TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2771, 24 April 1907, Page 13

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

ARTICLE BY MR F. MILNER, M. \. (RECTOR OF WAITAKI COLLEGE), ON THE PPIYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL.

(Continued.)

At a banquet in America gi\ en in his honour, Dr Lorenz, the eminent Austrian surgeon, whose operations have won for him world-wide fame, diank water only, saying : — " My eucce-o depends upon my brain being clear, my muscle-s (inn, and my ner\es stead y. No one can take alcoholic liquors without blunting these physical powers which I must keep always on edge. As a surgeon I must not dunk." Mr T. P. O'Connor, M.P.. editor of M.A.P , recently wiote. — "I believe that in half a century from now no man will ri6e to the height of any profession in the field, in the forum, or at the desk who is not a. teetotaller."

Dr H. A. J. Murray, the editor-in-chie f of the monumental Oxfoid Dictionaiy, and one of Oxford's greatest scholars. «aid recently at a public meeting at Oxford that he ascribed his womleiful mental clarity and untiring power of intellectual application to hie> total abstinence from alcohol.

Sir Thomas Barlow. King's Physician, said last year : - -'" E%en moderate drinking fa%ours the development of artoi 10scelerosis (degeneration of artery walls) He added that in no ca=e should more than lioz le taken in 24 hours, and even then only with meal*.

Sir Frederick Trr\es King's Surgeon, said lafct \ear: —"Alcohol is a poison, and the limitations in its u~-o should be as strict as in the ca^e of an> other kind of pci^on. I was v. it h tho relief column that moved on to Ladysmith. I* w-a/9 an evtremely tni'ig tiiw apart from the heat of the weather. In that column of some 30,000 men, the fir-,t who chopped out were not the tall men, or the short men, or the big men. or the little men, but the drinkeis, and they dropped out as clearly a« if they had been labelled with a bi£r letter on their backs. Theie is a great de9tre on the part of all young men to be 'fit.' A young man cannot be fit if he takes alcohol. By no possibility can he want it. No one who is young and healthy can want alcohol any more than he can want strychnine." Sir Victor Horsley, the eminpnt Professor of Surgery at London University, said: — "The \alue of alcohol as a drug has been enormously over-estimated. Either as a drug or ford, we recognise that alcohol is of no vnite-or very little — to the community. No tervice as a food, and very doubtful seivice as a drug.' 1 . . . " "lhe*namo of Piofessor Kraepehn ought to be a h<jjj-ehnld word among u<;. Thiough hi* experiments it has been firmly established that e\en dietetic quantities of alcohol produce harmful changes in the norvou* system." Speaking at Manchester only a few months ago before a conference of educationists he Mated that anyone in a position of influence should cut off hih right hand rather than give colour to the idea that alcohol in moderation was not hurtful.

Sir Herman Weber, M.D , said recently: "In the case of people enjoying good health alcoholic stimulants are entirely

unnecessary, and, moreover, they would be better without them."

Professor Bunge, the greatest physiological chemist on the Continent of Europe, has repeatedly demonstrated the injurious qualities of alcohol when taken in so-called moderate quantities.

Professor G. Sims Woodhead, M.A., M.D.. Fellow of Trinity Hall, Professor of Pathology at the University of Cambridge, and the most eminent pathologist in the British Empire, said recently: — t '" Alcohol is a reducer of protoplasmis-^ virilitj. I believe that every man an^ every woman, no matter whether he or --«B^ be healthy 01 unhealthy, is better Tfoir abstinence frcm alcohol as a beverage. A& man who has to do brain work of any kind cannot do his beafc work if he takes alcohol." <r "r:. Three presidents of the British Medical Association in succession have condemjjj&d any general use of alcohol as a drug. ?s£«•, British Medical Journal in its ediional, columns has openly commended the/tft£ero aneos of Professors Sir Victor Horsley Sind „ Sims Woodhead. Lef it be again cmjrjfeasi°ed that no intelligent man can eHsre'prafcd' ." ihe pronouncements of a quartet of names of such unchallenged supremacy in the surgical, medical, and pathological wounds as ' tho=e of Sir Frederick Tre\es. Sir Thomas Barlow, Sir Victor Horsloy, and Professor Sims Woodhead. Surely enough has been said to show what the brilliant Middlesex surgeon. Mr Pearco Gould, recently termed " the unassailable and impregnable scientific ]X)sition of our «tand against alcohol."— Nelsonian, September, 1906.