TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21198, 2 December 1930, Page 3

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Published by arrangement with tkc United Temperance Reform Council,

THE RELATIONSHIP OP ALCOHOL TO SOCIETY AND TO CITIZENSHIP. By Edoene Lyman Fiske, M.D., Medical Director, Life Extension Institute--11. THE SUPREME INTOXICANT. It is by struggle, not by compromise or disuse of our latent power, that we become strong, that we become conscious of those powers. There are men who have lived and died ignorant of their latent strength, leaning always on alcohol as on a crutch. Elat-foot is cured not by an arch support, but by exercise. Moral and psychic flat-foot is too frequently treated by a brace of artificial support instead of by developing the moral support. The sense joyous well-being that characterises healthy youth is due to hormones, substances manufactured by the body in a state of health. Alcohol is a fake hormone, and in relying upon it we mask the need to put our bodies into a healthy state where hormones are produced that give the most glorious intoxicant in the world—the intoxicant of youth and health, these men. like many other philosophers, took no cognizance of the fact that a vast amount of fatigue and mental pain and maladjustment to social conditions as a remediable physical basis, and that m masking fatigue and fear and worry and psychic strain, wears often shutting the door of opportunity, compromising with infection or poison or physical disabilities. Ignorance of those facts is responsible for the note of pessimism and despair that runs through the writings of most philosophers and intellectuals. „ IS MODERATE DRINKING * INJURIOUS.

W© must deplore the direct damage that alcohol does when used in gross excess, but it is used in gross excess by a comparatively limited number of people. I firmly believe that its greatest menace to society lies in its so-called moderate use which among the great mass of people who use it daily, but in so-called moderation, results in diverting these people from other resources of an upbuilding and constructive character. How much latent capacity for achievement, for adjustment, for business, social, scientific and artistic success, have been narcotised and suppressed throughout a whole lifetime by alcohol, we shall never known, but we know enough about its influence to he sure that it has thus maimed and crippled many millions of lives. What life insurance records REYEAL.

I have referred to my personal experience in rating men for life insurance. The steady drinker has never found favour in life insurance, even when there was lacking any accurate statistical evidence of the extent to which alcohol affected longevity. The actual experience of life insurance companies among total abstainers and drinkers of varying degrees baa in recent years been carefully tabulated. and this testimony is absolutely in line with, that received from the hospital. the clinic, and the laboratory. Life insurance experience has been grouped to include four British companies and three American companies that have separated abstainers from non-ab-stainers. The excess mortality among nonabstainers was 32 per cent. It should be borne in mind that the non-abstainers we J- e regarded as reasonably temperate and thoroughly sound lines when they were accepted, hence this excess mortality does not include any considerable number ot people who were actually intemperate in the popular sense of the word at the time they were accepted, but rather a ranging from the casual drinker to the daily social worker who never indulged to the point of intoxication, as word is popularly used. Other studies, grading the drinking classes more specifically are instructive as showing the regularity with which the -St inereases in any insured group the degree of alcoholic indulgence. Ihe North-western Mutual’s experience snows the following:— 2 S c s ts a 09 2 o °S a B S&S 51&.2 g g.2 5 « . «CL f*e C? CJ f? . -ta SSaS p.c. p.c. Total abstainers .. .. 90 100 Moderate, i.e., occasional users 107 119 Daily users of beer .. 120 133 Daily users of spirits .. 149 166 The experience of the New England Mutual is along the same line, but shows a much heavier death rate among the moderate users. This is stated as follows: p.c. 1 p.c. Total abstainers .. .. 75 100 Those who rarely use .. 93 124 Temperate users .. .. 107 143 Moderate users .. ~ 160 213 In the medico-actuarial investigations of the experience of 41 American companies, it was found that the conservative daily user of alcohol had a mortality 18» per cent, in excess of that of insured risks generally, while the liberal free users, but individuals considered thoroughly acceptable for life insurance, had a mortality of 86. per cent, in excess of the general. This shows the heavy burden of expense borne by abstainers or very moderate users of alcohol in the matter of the extra death rate sustained by their fellow policy holders who use alcohol freely, yet not to a point that connotes intemperance, according to the popular standards.—Canadian Temperance Advocate.