Experts Fail to Find When Man is Drunk

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18143, 30 April 1927, Page 19

Experts Fail to Find When Man is Drunk

Fifteen Londoners Look into the Question and Then Give It Up

struct that for the British public, and it has often been admired; but how the pieces had to fit together was for a long time a mystery. “One Sunday night, as I was sitting at home with a glass of beer—the kids were playing dominoes—l used the beer-glass to work out the curves and diagonals. The theory I worked out I put into practice on Monday morninf’’. arid there it is.” For fifteen years, he worked under Sir Charles Newton, who first fired the mason with enthusiasm for discovering the secrets of the stones kept in the basement of the museum. “For years 1 have been fumbling about down in those vaults," he said, “and I have fished gut some interesting “One stone I found proved to be an arch stone, and when I had -measured it up I discovered its secret. It showed that the side of the mausoleum was narrower at the top than at the base, anrl that there was a bead on it which had been knocked off. “According to Mr Walters, the Knights of St John had defaced the ornament on the approach of the Turks. It shows the arch and much about the style of this wonderful ’ marble tomb which has puzzled so many.” The top of the pyramid of the tomb, according to Mr Tinker's model, is different to previous reconstruct iqns. There is a chariot and statues. Inside the building lions guard the doorways, and Mr Pinker has altered the positions of the lovely friezes according to fresh evidence he has found.

LONDON, February 2G. FIFTEEN London physicians, two Judges and a General have devoted themselves for the last fifteen months to discovering an answer to the question: “When is a man drunk?” and they don't know yet, at least with any degree of certainty. Their report, just issued, promises to be the topers' Magna Charta. The inquiry was undertaken bv the British Medical Association to provide a legal definition of intoxication for use in the courts. The investigating committee throws into the discard all the time-honoured tests of drunkenness. The pronunciation of such a sentence as “The Irish constabulary extinguished the conflagration ’’ prqves nothing, io was decided, nor is a wabbly walk along a chalk line an indication of insobriety. Is it Nervousness Or Too Much Liquor? Other criteria condemned are the presence of a rapid pulse, irregular handwriting and the failure of convergence of the eyes. The difficulty, according to the committee, is that there arc exactly sixteen pathological con*

dilions that, might cause the svmptoms noted by the old-fashioned tests with out the subjects having drunk a drop These are mostly nervous ailments. “ There is no sipgle. test bv itself.” the committee asserts, “ that would justify a medical practitioner in deciding that the amount of alcohol consumed had caused a person to lose control.” Furred Tongru© Sign of Tipsiness. Having furnished the tipsy man with a hitherto unprecedent array of alibis, the Medical Association committee decrees that a person is under the influence of alcohol “ if there is a smell of liquor in the breath, provided there is a combination of all or most of all of the following groups of signs or symptoms;— 1. A furred tongue. 2. Irregularities in behaviour such as loquacity or sullenness. o. A suffusion of the conjunctiva and a reaction of the . pupils. 4. Loss or confusion of memory, particularly as regards recent events and appreciation of time. 5. Hesitancy and thickness of speech and impaired articulation; 6. Tremors and errors of co ordination and orientation.

.Pespite this list of t'ppling tests, the committee ends its report with a note of despair. '. Drunkenness,” if says, “ cannot vet be. measured by any definite standard. The word ‘drunk’ should be taken to mean that the person concerned is so much under the influence of alcohol ns to have lost control of his faculties to such an extent as to render him unable to execute safelv the occupation in which he is 'engaged at a mhtcr.al time.”