TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Waikato Times, Volume LVII, Issue 8079, 15 December 1906, Page 1

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

—♦.—■ [Thus column is paid kor as an advertisement.] Race Deterioration. Is Alcohol Responsible. The problem of ihe effects of alcohol ou the human heing is oue of the most of ihe questions it the day. Opiiion is as divided as ever as to the true place of alcohol iu medical practice aud in every-dn\ life, au opinion ou one side being immediately met by arguments ou the other. The subject of alcoholism in relation to menial disease is the aspect of the matter dealt with by E. Powell in the Economic Review. The effects of the excessive consumption of alcohol on the individual are well-known : Theie is not an organ or tissue in the human system on which alcohol has not a deterioraiing influence; it affects the most highly organised brain cells, as well as the coarsest fibres of the body generally. The continuous use .of alcohol, even in quantities far short of excess, acts injuriously on the digestive organ*, producing a chronic form of dyspepsia, with all its attendant troubles. It has a degenerating effect on the blood vessels, giving rise to a diseased condition called atheroma, which renders them unduly liable to rupture; it is a very commou cause of disease of the heart, kidneys and liver, and, what is of supreme importance and interest, it renders the systam more vulnerable to attacks of ordinary diseases arising from other causes, such as consumption and other lung diseases, and inflammation of various organs and tissues. An eminent authority has declared that we can artificially produce insanity by alcohol in the sanest in. dividual; that we can induce, by rapid or slow degrees, a gradually progressive insanity, ending at last, if pushed far enough, in coma and death. The question—is insanity due to drink, on the increase or no'. ?—is a most important one, and figurei gathered from the asylums of the country seem to answer in the affirmative, as the following table shows : England and Wales. Yearß Males. Femalei 1889 to 1893 ... 21.1 8.3 1894 to 1898 ... 22 1 9.1 1899 to 1903 ... 23.7 9.5 Average ... 22 3 8.9 The cases recorded as directly due to alcohol are those only whose insanity has arisen from its effects in 'he individual himself, operating primarily on the nervous system, and causing mental breakdown ; but let us see how it acts in other ways in ' producing insanity. It is undoubtedly responsible for the production of a large uumber of cases of a well-recognised disease of the brain, called "general paralysis," a disease which attacks people in their prime, and which ia incurable and hopeless. And, in addition, drinking induces a generally careless habit of life which sets no store on cleanliness, and which renders the subject peculiarly liable to sundry dreadful diseases which are fruitful causes of insanity.

The children of parents who indulge to excess in alcoholic drink are not only notoriously liable to become themselves drunkards, but they also come far below the normai standard in mental and physical equipment. It is in this way, therefore, by handing down from generation to generation a condition of the constitution which is defective, degenerate, and predisposed to vice, that alcoholinni acts as a factor in race deterioration.

During the past four years I have examined about 300 feeble-minded children before their admission into the defective schools, and I have as far as possible ascertained whether their parents were temperate or not. I found distinct evidence of intemperance in one or both parents of about 25 per cent, of the cases. Next to hereditary transmission, one of the chief causes of feeblemindedness is the deficient nutrition and general neglect of the child during infancy. When one considers the usual surroundings of an infant in a poverty-stricken home with drunken parents, the wonder is that any of the children grow up to be healthy and normal.

A proper amount of sleep, which should be undisturbed, is almost an essential to the Dormal development of the nervous system of a child. It is not difficult to imagine that this is rarely obtained in a home where one cr perhaps both the parents are inebriate.

The Daily Mail on Alcohol. During the past twenty years dietetics have been very carefully studied, and a long series of experiments conducted to ascertain the real value of alcohol. The result of these experiperimentt is certainly such as to justify the belief that alcohol has no value at all, and that, far from being a food, it is actually a form of slow poison. Dr. Sims Woodhead, the Professor of Pathology at Cambridge University, is on this point at ot e with Sir Victor Horsley, if indeed he does not go further than Professor Horsley. He declares that alcohol, when it enters the human frame, conducts a maUficent war against the phagocytes', or [t'jiice of tin 1 blood. It is a striking fuct that Bcience and morality arc now at one ruling alcohol to be a danger to the human being. Human nature being what it is, the rational argumsnts which science brings against alcohol are at least as likely to make for Temperance as the transcendental arguments which religion employs. It hab for years been observed by I mountain climbers that work in the . high altitudes, which most severely tries human vitality, is better accomplished by abstainers, aud it is, of course, a commonplace that any inI suraoce company will give ipeoial

terms to teetotallers, because their expectation of life is longer than even that of the most moderate drinkers. If alcohol be injurious and poisonous, the abstainer's long life is explained ; while if alcohol be a harmless drug or a valuable food, the insurance results ate quite inexplicable. Moderation v. Total Abstinence. Another Lie Nailed. The same old statistical lie that has been exposed for eighteen years is still being made to do duty for the Liquor party. The lie concerns the ' notorious report of a Committee of the British Medical Association on the ' enquiry into the connection of disease with habits of intemperance." The report summarised the reports of 178 medical men on 4,234 deaths, iucluding those of only 122 total ab. staiuers. The liquor advocates cannot even quote the figures correctly. They allege that the Committee has just furnished its report. As a matter of fact, the report was prepared in 1867, and temperance reformers have had to chase the lies arising out of it for eighteen years. .Now these are the conclusions quoted from the report:— "1. That habitual iudulgeuce in alcoholic liquors beyond the most moderate amounts has a distinct tendency to shorten life ; the average shortening being rwuglily proportional to the degree of indulgence. "2. That of men who have passed the age of 25, the strictly temperate, on thd average, live at least 10 years longer thau those who become decidedly intemperate. (We have not in these returns the means of coming to any conclusion as to the relative duration of life, of total abstainers and habitually temperate drinkers of alcoholic liquors.") The Medical Journal dealt with tLia boss liquor lie as long ago as September Ist, 1888, as follows ;

"Rarely has any document been the subject of such extraordinary misrepresentations as have fallen to the lot of Dr. Isambard Owen's report of the Collective Investigation on the Connection between Jrink and Disease. All over the Kingdom, Dr. Owen has been represented as lading down, from the returns sent into this Committee, that total abstainers do not live so long as moderate drinkers. We need hardly say to our readers that Dr. Owen has ueversaid anything of the kind.

Now, what is the truth? Mr Roderick M. Moore read a paper before the British Institute of Actuaries, on November iJOth, 1900, covering sixty-one years' experience of life assurance and 124,673 individual cases. including abstainers and non-abstain-ers, but JS'O excessive drinkers. He showed that between the ages of twenty and thirty the demhs of moderate drinkers exceeded those of abstainers by 11 per cent. The drinkwas beginning to operate at that ag', so that during the next nge period the deaths of "moderates" exceeded 0 : abstainers by 68 per cent. For the next age period—that between forty and fifty years-the excels reached the appalling figure of 74 percent. During the age period from lifty to sixty, again the deaths of moderate drinkers exceeded th'jse of total abstainers by 42 per cent , and even ihe hardened topers who survived to the next age period died oil' l'J per cent, more frequently than did abstainers of the same age,

These statistics Lave to be accepted as reliable. An experienced actuary compiled then), to be stu lied and tes'ed by o ber actuaries The truth in, therefore, that at every age you diminish your chance of living by even the moderate drinking of alcoholic liquors. And Mr Moore's report wipes ou h the last argument in favour of the licensed tratlic in New Zealand,