ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 26, 25 July 1911, Page 3

ALCOHOLOGY.

WATER IS BEST! (Published by Arrangement). "Water is best," is what the ancients discovered and the Greek philosopher voiced it centuries ago. Now in this twentieth century modern science is finding it out, but only after a long period of slavery to alcohol. It is to be noted that the superlative degree is used, "best." Not that water is merely better than wine, or beer, or spirits, or even what the drink-defenders so much condemn, tea; but water is the best drink possible. It is too cheap; men and women won't believe it because of its simplicity and cheapness. Yet

WATER IS BEST FOR DIGESTION. Water will dissolve most foods, but alcohol will not; it only hardens. So alcoholic drinks, in proportion to their strength, are a hindrance to digestion while water helps it. The whole body is largely made up of water —about fourfifths of its weight; and when alcohol gets inside the whole system is set to work to get rid of it. WATER IS BEST FOR TIIE'IJI-ART and for the circulation of tfle * Wood. It alone enters into the blood and helps the circulation. Alcohol gives this much-worked organ more work still, and inflames and hardens the blood vessels. Look at a drinker's face and see how inflamed it is. The blood vessels are overcharged and in a sense paralysed so that they do not force the blood along as they should do. The red face is not an indication of rude health but of disease.

WATER IS BEST FOR THE BRAIN. Ilomer said that wine "dulls the noble mind." But water doeß not. No part of the body is bore sensitive to the action of alcohol than the brain—the centre of the nervous system. That is how it is that the drinker so soon loses control of parts of his physical system, ne talks loosely, he walks unsteadily. As to his talk, he thinks he is very smart; but as Dr. Johnson said; "This is one of the disadvantages of wine; it makes a man mistake words for thoughts."

WATER IS BEST IN HEALTH. Everyone oufht to know this. If a drinker is cornered in argument on the subject of his drinking he generally falls back on "it does me gooi^"—a fiction visible only to himself , T|ie truth is that "Youth perpetual dwells in fourr tains, not in flasks and casks and cellars." Let anyone give water a trial and he will find that water is best. As Shakespeare says: "Good honest water that never left man in the mire." t WATER IS BEST IN DISEASE. '

There was a time when it was thought that ibrandy was the water of life, as' Frenchmen call it. Not so now. The use of this drug was freely used, in cases of typhoid or ipneumonia particularly, by doctors; now it is rarely ordered, sometimes allowed in deference to the habits of the patient by easygoing practitioners. Dr. Sims Woodhead, Professor of Pathology in Cambridge University, gives a number of cases in which alcohol should not be [used, so large a number that it is very hard to say where he thinks it might be used. WATER IS BEST FOR THE CHILDREN j The law of New Zealand says this when jit declares that no minor shall drink lat a public bar. WATER IS BEST FOR THE POCKET, too, as many a weary housewife knows, and many a drinker, too, when the drinking bout is over. In short, one might very well conclude that "water for ever" is a safe, sound motto.