TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20268, 29 November 1927, Page 2

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

[The mattei under this heading is pubÜBhou at the request oi, and 1b supplied by, the United Temperance He.'orm Council in pursuance oi the desire to inculcate the principles oi temperance.] Eighty per cent, of the cases of venereal disease are due to the influences of alcohol. Alcohol and venereal diseases go hand in hand. —Dr Arthur Evans, F.R.C.S, It has been demonstrated by scientific investigation that alcohol is useless as a medicine, dangerous as a food, and is never a stimulant.—British Medical Quarterly. MEDICATED WINES. The Sheffield licensing justices, England, received something of a shock recently. An application was made to them for a license to sell medicated wines, and evidence was tendered in opposition, showing that many of these wines contain a higher alcoholic content than many of the familiar wines that are on the market. For example, the alcoholic content of claret is given at 9 per cent.; hock, 10 per cent.; champagne, 10.15 per cent.; sherry, 18 per cent.; port, 20 per cent. But the alcoholic strength of Glendinnmg wine is 20.8 per cent.; higher, that is, than the highest of these well-known wines. Lenico wine has 17 per cent, of alcohol; Wincarnis, 19.6; Bovnl wine, 20 per cent.; and Coleman’s Cocoa wine, 16 per cent. There is no doubt that many persons have acquired the drink habit by taking these deceptive preparations. Some of these medicated wines claim to be nutritive because moat extract enters into their composition. But a House of Commons report supplies the information that the quantity of moat extract is trifling, and in any case it is not nutritive. The report says: “ Alcohol cannot contain moat extract in solution, and presumably any medical man desiring to administer meat extract would prefer to do so without mixing it with alcohol.” Robert Hutchinson, M.D., F.R.C.P., who is said to be a high medical authority, writes in his " Food and Dietetics ”: ‘‘Medicated wines are concoctions, the basis of which is port or sherry, to which has been added extract of beef, extract oi malt, peptone, coca leaves, cocaine, cinchona, iron, or some other dietetic or medicinal substances. The use of these wines oan on no grounds be recommended. . . . The use of such liquors by an invalid on his own responsibility, or even by prescription, exposes him to great danger of becoming by degrees the unconscious victim of alcoholism, and, in the case of the coca wines, of the cocaine habit as well. On every ground their manufacture and sale should be strongly deprecated by the medical profession.” WHY WE HATE LIQUOR. Dr Harry Emerson Fosdick, writing in the May issue of the American Magazine, has the following to' say on the drink question: —“Borne people wonder why wo ministers hate liquor so. I’ll tell you. Because, out of every group of young men that start drinking there are always one or two whoso nerves are turned to alcohol, and who are doomed as soon as they begin. How can a man take on himself the abysmal responsibility of giving liquor to a youth How do you know but that he is the boy between whose nerves and alcohol the affinities will fly?”—The Patriot ALCOHOL AND PUS. In a recent issue the Echo held that total abstinance was forbidding “ a beverage which is natural.” Alcohol, like pus, is the direct fruit of putrefaction. The first’ is a result of putrefaction in vegetables; the second, in flesh. Both, when absorbed by the animal organism, produce poisoning of blood, nerves, and tissues, and remain injurious unti’ they are decomposed or eliminated. Alcohol put to roots of plants lessens their vitality and stunts their growth. There is no trace of alcohol in earth, rocks, minerals, water, or air. •It is an evanescent concomitant of the death or decomposition of vegetables after thev have entered the stage of putrefaction. Man is fed by healthy vegetables, but he hastens his own death of decomposition by absorbing the death principle which destroyed vegetables through putrefaction. Vegetables are unfit for lood for man or beast the moment they begin to decompose ferment, or.turn sour. It is no more natural to use alcohol as a beverage than to commit _ slow suicide. Alcohol interferes with nutrition, paralyses nerve centres, and aggravates every puslorming ailment. Possibly pus when distilled might yield alcohol—both being ifiborn to putrefaction. A Scottish medical manifesto, signed by an influential list of medical practitioners, is neing circulated for further signatures. It is as follows:—“ We, the undersigned, are of opinion—(l) That the use of intoxi eating beverages is responsible for a Large proportion of unhappiness, disease and crime; ’2) that, in the normal human being, such beverages are not necessary for health; (3) that modern scientific research has proved that many former beliefs concerning the value of alcohol are no longer tenable: and (4) that much good would result to the communty from the restriction of the use of alcoholic liquors to that advised by medical practitioners.” MARRIAGE AND DRINK. Dr T. B. Hyslop, a noted London brain specialist has thrown all England into a turmoil because of the publication of a book called “ The Border Land.” Dr Hyslop in his book declares that his many years as superintendent of Bethlehem Hospital has convinced him that even an occasional use of alcohol will so undermine health that wholesome-minded children cannot be expected when one or both parents are . guilty of intemperance. Dr Hyslop declares that parents who are addicted to alcohol or have become intoxicated on three or more occasions are a menace to society, and that marriages of any persons three tifnos convicted of intoxication should bo prohibited by law in order to protect the race against the propagation of degeneracy Dr Hyslop says; “We see so many evidences of degeneracy resulting from alcoholism in narents that I am strongly of the opinion that just as the habitual drinker is deprived of his liberty, so the existence of the alcohol habit should be considered a bar to marriage.”—White Ribbon Signal,