Liquor and Influenza

Hokitika Guardian, 16 December 1919, Page 3

Liquor and Influenza

Medicine in the Home (From a Special correspondent.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The probability of a recrudescence o the influenza epidemic brings up a this time the question in relatoin ti to-morrow's poll on the licensing qnes tion. Some recent pronouncements b: leaders in the medical faculty -will In read with great interest. Sir Malcolir ' Morris, K.C.V.0.P.R.C.5., President oi the Institute of Hygiene, af a conference called by the Institute on February 28th., 1919, to consider influenza and its prevention said: “Alcohol is not essential for the prel Vention or the treatment of in- ' fluenzai.” Dr E. B. Turner, F.R.C.S., is a leading London practitioner and has lectured on venereal disease in the Army with great acceptance ,to officers and men. He has kept a record of an unbroken series of 2300 cases of influenza, which he has treated, ending in complete recovery with no complication and without a single death. He described in the British Medical Journal for March Bth., 1919, how in the epidemic raging in London since October 1918, he had treated 335 cases all with temperatures of 103.5 degrees to 105 degrees and of a virulent type, and all recovered without pneumonia or other complications. Dr Turner say s in a recent letter:— . / “I have not ordered any alcohol “whatever in influenza, either in “this epidemic or any of the ear“lier ones. They do not require “it as far as I can see.” | The public should remember that in the event of prohibiton being carried, alcohol for medical purposes will he available. The Act specially provides for it, and the Minister for Health in 'the National Government specially mentioned that ,provision would 1 he made to obtain it without payment of doctor’s fees. These facts should be carefully weighed by all electors. (Published by Arrangement).