When Is A Man Drunk?
[Per Press Association. Copyright.] HAMILTON, This Day.
Holding that a medical certificate in a charge of intoxication preferred against John Gibson Cook, aged 29, a motor driver of Te Awamutu. was not evidence, the Magistrate, Mr S. L. Paterson, dismissed the charge in the Hamilton Police Court. Intoxication was not ,a matter of tests, said the Magistrate. The British Medical Association had expressed the opinion that an experienced police officer was as capable of judging if
a person was intoxicated as any medical officer, unless there were pathological reasons for intoxication.
It was on record, said Mr Paterson, that a man, known to be intoxicated, had pulled himself together for the medical test, passed it, and then collapsed.
He recalled a case in which a man was arrested for straight-out drunkenness. A doctor had certified him as sober, but during the night the arrested man was taken to hospital with
alcoholic poisoning. It was a further proof of the unreliable nature of tests for intoxication.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NA19390421.2.55
Bibliographic details
Northern Advocate, 21 April 1939, Page 5
Word Count
170When Is A Man Drunk? Northern Advocate, 21 April 1939, Page 5
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