TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3911, 26 February 1929, Page 5

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Published by arrangement with the United Temperance Reform Council. NEW FACTORS IN A STUDY OF ALCOHOL. By Dr Courtenay Weeks. 111. As life proceeds, the living tissues tend to “ dry up,” shrinkage of the colloid occurs, and when the colloid shrinks, the vital functions begin to slow down, until at last death supervenes, which may, from one point of view, he looked upon as the drying of the colloids. Here, then, surely lies a fundamental and thoroughly scientific reason for the comparative shortening of life in users of alcohol, and especially in those who have used alcohol continuously over long periods without intermission. The immediate practical bearing of this is that alcohol tends to abstract water from all living tissues, since they must have water—thirst is Natures’ cry from the colloids in want of water. One of the most clearly-established facts of' recent scientific work is that practically' every function of the human body' is accompanied by an electrical change, which can be accurately measured. Every' beat of the heart, every twitch of a muscle, every state of secretion in a gland every nerve impulse which passes, every' emotional condition experienced, is accompanied by an electrical change. This is a very difficult matter to explain briefly. We may put it in this way: Those little particles which you saw just now, in imagination, in that mass of protoplasm, bear an electrical charge, and allow electrical currents to pass through the protoplasm. Under normal conditions, those minute particles or electrolytes, as they are called, remain within the cell, but if the membrane is injured in any' way, then they pass out and profoundly alter the conditions. It has been definitely claimed that the action of a narcotic like alcohol is due, first, to the change in the swelling of the cell, so that the cell electrolytes cannot produce the necessary electrical changes. A very carefully-controlled series of experiments has been conducted by Osterhour, which show’ conclusively that alcohol damages the cell membrane and allows th' electrolytes to pass out of living tissues into the surrounding solution. Thus, in this latest and most delicate aspect of the question, there is the beginning of direct scientific evidence which will prob -bly prove to be one of the most important features of the action of alcohol on the human organism. To quote Moore: “Variations in minute detail of colloidal arrangements lie at the root of the varying actions of cells and of all the physiological and pathological changes” (p. 158). This is confirmed by Dr T. Gowland Hopkins, M.A., F.R.S., who, in his British Medical Association address, 1918, speaking about the colloid state of the living cell, said: “Changes in any one of the constituent phases of a cell must affect the equilibrium of the cell as a whole.” THE ABUSES OF ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. Alcohol is a habit-forming drug. Its prescription to a person as a tonic when he is iveakened by disease is developing the alcohol habit in him. If it were possible to mass the army of drunkards in this country that has been recruited through these liquor prescriptions and march it to the next convention of the American Medical Association this question would be settled for ever. If it were possible to pile up the dead from automobile accidents that have resulted from the lessened efficiency of drivers who had been drinking prescription whisky, or who have formed the liquor habit through having it prescribed by doctors, the nation would be appalled. That past generation that so freelyprescribed whisky had another practice—that of bleeding the patient—which has now been abandoned. The reverse operation—blood transfusion—has taken its place. That generation put whisky into the patient and took blood out of him. Modern practice, reversing the process, takes the whisky out of him and puts blood into him. —The World’s Work.

ALCOHOL HELPS DISEASE TO KILL. Striking figures with regard to the use of alcohol in the treatment of diphtheria were given by Dr J. D. Rolleston, the medical superintendent of the Western Fever Hospital, Seagrave road, in a talk to the members of the Fulham Baptist Young People’s Fellowship. Dr Rolleston had prepared a paper regarding alcohol from every angle, tracing its course back to the ancient days of the Greeks and Romans. For the last 25 years, he said, he had entirely refrained from ordering any' alcohol for his patients, and some of his colleagues had followed his example. In 1925, the year before he came to the Western Hospital, the total consumption of brandy for diphtheria cases at the institution was 2589 ounces, with a mortality rate of 8.54. The following year, when the consumption w<-.i 9911 ounces, the mortality' dropped to 4.42. In the first quarter of that year 9141 ounces were ordered, 61i in the second. 13 in the third, and 21 in the fourth. The total consumption for last year was 25J ounces, and the mortality was 3.01 —the lowest of all the M.A.B. fever hospitals. Over 3200 patients are admitted to the hospital during the year. Alcoholism was a subject about which no one should be indifferent, and least of all a medical man. After defining alcoholism as the state produced by consumption of alcoholic liquor in any form so as to lower the moral mental, and physical efficiency' of the individual, Dr Rolleston said that though the grosser manifestations of alcoholism were much less common than they' were 30 years <go, the evil was still rampant, as was shown by the annual drink bill amounting to over £300.000,000. He contended that alcohol was £To be '*