NO MORE DOUBT

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 4, 26 March 1927, Page 11

NO MORE DOUBT

SURE PROOF AVAILABLE BOOZE IN THE BLOOD There is an old saying that "dead men tell no tales,” but that piece of wisdom will not hold good to-day for a French chemist has made a discovery which wrests secrets from the grave. In the past, when a gentleman dined "not wisely, but too well,” and attempted to give the police force a tuneful explanation of how “Britannia Rules the Waves,” he was called upon to walk a chalk line or perform a few linguistic exercises and upon his skill with tonque or toe pended his reputuation for sobriety. But these primitive methods are quite out of date now. The “blood test” is all. that is required. The policeman of the future will carry a nice, sharp knife. With this he will let out half-a-Pint of "accused’s” blood and hand it over to the analyst, and if that gentleman discovers the presence of alcohol there will be no further argument. A Good Skinful. The first occasion upon which the new test was employed happened in France ,in connection with a fatal motor accident. A motorist ran into a pedestrian who staggered into the car’s right-of-way. The man was killed. There were no eye-witnesses, but the driver demanded an autopsy. Leon Bonn, an expert chemist attached to the courts, analysed the victim’s blood and found alcohol in sufficient quantity to indicate the man had drunk about four quarts of wine of 10 per cent, alcoholic content. That made four-fifths of a pint of pure alcohol, which, the judges agreed, was enough to make, the hardest drinker disregard traffic regulations.