THE EVILS OF DRINK.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1810, 2 December 1919, Page 10

THE EVILS OF DRINK.

ADDRESS BY DR A. B. O'BRIEN. YOUNG WOMEN'S EITICIENCY LEAGUE. [Published by arrangement.] The second public meeting of the Young Women's Efficiency League was held in the King's Theatre last evening, Miss Freda Cunnington presiding, and over 700 people, mostly young women, were present. An address cm "The Besults of Drink as Seeu by a Medical Man" was given by Dr A. B. O'Brien, Christehurch. Dr O'Brien said:—ln presenting myself in t'ie cause of total abstinence, I need make no apology for appearing before you as a medical man. The health of the community is entrusted to the doctors, whose opinion must be taken in all matters relating to it. In the last Prohibition campaign a good deal of feeling was aroused between the "wet" and the "dry" camps, but the question has become inucli more to-day than a mere party cry. At a large meeting of Christehurch doctors, held during that campaign, a vote was taken, first, as to whether alcohol was necessary as a beverage; and second, whether its use was necessary in combating disease. On the first question there were 20 who voted "No," leaving only one vote for the necessity of alcohol as a beverage; on the second question 19 votes 'were registered in the negative, and only two in the affirmative. The -results were published at the time in the local newspapers. I contend that it is of far more value to you to pay attention to-what your doctors tell you, than to listen to people from other places, for the doctors live amongst you and know your conditions. Only one doctor in 21 thought it necessary as a beverage, and only two in 21 thought it was useful in disease. Alcohol is a Poison. In the early days of the Prohibition CMsade in the United-Kingdom and America, the temperance crusaders felt that they were asking people to make a sacrifice—to give up something that was good for them and which they enjoyed — for the benefit of their weaker brothers. But now the forward march of science has proved that alcohol is not good for us at all. Alcohol is a waste product formed when the little germ or fungus of the yeast grows in sugar. The excretion from the yeast is alcohol, which -in a poison. Alcohol has been from time immemorial made from grape juice, but it can be made from a variety of other things, including barley, and even wood-shavings. Brandy and whisky are, roughly speaking, 50 per cent, alcohol and 50 per cent, water, and when you dilute that again you get alcohol at the proportion or one in four. Taken into the stomach, this produces a feeling of warmth and well-being. It causes a greater flow of blood and digestive gastric juices in the stomach, which aid digestion, and this distracts attention from its harmfulness by a fictitious air of doing good. Good reasoning people have, like St. Paul, "taken a little wine for their stomach's sake." But that is where the deceptive quality of alcohol comes in. The first effect of dilatation and extra secretion of gastric juices is lost when alcohol is habitually taken into the system: the stomach becomes red and engorged with blood, and catarrh of the stomach ensues. The stomach becomes full of mucus catarrh, the glands do not secrete, and dyspepsia sets in. Now, take the liver, which we may call the factory or warehouse of the body. The liver takes up excess nutriment and packs it away, letting it back again ii : o the blood stream as required. It must take up the alcohol in the system in the same way, and the alcohol does to it what it does to the stomach. The organ becomes enlarged, and increases in weight from about 3ilb (normal size) to eight or as high as 101b. The fibrous tissue of the supporting structure becomes enlarged and congested, and then shrinks down to about 21b in weight, becomng covered with hard little lumps, like the nails in a man's boots, and is then known as a "hob-nailed liver." It is not able to do its work properly, dropsy and jaundice supervene, and ence this stage is reached, death happens in from three months to two years. Through alcohol, the kidneys become fibrous and shrink, leading to high blood pressure, which, in turn, leads to paralysis of the brain, and death. Its Effect on the Brain. The skin, the lungs, every part of the system is affected by alcohol, but most of all the brain becomes affected. The chief thing about the brain is"that it gives us reason, judgment, memory—the things we associate with the soul. Alcohol has the peculiarity, in common with many other narcotics, of poisoning, first of all the higher faculties. First it stimulates and then it depresses. Thomas a Kempis, in his "Imitation of Christ," says: "A merry evening makes a sad morning." While a man's judgment is depressed, the lower centres of his being are stimulated, and a respectable citizen, the father of a family, can be noted under the influence of alcohol doing all sorts or silly and ill-advised

