ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 179, 8 November 1910, Page 3

ALCOHOLOGY.

INSURANCE COMPANY'S MAXIFESTO. (Published by Arrangement). The Policy-holders' Health Bureau of the Provident Savings Life Asurance Society of Xew York has issued a remarkable document. It is, in fact, a compendium of suggestions concerning the conservation of health, and, on their part, a business circular: a desire to promote sanitary practice among their insured members. Here are a few extracts:— ALCOHOL AXD THE DEATH-RATE. "0, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains." By reason of its poisonous effects, alcohol is an enemy of life insurance companies. Directly and indirectly, it is responsible for no small portion of the mortality rate. In view of the widespread, so-called temperate use of alcohol, we have endeavored to consider this subject in no narrow or partisan spirit, but solely from the scientific view-point, as we would anv other cause contributing to increase the cost of insurance. ALCOHOL A FUEL. Alcohol is useful in science and in the arts. It is a good fuel, and can be burned in a certain kind of stove without the formation of clinkers, and without injury to the stove. If the stove had a brain, a nervous system, kidneys and liver, the result would be different. Alcohol can be burned in the human body, and will temporarily produce energy, also clinkers, but it exacts a heavy toll for this service. The man who thinks he can compete with a stove in burning alcohol makes a very great mistake—he is outclassed.

LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS. It has been conclusively shown by laboratory experiments that alcohol taken in so-called moderate quantities (two glasses of beer daily) reduces mental and physical efficiency. Those who are disposed to question "this statement would do well to have themselves subjected to a test in some experimental laboratory, Where the degree of impairment of.mental and physical functions caused by alcphol can be "measured quite as accurately as a yard of cloth. The full degree" of injury to the body, and the possible shortening of life through moderate drinking;-cannot be measured in ,such, laboratories. Only many years of .observation, covering large groups of indivi'dualsV could determine such facts. ''" "'A'LCOHdL AN ANAESTHETIC. \. .Scientific experiments show that alco'hol tias.'beVii mis-named a stimulant, its '"total effect is anaesthetic; therein lies its idanger,-and, for some, its charm. The ~pow: e r ,of .associating ideas is impaired after even slight,alcoholic indulgence, and 'with, increased'indulgence one after another of the higher' brain centres is put temporarily out .of commission. The .man,who wakes up "under alcoholic ininfiuence" is really going to sleep, as far as Hi's "higher"reasoning faculties are con-! j cerned.' Thefaricied'stimulation is merely a release of the lower nervous a?tivi,ti<fS ';y a, suppression of the higher, causing n lUi-rowing of the field of'conscious-' 1 nes's. ' I

ALCOHOL, IX MEDICINE. The use.of alcohol as a direct heart stimulant is obsolete. It is a heart poison. It is 'Still used as a sort of temporary and rapidly available food in the crisis •of fever, but to a lesser degree than, formerly, as it is known to lower the resistance to disease toxines. Its rse as a tonic in convalescence is dangerous,, and-it r is. now Seldom > TESTIMONY OF'THE BUSINESS ...'.:. EWORLD: .-But aside from the evidence furnished •by the .laboratories of experimental psychology, there are other laboratories whose testimony may be more readily accepted by «the' average man. Our great railroad systems and manufacturing industries, , where skilled labor, depending on accurate mental processes, is employed, discriminate against even the socalled moderate drinker—not on moral grounds, .but because practical business experience has..demonstrated the higher efficiency, both for mental and physical work, of the abstainer. Business instinct has'discerned "what scientific experiment 'has proven;' the anaesthetised (alcoholised)( employee,,is unprofitable. 'TESTIMONY OF LIFE INSURANCE.

> -Another practical laboratory of business, experience vis :that of the life insurance companies... Guided by medical judgment and lay common-sense, life insurance companies- have always discriminjated against the steady tippler and the | periodical-free .drinker. Published statisj tics relating to the mortality among immoderates are meagre, but the effect of alcohol has in a broad way been measured by the experience- of the U.K. Temp, and General Provident Institution, covering the period from 1860 to 1805. The company aimed to take none but total-abstainers and temperate drinkers. On analysing the experience of these two groups, it was found that for everv 100 deaths among- total abstainers, 'there were 131 deaths among the temperate drinkers, showing a difference of 31 per cent, in favor of the abstainers. Taking the experience of the same company for 61 years prior to 11)01, and considering the mortality at the different age periods', we find that from the ages of 35 to 30 the mortality in the general group was 83 per cent, in excess of that anion* abstainers (whole life policies). The experience of the Sceptre Life Association, 18S4 to 1905, is of a similar nature. In that company, for every 100 deaths among total abstainers there were 146 deaths among temperate drinkers, showing 4fl per cent, in favor of the abstainers