THE LIQUOR QUESTION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16564, 30 May 1914, Page 18

THE LIQUOR QUESTION.

It) THE EMTOR. Sir, —If I have been unnecessarily personal in my reply to Mr Butterworth I am sorry, but when he wrote of my " dealing with the drink question with such fatal facility, making difficult his scientifically approaching the problem," ono expected from him at least a rudimentary knowledge of the questions in dispute, and his .communications so far*are mere childish statements, dogmatically asserted, without any evidence in support. In his latest effusion he again errs fearfully. "How can there be any association between drink and divorce?" he asks. Surely a "scientific." study would not result in such a puerile question. It is only necessary to refer him to the evidence now being given each day this week in the Christchurch Divorce Court.

Then most stupidly Mr Butter worth says: ' 'Drink is not even classed among one of the general causes of insanity." On looking up the latest Now Zealand Year Book (p. 19b") I find that the second greatest contributing cause is alcohol. The Australian Commonwealth Year Book gives alcohol the same place in causation of insanity, and says: " About one caso in eight was due to intemperance in drink." But perhaps these authorities are not sufficiently "scientific" for Mr Butterworth, so I turn to acknowledged 'specialists. Dr Clouston, superintendent of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, said: " Alcoholic'insanity steadily goes up. This year no less than '12.3 petcent of all our men and IS per cent of our women had excess in alcohol assigned as the cause of their insanity. It has steadily gone up, and now it has doubled. No explanation will, account for this but the ono that certain of our population, are drinking to greater excess than they did, and in doing so are, many of them, destroying their sanity." Dr S. A. Tucker, in his " Lunacy in Many Lands," says: "Of the causes of insanity, heredity and intemperance take the "leading place, and perhaps it would not be unsafe to assume that in the majority of cases hereditary insanity has its origin in alcoholism.' Dr Percy Smith, M.D., F.R.C.P.. in his presidential address before tho Section of Psychology of the British Medical Association, said: "In addition to .the actual numbers who are sufficiently poisoned by alcohol to be certified as insane, there are large numbers of individuals who are from time to J time dangerously unsound, it may bo for a few hours or a few days, who are the terror of their relatives, form a large proportion of the cases at police courts, and ruin themselves m health and fortune" Dr Forbes Winslow, tho great alienist, said: " Insanity ,and inebriety go hand-in-hand, and children of drunkards inherit usually either the one or the other." But way multiply evidence,? Let Mr Butterworth quote authorities in rebuttal and stop frothing. Then your readers shall see whether, in demanding that tho liquor traffic be abolished, we have not only moral sentiment and ! economic acumen, but pathological and psychological evidence, irrefutable and unanswerable, compelling tho crossing ont of .the top lino in the interests of? ell humanity.—l am, etc., , ARTHUR TOOMBES.