actions. Later on the emotions become depressed, and, ultimately, the power ol walking leaves him. Finally, we have him left with only heart and breathing going. If he 'takes sufficient alcohol eventually they stop. The pnly thine that often saves a man with a stomach full of alcohol is that he becomes sick gets rid of a lot of it, and is sooi better. Otherwise he gets to a hospital and the doctors have to put in a stomach pump to relieve him of sonie of the alcohol. But the point is this—alcohol destroys the balance and the judgment, ami, it taken for years, causes a hardening of the brain, and mental decay sets in. Not a Food. Alcohol is not a food, but, In a small sense, is capable of being used as one, We can assimilate l*oz of alcohol in 24 hours. Taken regularly in small doses, it spares your foodstuffs, and, instead of the fats in your bodies being burnt up, the body burns up the alcohol, and thus beer and stout drinkers tend to become corpulent. This is one way in which alcohol gets a "good name"— people say it was good for putting on flesh. Doctors once' used to recommend alcohol in maternity cases, and, after a baby was born, a woman had to drink stout, whether she liked it or not—and many of them detested it. On the other hand, I have known wo>non to go on taking stout for 20 or 30 years after the babv was born'. There are some good points about alcohol, but it should be in a dispensary instead of in a public house. If Prohibition is carried —as I sincerely hope it will be —I understand tliat it will still be obtainable as a medicine. Alcohol does very little good in comparison with the harm, and there are far better things than it in the pharmacopoeia. The body, in its blind, instinctive way, recognises that it is a poison, and tries to get. rid of it as rapidly as possible —if yon come near enough to a man who has taken alcohol you will note that his breath is heavy with it; the lungs showing that they are doing their best to get rid of it. If it were an excess of food, the liver would store it up; being an excess of poison, the body tries to expel it. No Heating Properties. Now, if alcohol is not necessary in disease, how less necessary is it in health. Alcohol has been proved to be no good at all for anything that requires sustained effort. At Oxford, men who are training for their big boat races, cut alcohol out absolutely, so do footballers, boxers while they are? training, ami all others who want to make a sustained effort. When Sir Ernest Shackleton went to the Antarctic he refused to allow any spirits to be taken on board his ship. He knew that nothing makes a man so cold as alcohol. It is a very common thing to give people who are cold and wet a glass of alcohol to warm them up. This, by increasing the warmth of the surfaces, draws the heat away from the vital organs, where Nature had concentrated it (leaving the surfaces and extremities, which do not matter so much, to become cold), and converts the body into a radiator. The heat of the body is rapidly thrown off, and the lowest temperatures recorded are those of alcoholic patients picked up lying in the grass, on a river bank, or,in some such place. To give alcohol to anyone, and send him out in the cold is the' very worst thing you could do. Which of you would trust yourself to go up in an airship with a man who had had two or three glasses of liquor? No one would trust a taxidriver who had been drinking—no one would trust a surgeon to perform an operation if ho was known to have been drinking. There is only one argument for alcohol —that the people who take it like it. It is looked upon as a mark of shame for anyone to take morphia, and yet a man is regarded as a good fellow who drinks whisky. Now and then a Chinaman is brought before the Court and punished for opium-smoking. It is only our hvpocritical morality which makes us think that it is fearfully degrading for a Chinaman to take opium or morphia, and to let the white man take his dope just as he likes. Suppose by some act we could strike consumption out of our land —wdiat would we think of a Government which refused to do the thing that would strike it out if it were possible! But we can strike out something that does 10 times the harm of consumption, for alcohol is the father of all the diseases. It aggravates them all. The Influenza Bogy. What an advertisement alcohol got over the influenza epidemic! But I may tell you that many people got through the influenza quite successfully without alcohol. As a general rule it is good to use in pneumonia, but it is most good to those whose systems have got accustomed to it; it was the men who were used to alcohol who had to be primed with it at the time of the epidemic. However, in case of another epidemic or anything similar, it will, as then, be available, so the bogy of "whatevei should we do in case another epidemic came, and there was no alcohol," need not be entertained. If you present milk or sugar to s growing child, it accepts it with avidity but if you offer it alcohol, it refuses it showing that the one is natural to il

