“The Beer Is Best Business Is Bunkum” Says B.B.C. Doctor

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 57, 18 June 1948, Page 6

“The Beer Is Best Business Is Bunkum” Says 8.8. C. Doctor

In a broadcast on “Drinks,” the 8.8. C. Radio Doctor said: Now for alcohol. I am not going to lecture you on temperance. I want you to know the facts. Alcohol isn’t a stimulant. A stimulant is something which stimulates your brain to greater activity. Alcohol doesn’t. It depresses the brain, or part of it. We have two brains really, the lower brain—the older brain that keeps our “domestic affairs in order”—looks after our breathing and our sleeping and our digestion, and keeps our heart a-pumping. That’s the old, the animal brain. On top of that brain we higher animals have a newer brain which enables us to remember, to make judgments, to discriminate, to do things skilfully. Here lies the capacity for wisdom, for morality, and so on. It does its work by influencing, by controlling the lower brain, sometimes by pulling in the opposite direction. The lower brain wants to do something, and the higher brain restrains it. The old Adam is restrained by the new wisdom. Now, what alcohol does is to depress, to cut down the strength, the restraint, of the higher brain. Oh, it’s a bit of a food, but that’s hardly worth considering. You may be worried by things at work or at home. That worry is in the higher brain. The animal without it doesn’t worry. Alcohol tends to sweep away the worry. You may be driving a car—what alcohol will do is to weaken your self-criticism, and to make your movements less accurate. You think you are driving better. You’re not. You just think you are, thanks to that “one for the road.” Alcohol doesn’t warm you on a winter’s night. Oh, it makes you feel warm by increasing the rate at which your body loses heat. In fact, it cools you down. The plain blunt truth is that from the food point it isn’t necessary, and it doesn’t do you good. The Beer is Best business in bunkum—if by that it means that it is a food.