FROM ETHICS TO HYGIENICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 73, 22 April 1909, Page 4

FROM ETHICS TO HYGIENICS.

To the Editor. Sir—We are making another advance. The ethics of the teetotal position being . admitted, we are into the hysiemcs total abstinence from alcoholics. I mu»t lay here that I wish Mr. Enroth would let us settle one point at a tune and . not Veep changing from teetotal to pr Mbition: we can take up the 5 J™ iect later, when we have deposed of he former, for they are not one and the same by any means. It is something that-we are agreed as to a mail a duty to so use his body as to develop and maintain his powers of body and mind; where we differ is that Mr. Enroth says that the use of alcoholic drink does tend to such development and maintenance of our best powers. Then he further argues that strong drink is "both useful - and pleasant." Firstly as to the pleasantness of it. It may be to those hardened to it by long usage, but not to the natural taste. Try a little child—not one that imbibed the alcohol with its mother's milk, or was very early trained to it—and you will invariably find that it is not pleasant: notice how uncivilized races regard it and the name they give it—'"fire-water," (ask jour interpreter to explain the latter highly descriptive term]; they dislike it at first, but unfortunately soon become attracted to it because of its intoxicating effect. Here, Sir, let me digress to point out that the Maori was almost the Only aboriginal race ever discovered who had not some intoxicant to either drink or chew —such as alcohol, opium, hashish, tobacco, etc.; and yet the Maori was the finest race of all, both physically andi mentally. This may be only a coincidence, but I think it is a case of cause and effect. The argument from "pleasant" is quite a delusion. I can find lots of people with uncorrupted tastes who will bear me out in this. Now as to the usefulness of this drink. .We know, we all know, that there is a danger in the use of this drink, and that it does do a great deal of mischief —excess, of course, Mr. Enroth sayswell, whatever amount is used it does in many cases do great damage, and in the face of this fact it seems reasonable to ask the advocate of drinking to show that it does good, that it is a necessity to growth and health. This, of course, he cannot do, and so calls on the abstainer to prove the uslessness of the drink at its best. If, then, it be useful it must make a man strong; but it does not, as witness the fact that in training j for athletic contests it is now generally condemned. Professor David, who had just returned in the Nimrod, said that "'on one occasion at a birthday eele&ra- ■ tion they had just a little wine, but they found that their resistance to the cold dropped, bo they dropped alcohol."'I It -was jot useful to keep out the cold. Neither is it useful for maintaining a sound mental condition. Here is a line from the medical evidence in the Goode trial: "It is an axiom that alcohol attacks first of all the highest and most specialised functions of the brain. In other words, alcohol is one of those ' 'poisons' which has what we call a highly selective action affecting the higher functions first and the lower functions afterwards." Neither is it useful to help a man to tell the truth. Here is another sentence from the same trial: Dr. Beat- »■ tie said, "Practically all alcohols were untruthful and deceptive." Neither is it useful to secure a long life. Sir T. P. Whittaker, M.P., chairman of the United Kingdom Temp, and General iProvi- • dent Institution, said. "Our experience for 60 years with ove r 100.000 lives is that the death rate amongst abstainers as against careful moderate drinkers '3 25 to 35 per cent, in favor of abstainers." To come to the positive side of the question, I know what it is useful for: To stiffen hats, to drive motor ears; and in the organic realm, '-to,kill the living and to preserve the dead." The evidence is overwhelming, and onlv the fear of being too lengthy makes me refrain from quoting more. I am surprised that Mr. Enroth should tall the evidence I referred to in my last letter —Supreme- Court evidence, Dr. Trubv King and Horsley's book--as ''ptohibition literature." What is said and done and quoted in Court can hardly be so regarded bv reasonable men. If I quote the King's surgeon, or Lauder Brunton, or the Professor of Physic of Cambridge University he will put them in the same list. I will conclude by just quoting Professor Itwater on whom advocates of alcoholic drinks always rely. He said, summing up his own work, "The net result of its (alcohol) use is damage, not advantage."—l am, etc., GEO. H. MAUNDER.

[We cannot find room for further correspondence on this subject, which has been thoroughly threshed out.—Ed.]