and the other unnatural. Yet, I know of children taught to drink from babyhood—in London, particularly, when I have seeu a mother give a baby of seven or eight months the dregs of her beer glass. But children do not naturally like the taste of alcohol, and ,do not take it willingly. Boys are persuaded to "come and have a glass and be a man," a-ud the taste is fostered until it be* comes a craving. How many girls are foolish enough to "be a sport," and kil: their judgment with alcohol. The tast< once acquired, you never know when i; is going to get you. For a while you can let it alone, but the time come;: when you can't. Many of you girls will marry, and, perhaps, you are more attracted by the "good fellow" am! "good sport," the man who takes hi; glass, than by the "wowser." The man who takes a drink while you an engaged is bound to do it when you are married, and all the time he drinks lit will be becoming more and more a beast, his selfishness and his brutality always on the increase. There is no man so selfish as a drunkard. Danger of the "Occasional." The case of the occasional drinker is the one we have most trouble over, If all people were drunka-rds, people would rise and sweep the traffic from the land, but it is the occasional drinker, the moderate man, who complicates the situation. He only has a drink now and again, but likes to have it when he wants it—likes to know it is there. Ask that man or woman to make the sacrifice for the sake of those who cannot control themselves—for the benefit of weaker people. Besides, even the moderate drinker never knows the moment when what he has regarded as a pleasant relaxation may turn into a habit that binds him with unbreakable chains. There is also the danger of example to others—men observe the ways of the moderate drinker and seek to follow him, but though he may be strong enough to drink when he wishes, and leave it alone when he wishes, the man whom he has influenced may not be.

The speaker here "told a story of a patient who came to him about a year before the signing of the Armistice, and who was suffering from some'hing in the nature of a nervous breakdown, owing to worry over her seven sons, all of whom were on active service. Just lately he saw her again, and said to her, "Well, I daresay you feel much better now, having your boys home again." She began to cry, and, fearing that he had touched on a sorrow all too usual in war-time, he added, "Why do you cry! Were any of them killed I ?'' "Yes,' she said,'"one of them was killed; but I'm not crying about him. The other six are home, and since they've been at the war they've all taken to drink." They had seen a Frenchman drinking, probably a very light wine which he further diluted with water, until the alcohol in it was of a very small quantity indeed—and they had probably seen their officers having an occasional glass—and, so far as they could see, it did them no harm. Now they were all home, six men between 20 and 30 years of age, all drinking; and their mother wa3 glad because at least one could never live to be a drunkard —the one that was dead. "You," went on the speaker; "you are the mothers of the future race. It is incumbent on you to train your children to avoid alcohol, and, instead of letting them think it is manly to drink, make them soo that it is much more manly to refuse." Wrapped Up With Disease. Alcohol is inherently wrapped up with venereal disease. I am not going to talk to you about this subject with the gloves on. Venereal disease is becoming more and more prevalent—in England about one in three persons suffers from it. We are not quite so bad as that in New Zealand, but unless we make a fight we will be in time. Alcohol and syphilis go hand iu hand —• alcohol and all venereal diseases. A man or woman who is drunk doesn't

know what is happening, and they break the laws of God and man because they don't know-what they are doing. Our homes and refuges are filled with women who have fallen —our orphanages with children abandoned by their mothers. In 99 cases but of 300, drink was responsible. Not because a woman liked it, but because some worthless fellow Jbad forced it on her. The man vho wants you to drink is looking for .our downfall. All too common s the practice many men have if inducing foolish girls to take ilcoiiol, and the girl often as a result finds herself landed, if not with syphilis, at least with the loss of her virtue. All down the ages men 'iave had the upper hand; a man can rise and the world accepts him, but a woman can't. Of No Use or Necessity. "You can help this great cause by keeping yourselves unsullied. You can help by educating people. My business to-night is to try and educate you. Alcohol is a deceiver. The only question we are asked to decide is, whether we shall use it as, a beverage, and we have proved it, under that head, to be unnecessary and harmful. Do your best to spread the truth that alcohol is not of any use or necessity. You have this big issue in your hands. I hope on lolling day you will rise to the occasion, ind if the vote does not go in our favour this time, go on working, until j people do not need to be cudgelled : to go to the poll, but will go in a body, , joyfully, to wipe out this dreadful ■ curse."