ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 385, 10 May 1910, Page 2

ALCOHOLOGY.

MORE EXPERIMENTS. (Published by Special Arrangement.) It takes a great dead to satisfy the scientific mind. Hence men of that turn of mind have experimented with alconol until they are satisfied that the effect of alcoholic beverages—where any effect is produced—is only injurious. iDR. ASCHAFFENBURG'S TEST. He took four compositors, skilled workmen, who were not teetotallers and tried them at their work both without it and with it. He first tried them in their ordinary way to find out what amount of work each was capable of. Then he tried them on four alternate days without alcohol and with it; but only in what is called moderation. Counting the number of letters set up he found that without alcohol the better work was done to the extent of 87 per cent. There were really eight, tests without the drink and eight with it, •with the tf,bove result, yet throughout the tests the men thought that they were doing more when they had the alcohol than without it. This is another proof a-lso that, like all narcotic drugs, alcohol is a delusion. PROFESSOR KRAEPELIN'S TEST. This was really a test of the time it takes for the brain to receive an impression and to respond to it: what is called "the reaction time," or the time taken for the passage of a thought. By the aid of an electric battery and clockwork this can be done to a nicety, and the normal time is found to be threetenths of a second. However, when two ounces of spirits was taken the reaction time was increased to eight-tenths of a second—more than double the normal; as is found elsewhere, the slowing effect upon the brain began from the first time alcohol was taken and continued throughout. Professor Kraepelin made a large number of experiments with alcohol extending through many months or years and his conclusions are accepted bv all. This is how. he sums it all up: "Small doses of alcohol,, from the very first, influence adversely the finer brain cells and centres of latest and highest intellectual development."

THE SWEDISH EXPERIMENT. Lieutenant Boy, of the Swedish Army, and with the consent of the military authorities, tried a squad of soldiers at target practice both without and with the ordinary allowance of beer or wine. He alternated their -,vork several times, taking note of the rapidity of firing and of the scores; but, like the compositors above mentioned, when they had the beer or wine they thought they were making better shooting, while the markers at .the butts told a different tale—that they did much better without alcohol. All this was carried out under official supervision. Dr. J. M. French, in the ''Medical and Surgical Reporter," says:—The question is not whether alcohol is capable in particular organs, under certain conditions, of producing results which either are, or at first seem closely to resemble the effects of stimulation; but whether stimulation is its fundamental and most important effect. . . . "The basic action of alcohol is never that of a stimulant, a tonic, an excitant of vital activities; but always the exact opposite, that of a sedative, an anaesthetic a paralysant; whenever any apparent stimulant effect results from its use, such effect is always incidental, and at the expense of other and more contrary actions."