Eliminating the Drunkard.

Manawatu Herald, 25 February 1904, Page 3

Eliminating the Drunkard.

Xn a recent letter to a London Journal, Dr Rentoul argued that civilised nations ought to rid o( their lunatics by quietly il’iowing them to achieve the desire of their hearts and commit suicide. He was followed by Dr Archibald Reid, who put forward a cure for the vice of drunkenness very similar in conception. He proposed, in effect, that the confirmed drunkard should he allowed, and encouraged, to drink himself to death. Dr Reid said that it was a well-known fact that children inherited parental and weaknesses in the matter Of resisting disease. Drunkenness was merely a disease, and the fact that inhabitants of the great wineproducing countries, and of the palm-toddy regions of West Africa, were the most temperate people on earth, was due to their ancestors having had abundant supplies of alcohol. The weaklings drank themselves to death, and the survivors were “ inoculated ” against the complaint. Ancestral and parental drinking, Dr Reid argued, were not the cause of an increased tendency to drunkenness amongst a people. Races that had never had any alcohol, such as the Esquimaux and the Tierra del Euegans, were by far the most drunken when given an opportunity, because Nature had not Inured their constitutions to the effects of alcohol. Repressive drink legislation, therefore, unless it was made eternal, might be followed by great disaster, since the prohibitory laws would probably be repealed by descendants whom artificial protection had made unable to resist alcohol’s attacks. “It is clear,” Dr Held wrote in conclusion, “that there are two methods of temperance reform—the reformer’s plan, the elimination of drink; and Nature’*: plan, the elimination of the drunkard. Heredity .and history teach that the former's plan cannot possibly achieve permanent success; even temporary success is denied to it under civilised conditions of life. Nature’s plan has succeeded everywhere, although at a terrible coat in life and happiness.” It would be Interesting to know • what the Prohibitionists think of this new cure for the drink evil.