ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 314, 30 May 1911, Page 7

ALCOHOLOGY.

i DR. TRUBY KING ON ALCOHOL. (Published by arrangement.) Dr. Truby King gave a lecture in the I Garrison Hall, Duuedin, on •'Health, I Sleep, Sanity, and Insanity," in the : course of which he dealt with the effects lof alcohol in the human body. He had i a picture thrown on the screen showing .a number of yeast cells. Having previously shown several pictures of the 'cells of which the human body is made gip, Dr. King explained that the yeast jjfccll' is very similar to the single cell of our bodies, the main difference being that the cells of our bodies are organised and specialised, each class of cell doing its own separate work, and that only, while the yeast cells all act alike, each working for its own end, with no community of interest. It is the specialisation of those minute cells, each taking on some special duty in return for services performed by other cells, that makes all higher plant and animal life possible. Our bodies are the highest instances of the organisations of these minute cells. It is plain that, what is good for the most part, what is good for the health of one cell is directly or indirectly beneficial to all, and that all the activities of our bodies must be at high pitch if we arc to keep fit. The scavenger cells must do their work well, the white corpuscles must deal thoroughly with the invading bacteria of disease, the cells which provide our nutritive juices must be sufficiently energetic, and all must work like , ' 1 . A WELL-ORDERED CLOCK.

We all know what a little, puts a Watch out of order and causes it to stop or to go wrong, but there never was any watch that at all approached our bodies in delicacy of working or intricacy of mechanism, for "we are fearfully and wonderfully made." Therefore, we should see to it that we do not introduce into our bodies that ■ which has proved to hinder healthy cell life and activity. Djv King showed that the life of a -yeast cell is analageus to the life of a fijjgle cell from our own body. It istherefore a fact of the greatest possible significance that ALCOHOL POISONS THE YEAST CELL. It not only docs that, but it is a poison also to each cell of .the human body. On page 52 of "Alcohol and the Human Body," by Horslcy and Sturge, is a table showing, as the result of careful experiments, that the growth of the yeast cell is ohecked by bo little as one part in lOfltj) of alcohol, that 5 per cent, of alcohol reduces the growth of the yeast plajft to about one-thirtieth part of its no#i>ial rate, and that at 13 to 14 per cent, the cell life ceases,, all the cells being then poisoned by their own excreta. There is no period at which t alcqhol is beneficial to the cells. This is a very important fact, as it disproves all the theories of so-called moderate drinking, and leads us to the conclusion that

ALCOHOL IS A TIME POISON. i '-.Dr..King spoke plainly throughout his address in regard to' alcohol being a poison. He quoted also Professor Metch- j nikpff, of the Pasteur • Institute, who', ■i&ii* "When you take chloroform or alcohol' you poison the cells of your body." Thus the greatest living authority—Metchnikoff—on this >. subject. puts alcohol and chloroform in the same' class. Dr. King also showed diagrams of brain matter and how the brain matter is developed from the lowest to the highest—the highest development being in men; and then how the highest functions of the organ, such as self-con-trol, judgment, etc., are the last to be developed, and then the first to be destroyed by alcohol, leaving the drinker a mere animal without that higher controlling power. The doctor said that in a /case he had himself examined, the ■"control" layer of the brain was : only two-thirds of the normal thickness owing to the action of alcohol. Many more pictures were shown and all illustrated the effect of alcohol as retarding development in the case of frog's spawn, chickens, etc.

It is now generally accepted that alcohol prevents the healthy action of the while corpuscles in our blood, and that in consequence the drinker is not able to resist the inroads of disease. This then explains how it is that insurance companies can give benefits to total abstainers, because they have better prospects of long life. This brief sketch of the lecture should induce all thoughtful moderate drinkers to review their position and renounce the cup.