ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 173, 1 November 1910, Page 7

ALCOHOLOGY.

A NATURAL APPETITE. (Published by Arrangement). Defenders of the alcohol habit—the drinking of intoxicants—from 'time to time fall back on the argument that the use of alcoholic beverages is a natural appetite, In the exigencies of election contests in New South Wales lately this argument has been made much use of. It would be interesting, and perhaps helpful to clear thinking, and to a right conclusion, if we looked into the question a little. On the first statement, that the use of alcoholic drink is a natural appetite, there is much to make a beginner in the study of the temperance cause | to pause and think. He will say that, if it be a natural appetite to take alcohol then it will need that some good reasons be shown before he will seek to abolish it; lest he be found fighting against Nature. Now, the enquiry is, first: What is a natural appetite? and then, as a test whether the alcoholic appetite is natural: How does nature (human nature) treat alcohol when introduced into t>he living system? A natural appetite is an appetite that is found in all men uninfluenced by custom or artificial cravings. This is to be found in children—children uncontaminated by infantile, or even prenatal, use of alcohol—and in the simple children of nature, now too rare, amongst the aboriginal races. Try a child with alcoholic drink for the first time and he will not have it; persuade him to try again and he makes a. very wry face, indicating anything but a natural desire for it. This is true where any native races have for the first time been offered strong drink. They show their esimation of it in the names they give it—"fire-water," "waipiro," and so on. It is sadly too true that young children and uncivilised natives alike are, in many cases, soon taught to drink intoxicants and the craving become? to them so much a part of their way of life that they may delude themselves with the idea that it is a natural appetite. No doubt many who have for loni,' regukirly used alcohol do honestly think that it supplies a demand of nature. If we want to know what appetites are natural >\ye ask what are essential to the well-being and propagation of the race; these and these only are natural appetites. In the matter of foods and drinks they are the very simplest. A writer on hygiene says: "Milk is Nature's primitive, simple, complete type of food for young mammals, and on the composition of milk all other complete diets must I be based, however they may be modified in accordance with the requirements of later life. . . . From the cottage dinner to the Lord Mayor's banquet it is a question of ringing the changes on the proportions of sugars, fats and flesh-form-ing materials which, are present in all milks." And it might truly be added that alcohol is not to be found in milk; therefore alcohol has no place in this the first craving of the infant. If we ask our second question of how Nature treats alcohol when it is taken into the system everything points to the endeavors Nature makes to get rid of it: the sickly taste noticed by the novice in the use of it and the ultimate vomiting point in the same direction; nature repels it. In this connection there is a very interesting and important fact to be taken into consideration—that is, that while among many aboriginal races there have been found articles of a more or less intoxicating nature in general use, yet there are exceptions. The Maori of New Zealand—our own country —was one striking exception. It is striking, too, that while the Maori was exceptional in his freedom from any habits of intoxication he was also very exceptional in his physical and mental superiority over all other untutored races. It may be asked: Is there not a connection between his abstinence from intoxicants and his admitted superiority? Undoubtedly there is. At the very least in him nothing of that sort can account for his high place anions aboriginal races; and that to him it was not a natural appetite.