Alcohol in Disguise.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 940, 7 March 1890, Page 5

Alcohol in Disguise.

Thanks to the folly of mankind, the position of alcohol as a mischief-worker and destroyer of health is at least as eminent as that which belongs to it in virtue of its right and judicious use. We do not need to remind our readers that it has for long wrought probably more for evil than for good, under other names than those by which \Ve in this country recognise its familiar combinations. Under a variety of titles it exerts its influence s the potent body of the various liqueurs so common on the Continent. These contain, it is true, other ingredients of more or lesß stimulant character, but they owe then highly intoxicant qualities without doubt to the presence of a large percentage of alcohol. A fact which is not so generally known has, however, been brought to light in some recent returns, which prove that such apparently harmless compounds as ‘ hitters ’ and ‘ tonics ' are also commonly alcoholic in a high degree. Samples examined have re vealed the presence of alcohol to an amount varying from 20 to over 40 per cent. Of the legion of adulterations more or less poisonous which have been from time to time introduced into intoxicating beverages our space will not permit us to speak. It is probable that in this case the real stimulant is often the lesser evil. In the presence of such evidence as this, there can be no question that the machinery of official inspection must be made to work with considerably greater nicety than hitherto, if even one desirable end—the purity of known intoxicants—is to be assured. A somewhat simpler task, though till recently but little suspected, also presents itself to them, and to "the too confiding public—this is the detection and exposure of the fraud implied in selling strongly intoxicant ‘non-alcoholic bitter tonics.’— Lancet.