DOCTORS AND DRINK.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 224, 21 September 1907, Page 3

DOCTORS AND DRINK.

PORT WINE AND LONG LIFE

BEER VERSUS TEA

LONDON, Aug. 2. A further contribution to the alcohol controversy was made yesterday at the resumed proceedings of the British Medical Association at Exeter.

Dr. Davy, president of the Association, while admitting that the evils in. crime and disease arising from the excessive use of alcohol demanded the attention of every Englishman, more especially as the drink habit was increasing among women in England, proceeded to criticise the ultra-temper-ance advocates, whose arguments, ho said, not unfrequently consisted or " unscientific twaddle."

Lessons on the abuse- of alcohol should be given in our schools, and the children should be taught that alcoholwas not necessary for muscular work. " But," he continued, "to go on and tell them, as in so-mo American schools, that you are morally wrong in drinking a glass of wine and to do so is taking poison, is unscientific twaddle, and is absolutely wrong. If that is what they are going to be taught I, for one, prefer to teach them nothing lat all."

Dr. Davy admitted a liking for port wine, of which,.be said, his great uncle had never drunk less than a bottle every day of his life, and he had lived to within four months of being a hundred years old. Two or three pints- of beer a day would not injure one any more than tea. Light beer, containing only two and a half per cent, of alcohol, along with bread and cheese, was scientifically better than the feeding of bread, tea and jam, which nowconstituted the dietary of so many children.

At the same time, said Dr. Davy, he never recommended the use of alcohol to a patient who did not drink, and in the case of those that did drink, he specified what they might take. It was a scientific fact that alcohol was not necessary to life or bodily work, very rarely useful in disease, and as a nation we drank too much.

Dr. Reeve (Toronto) declared he had been a life abstainer, and ho had nev^i\ cause to regret the course he bad laid out for himself. lie had been appalled by the sight which had met his gaze in London of women standing in the gin palaces giving sugar soaked in gin to their infants. This evil of the drink habit afforded scope for a great effort on the part of medical men to secure, if not total abstinence, at all events sobriety. Sir John W. Moore (Dublin) said that a great many beverages which, were taken by total abstainers contained an appreciable amount of alcohol. It would be quite possible to take too much alcohol in ginger ale. He had no hesitation in saying that intemperance led to tuberculosis, and acted in depressing the resisting powers of the human frame.