WHEN IS A MAN DRUNK?

Otago Witness, Issue 3806, 22 February 1927, Page 27

WHEN IS A MAN DRUNK?

QUESTION SETTLED AT LAST. LONDON, February 17. The question when is a man drunk has been settled definitely in England by the past year’s discussion and investigation by a committee of the British Medical Association, comprising twenty-eight doctors police surgeans, scientists, and magistrates. The committee says: ‘A man is drunk when he is so much influenced by alcohol as to. have lost control of his faculties to such an extent as to render him unable to execute safely the occupation on which he is engaged for any material time.” The report enumerates twenty diseases which may be responsible for symptoms

resembling intoxication. Little importance is attached to a single test, such as walking along a straight line. A correct conclusion may be arrived at from the smell of alcohol in combination with the following symptoms:—Dry, furred, tongue or excessive salivation; irregularity of behaviour, such as insolence, loquacity, disordered dress; watering and redness of the whites of the eyes; loss of memory ; thickness of speech, impaired articulation, or tremors, and errors of co-ordination and orientation. That is when a man is drunk. February 19. “If I were called to a police station to see whether a man was drunk I would ask him to read the B.M.A. Committee’s definition,” said a prominent divisional surgeon. He added: “If he could read it, he certainly would not be drunk. If I were asked for a comprehensive definition of drunkenness I would say it is when a person makes himself a general nuisance. The motorist is chiefly concerned in this business, because the penalties in England are invariably three months’ gaol, an! the license suspended for a year. it seems practically impossible to generalise. 'A.' man once drove me over a most difficult' road in war time with perfect skill. The following morning he knew so little of what had happened that he went to the garage in his pyjamas to see if the car were there.”