TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2915, 26 January 1910, Page 13

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

THE VOICE OF SCIENCE. ALCOHOL A DANGEROUS NARCOTIC. One of the great obstacles to temperance reform was the terrible custom which prevailed of taking spirituous liquors for the purpose of obtaining relief from physical pain. In the United States they realised that alcohol was a narcotic, and that for this reason it was seductive. The ultimate ruin of the man who took alcohol as a narcotic was as certain as though he had been taking arsenic. The man who took alcohol as a narcotic was covering up the danger signal, so to speak, and what was the result? Destruction ; and wor«e than that, because the effect of his indulgence was often felt by his children. This was eminently a work for those engaged in the medical profession, because they were in possession of the facts and ought to be the teachers.—Dr T. D. Crothers, Hartford (U.S.A.), at Belfast, August, 1909. ALCOHOL FOUND OUT. Physiologically alcohol has been "found out. : ' Up to 50 years ago empiricism stamped it as food and stimulant. Since then science has been quietly at work stripping off these labels and putting on correct conceptions—namely, poison and narcotic. Before chloroform was discovered the medical profession availed itself of the deadening influence of alcohol by using it in surgical operations. The difference, therefore, between our knowledge now and then is reduced to one of degree. In large doses alcohol has always been recognised as a narcotic poison like chloroform, ether, morphia, etc., while, in small doses it was imagined to be food and stimulant. Definitions are disagreeable and often difficult..." But under the ordinary acceptation of the word, alcohol cannot be classed as a food. That is to say, it makes neither flesh,. bone, nor brain in the human anatomy. What little food there is in beer, wine, or spirits, is not due to alcohol, but to the smalli amount of malt, sugar, etc., and the large amount of Water present. To be practical, we ocasionally hear of an invalid living a week oil champagne. To be accurate, the patient lived on the sugar and water in the champagne, and not on the alcohol it contained. Under ordinary circumstances, however, to talk of intoxicating beverages as food is sheer nonsense.—Dr V. H. Rutherford, M.P. ALCOHOL AND THE ARTERIES. " A man is as old as his arteries " is a witty saying, but none the less it is a true one. If the arteries in childhood are elastic, supple, and soft, those of an old man are liable to be hard, firm, and rigid. They have deteriorated, they have begun to wear out, or to become " furred " like a water pipe. If a young man takes alcohol, and it has this deteriorating effect upon his arteries, an effect which is often very insidious and almost unrecognisable in its eai-lier stages, he will become prematurely old; he will deterioate before his time, and the nation will lose his efficient service before he has given his proper quota to the nation's work. He will become, in fact, as old as his " aged " arteries are, and he has thereby to all intents defraudec society. While, then, alcohol may act directly upon the elastic tissues of the arterial wall, this is not all, for it may also act indirectly. Alcohol retards the excretion of toxins and other poisons from the blood. It is a fact worthy of notice that muscular activity causes the formation of a peculiar waste product termed hypoxathin. This has to be eliminated a.'j quickly as possible, if the indvidual wishes to keep fit. It is absorbed by the lymphatics and passed into the blood, by it carried to the kidneys, and by them excreted. It is a definite poison, and, like alcohol, tends to produce arteriosclerosis. —Dr Wm. M'Adam Eccles, in Eighth Lees and Raper Memorial Lecture. PROGRESS OF TWO CITIES. LICENSE v. NO-LICENSE COMPARED. These figures are compiled from the reports of these two cities for 1901 : Topeka, Lincoln, j Kansas. Nebraska. ! For the year 1901. No saloons. High l'ns. Population 36,000 451,000 Licensed saloons None. 42 Property value ... 33,500,000 30,000,000 Debt to State ... 632,000 2.032.000 Bonded debt ... 66,378 1,169,000 Spent on permanent improvements 211,202 47,408 Saloon revenue ... None. 42,000 Total tax rate ... 56 c. per 66 c. per lOOdol lOOdol DOCTORS AND DRINK. (From the Australian Christian). It is gratifying to find that doctors are refraining from prescribing alcohol as a curative agent. In the following report the trend of medical opinion on the subject, is duly set forth : —" At the annual meeting of the Victorian branch of the British Medical Asj sociation, which was held recently at the Medical Society's Hali, Dr Moore, the president, drew attention to the great change that had occurred in medical opinion in regard to the value of alcohol as a drug, and to the resulting diminution in its use in the treatment of disease. This was especially the case in the treatment of typhoid and pneumonia, and septic diseases. He Points out that in the Melbourne Hospital in 1874, the expenditure on alcohol was 7s lOd each patient for the year. In 1908 it was i6d for the same time. He also stated j that there was a great diminution in the I personal use of alcohol by medical men—- ', not only were many of them total ab- ; stainers, but maary more, though not strict abstainers, scarcely ever touched ' liquor in any form."-