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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

Health Aspect of Alcohol. — Summary of a Paper Read at the Medical Congress Held in Dunedin, 4th February, 1896

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Health Aspect of Alcohol.

Summary of a Paper Read at the Medical Congress Held in Dunedin, 4th February, 1896.

It was no part of the duty of medical men, or medical societies as such, to [unclear: seal] with the various ways suggested by social reformers and politicians of [unclear: seling] with the liquor traffic. It was no more the duty of medical men to [unclear: dvocate] or oppose such systems as Prohibition, High License, Gothenburg [unclear: pstem], and so on, than it is to advocate or oppose different systems of [unclear: rainage] for the control of typhoid.

A medical man as a member of society might take upon himself whatever till duties and responsibilities he felt competent or desirous of performing; but medical men as such and medical bodies owed no duty to society beyond affording instruction and guidance in the nature, causes, and prevention of preventible [unclear: leases], without reference to any means the State might in its wisdom see fit to [unclear: Iopt], based upon the lessons which medical science had taught.

For the sake of their honour as a profession, and for the sake of their [unclear: low]-men, accursed, diseased, and dying under the influence of alcohol, they [unclear: would] not afford to have done with the subject, however well-worn it might be. [unclear: The] sake of their honour as a profession, for nearly every popular belief in the [unclear: icacy] and virtue of alcohol was false, and their high authority was claimed in support of it—that it increased the body heat, that it added strength and [unclear: pro]durance to the muscles, that it was necessary to health, that it controlled [unclear: he]morrhage, that it was a disinfectant, and protected from infection—all [unclear: sol]utely false, and the profession knew it; and it was their duty to themselves and to the public to correct these beliefs, or at least to say that they had not their authority; for the sake of their fellow-men, for it was as much their duty to save them from the ravages of alcohol as from the ravages of cholera or any other preventable disease.

Dr Chapple proceeded to consider the effect of alcohol in the body, both in [unclear: the] special or specific action on the brain und its more remote action on the other [unclear: seera], producing well-defined and distinct diseases, such as cirrhosis of the liver, pripheral neuritis, chronic gastritis, &c, and thus summarised his conclusions out alcohol taken as a beverage in health, in varying quantities from physiopeal moderation to excess :—
1.Alcohol is a poisonous drug whose special action in the body is a brain cell paralysant, nestroying these cells in the inverse order of their development.
2.Alcohol disturbs the circulation, leading to a loss of body temperature and an accumulation of waste products in the blood, accompanied by great depression and muscular weakness.
3.Alcohol tends to produce in all, proportionate to the quantity taken, cirrhotic diseases of all the tissues and organs of the body.
4.Alcohol tends to produce an irresistible craving for itself.
5.Alcohol predisposes to all infectious and many organic diseases.
6.Alcohol diminishes the chances of recovery in those attacked with any disease other than those resulting from its use.
7.Alcohol increases the sick rate and shortens life.
8.Alcohol predisposes to consumption and all tubercular diseases.
9.Alcohol increases lunacy and crime.
10.Alcohol is absolutely unnecessary to health.
11.Alcohol promotes haemorrhage, and does not check it.
12.Alcohol adds no muscular strength to the body—at most it encourages the expenditure of its force in the shortest possible time.

If these were the true facts about alcohol taken as a beverage in health they [unclear: are] as medical men, individually and collectively, in duty and in honour bound make them known to the public over whose health they pretended to preside.—Otago Daily Times, February 5th, 1896.

Issued by the Grand Lodge of New Zealand, I.O.G.T. Price—2s 6d per 1000 copies; or, Including postage, 3s 6d per 1000 copies.