ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 120, 30 August 1910, Page 7

ALCOHOLOGY.

ABOUT WINES. The Apostolic advice to a friend: "Use a little wine for thy stomach's sake, and thine often infirmities," was kindly meant; and so it is to-day when it is repeated, as it often is, by friend to friend when he does not know what else to advise. The pity is that jt is still sometimes the advice given by doctor to patient, though the former ought to 'know better. It would be interesting to point out to the wine-drinker that the stuff he or she drinks is very often not much wine about it hut the name. A wine merchant of London, giving evidence before a committee of the House of Lords, some years since, said it was almost impossible to get real port wine; and things in that respect are no better now. The report of the State Board of Health of Indiana, U.S.A., asserts that more than 50 per cent, of the wines examined, all obtained from drag stores in that State, never saw a grape, and that many additional samples were wines of very inferior quality. Originally and for many centuries no doubt all the wine was made from the grape, but it can't be so now, for there are not enough grapes grown to produce the quantity of so-called wine that is sold, and therefore it must be made-up stuff amply fortified with alcohol. The public who use wines ought to know, too, that any wine over 13 per cent, of alcoholic strength is not the simple fermented grape juice because by fermentation simply a greater strength cannot be produced; the stronger wines are all made* up with the addition of distilled spirits and other things; in fact, it has now become a fine" art to combine alcohol- with colored liquids (turmeric, logwood,'etc.), and these decoctions, being duly flavored, are sold as "wine." But supposing the wine is the | fermented juice of the grape and nothing : added thereto, it is not a healthful ' drink. The alcohol generated in the pro-1 cess of fermentation (or added) is the injurious part of it, and that is always! so. Dr. Jonathon Periera, more than | fifty years ago, and a pioneer in modern j medicine, said that "to persons in health the employment of wine is either useless or pernicious, and that medicated wines are objectionable preparations." These medicated wines are becoming a great snare to many and the leaders in the medical world begin to recognise it. At the Brussels Conference on Medicine it was agireed that "no potent drug shall be directed to he prepared in the form of a medicinal wine." One, a good deal advertised in New Zealand, is describe:! by the Health Department as containing ; more than 15 per cent absolute alcohol, j or more than 33 per cent, proof spirit. I Why do people still use wine as a medicine? They cannot tell. They fancy it. does them good. They want a "pick-me- j up" and think the wine does it; whereas j they ought to know, or to he told, that a little hot milk, or hot water and milk, just sipped a little at a time, is a real stimulant, and leaves no evil effects behind. On this use of wine Sir B. W. Richardson said: "That fluid on which ( they had relied had in it nothing at all i on which their structural life coidd be sustained, except a little sugar in some ,■ of the drinks, and the water which j formed the main body of the fluid. The j action of the alcohol throughout was | but an agent that relaxed the vessels, taking'off friction for a brief period;] that set the heart for a short time free; | that seemed by the flush of life that ap-1 peared on the surface to communicate | life, but that really wore out every or- j gan it influenced, and chiefly the heart, without supplying a figment of strength, j health or vitality." Dr. E. J. Spriggs, of St. George's Hospital, London,, says: "No substance should be recommended as a food by the medical profession which cannot be taken repeatedly to allay hunger in accord with the dictates of the healthy appetite with any concomitant results." Professor H. Kelly, John Hopkins itiospital, Baltimore, after 3 years' practice, said: "I began, my practice in private life by prescribing alcohol in its various forms as an easily diffusible stimulant in cases of periodic weakness, in low fevers, and exhaustion, in accordance with the common custom of a generation ago. My experience has told me that the effect is temporary, evanescent, that the drug (for such it is) does no real good, and that a dangerous habit is thus easily engendered which may be most difficult to eradicate, a habit that may ruin the patient's body, soul and spirit."