BLOOD TESTS.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 409, 16 April 1937, Page 2

BLOOD TESTS.

ALCOHOL CONTENT. Infallible Evidence. The nervous driver 'Who makes a mistake is safeguarded, while the intoxicated driver is proveid guilty beyond dispute, when their blood is tested for alcoholic content in accordance with a technique developed by Professor Widmark, of the University of Lund, and adopted in Great Britain and most European countries. Describing the test and its value, in a recent book, Dr W. McAdam Eccles, consulting surgeon to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, who visited New Zealand last year, stresses the fact that there is no necessiary relationship between the amount of alcohol imbibed and the percentage of alcohol actually circulating in the blood. In one man there might be | enough in his blood to make him j “under the influence” after drinking only two small glasses of beer, while another man (usually a heavy drinker) may have imbibed several drinks, even mixing drinks contain ing large proportions of alcohol, and yet when his blood is tested there will not be a large amount of alcohol circulating in it. One Drop of Blood. For the purposes of the test only 1 a drop of blood from the subject is I needed, this being drawn into a capil- , lary tube from a puncture in the ! finger or the lobe of the ear. Both | ends of the tube are then sealed and . sent to the laboratory, where, within a few hours, a skilled worker, using elaborate and extremely delicate apparatus, can determine the exact proportion of alcohol in the blood. Various tables showing the condition of the subject corresponding to the ascertained quantity of alcohol circula ing in the blood have been drawn up after an exhaustive series of experiments. Dr Kenneth Soltau, of London, after applying the tept to over 100 cases, issued the following report: The minimum percentage causing evidence j(n the person of baling ‘under the influence” was 0.088 per cent. The minimum percentage found in a person actually exhibiting the signs of being drunk was 0.130 per cent. The maximum found in any case was 0.430 per cent. In any person whose alcohol blood content was .0.1 per cent, there were always signs of being “under the influence.” American Standard. As might be expected, ian American Investigator, Dr Walter L. Miles, makes his table a little brighter. He puts it this way: 0.40 mg per cc: “You don’t think I’m drunk, do you? Why, I haven’t taken anything yet.” 0.50 mg per cc: “Can lick anybody in the country.” Observable difficulty in lighting a match. 0.70 mg per cc: Amused at the seeming perversity of things. Upsets chair on rising. 1.00 mg per cc: Staggers perceptibly. Sings loudly. Complains that others don’t keep their side of the road. 2.00 mg per cc: Can’t recall with i

whom he Epent the evening. 4.00 mg per cc: Deep anaesthesia •hat may be fatal. Dr Eccles suggests that every person involved in a road accident should be submitted to the test, be he driver, pedestrian or passenger, and a conviction of being “under the influence" should follow, together with such punishment (in most cases a term, of imprisonment) as is thought fit.