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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 221, 29 December 1910, Page 7

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ALCOHOL AND PREVENTIVE MEDICINE. (Published - by Arrangement). Preventive medicine is being more and more studied in the medical schools, Doctors—and. their patients, too—are getting to understand that more can be done in tlie way of prevention of disease than in the cure; and that generally preventive measures are safer as well as pleasanter. T.he first thing to be sought after in the study of preventive medicine is to iind out the cause of the disease or diseases. In regard to many diseases the cause, has been found out and the disease successfully combatted. > The house fly, the mosquito, the swamp and other causes of diseases have been found out and dealt with. There is, however, another great cause of disease which is also being found out —alcohol. Professor T. D. Crothcrs, superintendent of Walnut Hospital, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A., has given special attention to this, and to his researches we are largely indebted in this article. The first deals with RESULTS OF DRINKING. Here are a few: Of the more than 200,000 insane in the United States in ['9 oB various authors have concluded that from 20 to 50 per cent, could be traced to the use of spirits. Of the idiots and epileptics in 'IOO7, various studies have proved that from 40 to 70 per cent, were directly traceable to alcohol in the patients and tlieir ancestors. Poverty is a cause of weakness and thus of disease, and this again is caused by alcohol to the extent of from 50 to 80 per cent. Studies of the mortality tables and statistics of hospitals and insurance companies show that alcohol may be considered an active cause in at least 10 per cent, of all deaths of persons over 20 years of age. Another very startling conclusion has indicated that at least 50 per cent, of all railroad accidents, disasters on steamers, and motprs and other fatal casualties are due to the mistakes and failures of persons under the influence of spirits and drugs. Then we may include crime in the category of disease, for if not physical it is certainly a mental and moral disease that'the wise physician must consider. There were, in 1908, 170,000 persons serving sentences in the United States for crime. Of this number from 60 to'Bo per cent, gave a history of the use of alcohol as a prominent factor in their criminal- conduct. The toleration in the country of these economic losses and burdens, which- are so clearly traceable to, causes that are preventable, is one of the most startling stupidities of the intelligence of to-day. Such an enormous amount of money is spent in the drink traffic, and no one has yet pointed out any benefit or help to humanity in the evolutionary progress resulting from it. . THE NON-HYGIENIC DRINKER. Spirit drinkers neglect the ordinary hygienic and ethical relations to surroundings, and fail to recognise the conditions essential \to health. They delude themselves with the idea, quite wrong, that alcohol is a tonic, a stimulant, a preventive of disease*. Such persons become irregular in their habits of eating an|d drinking and entertain a lower standard of their duty to themselves and others. The inebriate from the l highest circle down to the most degenerate. is ' a centre of unhygienic conditions of thought, conduct and living. This is all very evident in the slums of large cities, and also in, the homes of the wealthy where great irregularities of living and the absence of common-sense rules of life are tolerated That preventive measures are needed in relation to alcoholism has been recognised for a long time. The law attempts to cope with it by pains and penalties (additional) for the drinker; the Church uses its power and persuasion in pledge and prayer and political influence; tlie doctors are rapidly leaving alcohol behind as an unfit substance to be put inside a human being; and the possibility of stamping out this cause of disease is becoming more and more of a reality every day. Dr. Crothers' conclusions are:' That alcohol is a depressant and a narcotic; that its action on the body is toxic and degenerate, not nourishing or stimulating or tonic. That the. use of alcohol is both a symptom and a-cause of neurosis and a distinct disease. -It is t-his delusion, that alcohol helps the : ndivi(lun], that leads to tjie growth of an army of paupers, defectives and in- 1 sane. Those who feel themselves deficient under par and nervy have recourse I i to alcohol, while in reality it is frequently the inherited effects of | ism that is troubling them. It isias the saying is,, "taking a hair of -the dog that bit them," and it will bite them a sain and 'again, harder and harder each time.-' ■ v -r.: |