SIR VICTOR HORSLEY ON ALCOHOL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 154, 10 May 1909, Page 4

SIR VICTOR HORSLEY ON ALCOHOL.

Sir Victor Horsley, F.R.S-, the eminent surgeon, recently delivered an address to a crowded congregation at Whitefield's Central Mission Chapel, London, on "Alcohol and the National Life." The Rev. C. Silvester Home, who presided, in introducing Sir Victor Morsley,said that some day they would be able to fight the drink evil with laws, but meanwhile they would fight it with facts. Sir Victor spoke of the drink evil from a physiological, economical, and moral point of view. Men, be said, who took alcohol in small quantities said they did so because they liked it. Such men should reform their ideas of pleasure. There was nothing which could really be called pleasure unless it conduced to the physical or moral benefit of one of our race. Then it was said that alcohol was a source of cheerfulness, and one of the most detestable features of the recent debate on the Licensing Bill in the House of Lords was the utterance of Lord Robertson, that, if there were a diminution in the consumption of alcohol by the nation, it would destroy the jollity of the English people. A man who took alcohol because he liked it was acting disloyally towards his country. Lord Halsbury spoke of alcohol as being one of the most important if not the mjst important, food of the working man. It was not a food. The net result of it was loss and not profit. Whereas the expenditure on alcohol in our great hospitals was in 1862, nearly £BOOO a year, in 1902 it was under £3OOO, and, conversely, the expenditure on milk rose from £3OOO to over £BOOO. Since the London County Council took over the asylums the consumption therein of alcohol had been enormously reduced. So far back as 1726 the Royal College of Physicians reported that the daily use of alcoholrendered people not fit for business, and that its consumers were producing children which would not be a sourco of strength of the nation, but a charge. Twenty five years ago the late Sir James Paget showed that the British nation lost an immense amount of useful work, not by grave illnesses, but by small maladies produced by. drinking. The researches of Mr Moore in South Australia demonstrated that the larger proportion of these small maladies fell on the so called moderate drinkers. Passing to more serious maladies, Sir Victor said they knew that the death rate among publicans as compared with others was sixteen to ten. He was of opinion that intemperance could be dealt with by licensing legislation. Hp did not regard the fate of the last Licensing Bill as a defeat. It was no defeat. The question arose: Did higher licensing dudes diminish the number of public houses? They most certainly did. He did not believe in the municipalisation of public houses. He did not approve of any section of the nation deriving profit from the drink trade. Referring to the moral aspect of he drink question he maintained that no national life could exist without a keen active moral sense. Alike physiologically, economically and morally, the drink habit was most injurious and to be condemned.