the chief contributing factor.

Dr. McGettigan made a scathing denunciation of the Government's practice of treating alcohol with poisonous substances and gave as "the only possible solution the immediate repeal of the prohibition laws."

Coroner Leland. in announcing his liquor mortality statistics, brought out another new phase of the situation.

"For every death which is directlyattributed to poison booze, you may safely add ten times that many," he said. "This results from a desire on the part of coroners' juries to save the families of liquor victims from disgrace. Of course, it is no crime to drink poison booze and I have found that my juries are exceedingly loth to place the stigma of 'death from poison liquor' on a family's name. My data does not include the many homicides and suicides which, no doubt, are caused by persons drinking rank poison."

Dr. Leland, a commissioner in the United states Navy during the World War, gave an interesting sidelight on his researches in the poison liquor field. "It is ridiculous to believe that the Government can halt the drinking of industrial alcohol by placing poison in it," he continued. "While in the Navy, I found that men who desired alcohol would drink it in any form. They drank the alcohol out of the compasses; tlicy even drank shellac and other alcoholcontaining fluids unfit for human consumption. The Navy, however, would not permit the placing of poisons in alcohol to denature it. They resorted to the placing of ill-tasting harmless drugs in it, but this did not halt the consumption."