THE USE OF ALCOHOL.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 957, 9 July 1908, Page 22

THE USE OF ALCOHOL.

Under the auspices of the Vienna Chamber of Medicine, the well-known physician, Professor von Noorden, delivered recently to an audience of practising doctors a lecture upon the dietary treatment of corpulence, diabetes, and gout. The lecture of which a technical report appeared in the Neue Freie Presse, concluded with references to the use of alcohol, especially in relation to gout, but as his remarks in this direction were Inadequately rendered by the reporter, Professor von Noorden writes to the Neue Freie Presse to define exactly his views upon the use and abuse of alcohol. He says:—"ln regard to gout I said that persons of gouty dispositions must avoid alcohol in every form and quantity, and that I must insist the more upon this in-

asmuch as I cannot in other respects share the view that alcohol, even in moderate quantities, must be banished from the sick roof and from the table of healthy people. I did not need to demonstrate to my expert audience that alcohol in large quantities is absolutely harmful; but from a scientific standpoint the view is not tenable that small and moderate quantities of alcoholic beverages must„be condemned as contributing to individual and racial degeneration. The converse question might be raised whether individuals who cannot stand even the smallest quantity of alcohol ought not to be considered already degenerate. What I- said in the clinical lecture-room on this purely scientific question was naturally not directed against the highly important and salutary endeavours to combat the abuse of alcohol. Though I have not always been able to approve of the means adopted by the agitators against alcohol. I have always been one of the most zealous opponents of its abuse.