ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 255, 7 March 1911, Page 2

ALCOHOLOGY.

' ; ' wiIISKY DISARMED. > (Published by Arrangement). "Whisky disarmed" is what we see. advertised in newspapers just now. Lvi- ■: dently, then, in the minds of the id\ Users, in the ordinary way wiii k) w armed; and if a little more attention is given to the advertisement it is quite plain that whisky is armed to do mischief to various parts of the body. What is. said or implied about whisky may be taken as applying to its near relations — other alcoholic liquors. Speaking generally about whisky one might say as Sir Victor tlorsley did about it. A few years since there was some stir in circles legal, scientiiic and commercial, over the. question, "What is whisky I !'' A friend met Sir Victor at his club: "Halloa, Ilorsley," he said, "can you tell us what .whisky is yet';" "Tell you what whisky is," replied Horsley; "certainly; it is the most popular poison in the world." Sir Victor was not far out so far as New Zealand is concerned, for in 11)09 the whisky imported was 573,207 gallons, against 90,775 of gin and 09,549 of brandy. Popular it certainly is by this record, and poisonous, too, by what one sees in street and police court. The report of- the Whisky Commission instituted by the British Medical Association (see Journal B.M.A. December 20, 1903) says: "Originally whisky—or, at any rate, Scotch whisky—was manufactured from barley malt, and this is still the case with some of the whisky distilled in the Highlands in pot-stills. At a moderate computation,, roughly twothirds of the spirit vended nowadays as 'whisky' is derived from other materials, chielly maize and refuse molasses." Then, again, Dr. Wiley, Chief of the U.S. Government Bureau of Chemistry, in giving evidence before the Congressional Committee on the Pure Foods Bill, produced •his apparatus and some chemicals and proceeded to make whisky, and in a few minutes he produced something so like whisky that he handed it round for the committee to taste. He said that four-teen-year-old whisky could be made in less than fourteen minutes by certain chemical additions. In the face of this evidence, any whisky drinker may well doubt the age and the origin of his "Old Rye" or "Real Scotch." But to return to the advertisement; whisky harms liver and kidneys. Its effects on the liver are admitted. Alcohol—that is whisky and its relatives—when taken in moderate amount is practically all absorbed by the stomach. That is to say, it is taken up by the blood-vessels of the stomach wall, and is in consequence carried straight to the liver. Therefore, as the first organ in the path of the absorbed alcohol, we should expect the liver to be most affected by it. The kidneys, too, arc endangered by this armed whisky. The work of the kidneys is to act as a filter and to carry off waste material; if this work be hindered in any way rheumatic pains, loss of appetite, mental depression and other symptoms of impaired digestion follow. Alcohol helps in all this evil work. The next question, is how to'disarm this thing that, "like j an armed man," comes down on men and < women. There is one way. A boy at school was set to write a composition on pins. He did so, and said: "Pins are useful things; they have saved many lives." The master asked how pins saved lives, to which the author of that composition replied: "By not swallowing them, sir." Now that would be one way of disarming whisky. The advertisement has another way: Mix it with water, and then more water, and still more water until it is brought up (not down") to a safe beverage, near to what Shakespeare commended, "Honest water, that ne'er left man in the ditch."