DRUNKENNESS TESTS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4825, 4 May 1925, Page 4

DRUNKENNESS TESTS.

present methods unreliable. FUTILITY OF TONGUE-TWISTERS. Cousiderable interest is being taken in medical circles in tire question >1 the tests that are applied for drunkenness and the medico-legal aspect of the subject, which formed the basis of a lecture by Sir J. Purves-Ste.wart, senior physician to Westminster Hospital, to the members of the Society for the Study of Inebriety. The lecturer’s remarks as to the, 1 unreliability of certain of the tests usually applied by the police authorities received endorsement from Dr.-Rodas Shaw, who was the medical officer in London in charge of the Australian tioops dining the war, and who has made a special study of the subject of alcohol. .'. . . . "1 regard these tongue-twisting and toeing-the-lffie tests as worse than useless," he said, “and I believe that many a sober man has been misjudged aceoidingly.” He recalled the historic occasion when the “shibboleth’’ was used by the Gileadites under Jephthah to detect the fleeing Ephraimites, who would not pronounce the “sh," and expressed the belief that all such pronunciation tests were unreliable. The general condition of a person, both physical and mental, was, he said, a much greater diagnostic indication, and, in the case of a motorist charged with drunkenness, it should be the medical examiners’ duty to determine whether the amount pf alcohol the accused had taken had upset his equilibrium.

“I should examine a man,” said Dr. Shaw, “from the point, of view- of his normal, condition, and weight up the question whether tlie alcohol he had taken made his condition abnoimal. I should take into account tlie relationship of the pulse tb respiration. A normal mail’s pulse should be four times as fast ,as his respiration. Alcohol would tend to increase the pulse, both in rate and volume, in comparison with his respiration. What is'one man’s meat is another’s poison, and it is not the amount o’ alcohol a man takes that matters so much as the amount which affects him individually. In testing a man for drunkennejss far more reliance should be placed on his general appearance than on the tests which are usually' applied by a police surgeon.”