ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22110, 4 June 1937, Page 7

ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO

TO TBS EDITOR Of tBM PRESS. | Sir.—C. C. Flanagan, in his letter In defence of smoking and drinking, says: "The majority of doctors- -oke and have a spot, and you would think they should

know as much as M. G. Davies about nicotine, etc." , In reply. I will give the findings of Sir Victor Horsley, M.8., F.R.C.S., F.R.S. He delivered a lecture on the subject of the baleful effects of alcohol and nicotine at St. James's Hall, London, in 1900. I can only quote a brief extract: "As Professor Erlich has pointed out, the action of any drug is merely a question oi cviemical affinity, under which some organs, or even parts of organs, are affected and others spared." .' . .. This is particularly observable In the case of alcohol, which acts especially on the peripheal nerves, i.e., on the nerves running in the limbs and extremities, and thus it is that alcohol, when taken in quantities not sufficient to produce drunkenness, but enough to justify the term "soaking," causes the nerves in the extremities to become paralysed. It is to be noted that this condition must have been observed for thousands of years, and it is only within the last 40 years that its signification has beeen understood. ' Again quoting from Sir Victor Horsley: "Thus, while there are forms of paralysis which are now well recognised by the medical profession to be the direct effect of alcohol and nicotine poisoning, the individuals affected are never considered by their friends to be drunk, nor are they ever, in the popular sense, intoxicated, i.e., rendered partly unconscious, and thus the origin of the disease is not ascribed to its true cause." The effect of alcohol is slow and insidious, and I am convinced from observation, that it plays an important part in the causation of cancer. In conclusion, I must refer to the statement, in a recent letter on the subject, that smoking soothes the nerves and is a comfort to man. This is quite true—so is morphia—they both act as depressants. The figures for cancer in Australia to-day are one in five of the population, and New Zealand runs very closely to this.—Yours, etc., M. G. DAVIES. June 3, 1937. TO THB EDITOR OF TTTE PRESS. Sir, —About the argument in your paper about alcohol and tobacco, if, as suggested by one correspondent, we are to take old men of 80 years from an old men's home as an argument for smoking and drinking, what of the hundreds who both smoked and drank with these men but died much younger? Also, your correspondent did not add that the indigent position which so often causes residence in homes for the aged is often directly traceable to alcoholic drinking to excess. —Yours, etc., TRUTH. Ashburton, June 3, 1937. [Subject to the right of reply of "Efficient," this correspondence is now closed.—Ed., "The Press."]