A SCIENTIFIC OPINION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2735, 15 August 1906, Page 80

A SCIENTIFIC OPINION.

The Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey for April publishes an article on alcohol which is much "better than the average scientific article on the subject. Tie author is one of the nhysicians of the State Hospital for the Insane, at Morris Plains, N.J. The hereditary tendency to alcohol and the exciting causes of drunkenness are discussed. The writer shows how •insanity, delirium tremens, and various forms of mental and physical degeneration are produced by it. furnishing authorities in every case. His conclusion is : " The' weight of opinion of science, observation, and experience is against the use of alcohol in health. It is true that it does give men ' surcease of. sorrow,' and it might be said that there are times when the use of alcohol is justified for the relief of painful emotional states. If, however, we consider the vice, crime, and disease for which this drug is responsible ; if we remember the particular susceptibility with which -a great portion of the human race is endowed ; and finally recall the seductive way in which alcohol overcomes -even the normal resistance ; it does not seem possible that one can find much justification for its use. One of the most deplorable features connected with the question of alcoholic misuse is ■that it visits upon "the helpless and innocent offspring the sins of their intemperate parents. It seems to me that physicians are not sufficiently aggressive or unanimous in their treatment of the subject of alcoholism. They, better than any other olass of men, are in a position to know the degenerative processes that are induced by it ; they, more than any other class of men, know the danger te the vast majority of men which goes with its use. Their duty, then, is evident, if they would fulfil their obligation as educators and guardians of the public health." This is no attempt of an inexperienced person, but one who has had opportunities for many years of analysing the wrecks of intemperance, both of heredity and self-indticed, in the regular pursuit of his profession.