BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.

Evening Star, Issue 18033, 29 July 1922, Page 7

BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.

ALCOHOL UNDER DISCUSSION. LONDON, July 28. (Received July 29, at 11.15 a.m.) The British Medical Association discussed the relation of alcohol to the human economy. Professor Mellanby detailed experiments with guinea pigs in eider to tost the effects of alcohol on heredity. An abnormal progeny resulted. Some wore born without eyes, and others without brains. The professor said that after a good carouse it would take from ten to eighteen, hours for alcohol to bo cleared out of the circulation of a man. The apparent stimulative effects of alcohol were now known to be due to depression and partite paralysis of the cerebral cortex. Thus feelings of joy, misery, and anger were more easily called forth and cares and worries forgotten. Dr MacCurdy, of Cornell University (U.S.A.), in dealing with Prohibition In America, said that evolution in drinking was still in progress. The domestic manm facture of mild alcoholic drinks might develop into a recognised household art, become legalised, and produce a nation of moderate drinkers. Discussing the effects of alcohol on a man whom alcohol makes quarrelsome, Dr MacCurdy said that such a man belonged to the paranoid group. After a drink or two a paranoid imagines that he is being slighted and Insulted. Such men have strong anti-social tendencies. As marriage mokes the most persistent demand for social adaptation, these men begin to drink after marriage.—A. and N.Z. Cable.