“MAGNUM EST VERITAS ET PREVALABIT.”
[To the Editor of tho Hawke's Bay Times. ]
Sis, —“ Magnum est veritas et prevalabit.” Pray excuse the quotation, but it is quite refreshing to find, from an article published in your last, that truth has at length forced its way upwards into the understandings and convictions of the learned doctors of medicine. Can it be possible that the acute and talented members of the medical profession have only now become convinced of a truth that has been one of the main foundation stones of the Total Abstinence Society for upwards of 30 years past,—the truth that alcohol is not food. Why, Sir, I could point out almost innumerable instances in the'early publications of that Society, where the above.'tmth is demonstrated by some of the cream of the medical profession j and the great wonder is that prejudice could blind the eyes of the bulk of that profession, so as to prevent its universal acknowledgment. Teetotalers at least have well understood that alcohol could not be rendered available by nature to the building up of any living tissue; —that it could not be digested or assimilated; but that it is regarded as an enemy, and the whole functions of nature are taxed by the effort to get it out of the system as quickly as possible. Hence is it to bo found in all the excretory fluids of the person who has swallowed it, and many well-authenticated cases can be given where the fluids in the bodies of those who have been poisoned by it have been so strongly impregnated with it as to burn dike alcohol itself on the application of a taper. It is also gratifying to find that the profession are beginning to awake to the conviction of the vast amount of evil, physical and moral, they have done to society by the indiscriminate practice of prescribing alcoholic mixtures as medicines, and the very fact of their having done so is the best promise of a better state of things, which certainly must follow upon the discovery that in so doing they are following the authority of one, “ all of whose data are actually in discord with the best teachings of modern science,” and if not directly contradicted by modern and best scientific enquirers, are shown to be unwarrantable assumptions. So that at length the drinker of alcohol is stripped of liis last excuse of an appeal to the practice of the medical profession; and the only plea now remaining for such is,—“ I like it, and rather than give it up will bear all the penalties that religion, reason, and science tell me are consequent upon its use.”—l am, Sir, AQUA. Napier, 21st February, 1866.
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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 7, Issue 352, 22 February 1866, Page 2
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453“MAGNUM EST VERITAS ET PREVALABIT.” Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 7, Issue 352, 22 February 1866, Page 2
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