INTERESTING LOCAL CASES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 90, 25 July 1910, Page 3

INTERESTING LOCAL CASES.

To the Editor.

'Sir,—it is an old saying that an ounce of fact is worth more than a pound of theory, and as your readers are occasionally dosed with a lot of the latter, as to the poisonous nature of alcoholic beverages, with your permission, I will give them a somewhat interesting fact on the other side, although very many of a like kind could be given were people wishful to give them. We have an old lady of 83 years of age resident in New Plymouth who is well known to many of the older residents of the town, and has had her share in the hurly-hurly of early times in Taranaki. There are many curious episodes in this old colonist's life well worth recording; but not to be prolix I come to one that has just transpired. Some two months ago, during the coldest snap we have had this winter, the old lady was working in her garden and took a violent cold, which confined her to her bed and brought on such further complications that her doctor at length advised that her family be summoned as she could not possibly live many days longer. But the old dame disproved his prediction and was well enough to go out on Sunday week for a walk, to the astonishment of doctor, family and nurse—a truly wonderful recovery at her advanced age of four score and three years. 'Now this dear old Christian, with whom it is a pleasure to converse on the love of God and her hopes for the future, as well as to witness her perfect resignation, has been, and still is, in the habit of taking her whisky or stout—or both—every day, far I do not know how many years, but say sixty to seventy. "Now. if alcohol is a poison, why has it not killed her, j and how is it that she has exhibited such ■ vitality? To use a modern phrase, it is up to these dogmatic villifiers of one, of God's good gifts to give us the reason. I have ibeen reflecting, and am not able to recall one person among my family and friends who has lived to be over four ] score up to four score and ten who was not in the habit of the temperate use of intoxicants, although I have known several teetotallers who have lived up to between 70 and 80. My observation teaches me that, after all, what we eat or drink in moderation has not so much to do with longevity as a habit of industry and moderation in all things. This new theory of the poisonous nature of alcohol was never heard of for the trousands of rears it has been in daily useever since the Flood, in fact, until m my own lifetime it was needed to buttress the un-Christiau platform of the prohibitionists and to salve their consciences in their efforts to rob their neighbors ot their means of livelihood.—l am, etc., B. ENROTH.