MODERATE DRINKERS AND DISEASE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18990, 11 October 1923, Page 10

MODERATE DRINKERS AND DISEASE.

Dll CHADDDE'S. CONTENTION. (From (Jue Own Oorrespondent.) LONDON, August 30. Dr W. A. Chappie, M.P., speaking at Brighton, challenged Lord Dawson, in view of his speech in ihe House of Lords, on the innocence of moderate drinking, to explain to the public the latest statistics of li/o insurance companies, which have for 50 years pait kept all their members in two separate sections, abstainers and moderate drinkers; intemperate applicants having been rigidly excluded (a ndo strictly enforced by all companies) by medical examination and the testimony of witnesses. All other factors, except the one of moderate drinking, in these two classes of insured persons were constant, Dr Chappie said, and yot abstainers showed an average advantage in death expectancy over moderate drinkers of d-2.3 per cent. He, himself, attributed this very striking difference, not to deaths due to alcoholic diseases, but to deaths from other diseases, which the healing power of Nature was unable to overcome because of the alcohol circulating in the system, and, in general, to the higher susceptibility to diaeaeo of moderate drinkers.