CORRESPONDENCE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 250, 28 February 1911, Page 7

CORRESPONDENCE

MR. TAYLOR'S "FACTS." To the Editor. Sir,—Aware of your feeling in reference to correspondence on the no-license question, I have refrained from writing to you in reference to the many misstatements of Messrs Taylor and Poole. But as you have a second report, or rehash, of parts of their speeches, in which my name is given prominence, I think it is only fair that you should allow me a few remarks. As to what Mr. Taylor says in re the property of those of the I liquor trade, his special pleading as to the license only being an annual one and therefore of no actual value but for a year, is so puerile and tins been so often refuted as not to need remark. But lie says nothing as to robbing the many widows and orphans and others who have shares in breweries, etc., and whom he will hardly have the hardihood to class with the licensed victuallers, tlie Sedgwick boys and the bootmakers whom he villih'es. No respectable jurist outside their own ranks takes the light .view of confiscating property that he gave us. The comer stone of the platform is the assertion that alcohol is a poison, and Mr. Taylor ''went the whole hog" on this by saying that !lv> per cent, of those able to give an expert opinion agreed that it is. , A more bare-faced statement than this one can hardly imagine, the converse of this being nearer the truth. It is doubtful if he can name one first-class chemist or physiologist who agrees with him. Not to tax your space too much, I will content myself with an extract from a very recent ar- ■ tide in the Xintecnth Century by Professor Dixon, lecturer on Pharmacology at Cambridge—an authority that most unprejudiced people will "consider of greater weight than Mr. Taylor. After noting the recent discovery" at the Pasteur Institute,'that alcohol is generated ..in the human body and in others of the superior animal, he says: "If, as this evidence shows, alcohol is a primary product of metabolism in the animal body and not an unimportant accidental byproduct, then it would be expected that .alcohol should behave in every way like such ordinary -carbo-hydrates" as starch and sugar. Fortunately science is now in a position to give a definite answer to this question, for it has been shows that within certain limits, alcohol can be substituted for starch'and sugar, without in any way altering the ordinary metabolism of the body. This has been proved for alcohol, but for no other chemical substance." He adds: "from these facts it will be evident that most of our views on the use of alcohol as an aliment have changed in the last 2,"> years. It was once asserted that alcohol was not burnt, but secreted unchanged. Later, that it was burnt, but burnt immediately like a wet squib, and much too rapidly to lie of any service to the body; then, that it did'not supply the body with heat, since the liberated energy was lost by heat radiature. It was also stated that alcohol had not the power to cconpmJM the body's fats and proteins. 'Air] (h|e assertions, which were are now completely disproved." Unless Mr. Taylor and his oar.ty can prove Prof. Dixon to be as diahoiuM suggests, the sixteen .firsWliJi medieal men to whom T drew his 'attention, to be as also Sir Michael host'er, Professor Atwater, ami many others-too numerous to mention • here, it is highly probable that ordinary 1 plain people will be inclined to think] j with me that his ipse dixit is as the I du*t in the'balance compared with their I decla rations. For my j own part, ever since this poison theory was first invented some fifty years since, I have al''wa'vs''disbelieved it. as ,: firm believer in I Hod's Word and the uii-fhvistimi eliarI acter of this new doctrine, so opposed in I it is to inv belief to the completeness of | the fiospcl'Fnr ~11 m ,r moral, wants, and tending as it doss to lo\vcr the good

name of Him who is the chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely. He would never have given us wine, drank it. and enjoyed its use were it poisonous.— I am, *fcc., ■ B. ENROTH.