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opportunities for the latter to play their part in producing a
healthier society. With the fulfilment of these possibilities the
coming merger will surely enable the problems of lung cancer,
alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, venereal disease and
the many other chronic and degenerative and inherited diseases to
be tackled with greater chances of success.
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is regarded by the W.H.O. as the fourth most
important problem in the world today but when one looks at
efforts made for its treatment or eradication, this country can
hardly be considered in the forefront.
Psychiatry offers no precise cause for alcoholism but seems
to agree that anxiety in adolescence, depression in middle age
and loneliness in old age are important contributory factors.
Obviously these can form only part of the aetiology because
all members of these particular groups do not become alcoholics
—we must delve deeper. Unquestionably, there is ar urgent need
for factual and epidemiological information, the lack of which
renders successful preventive work somewhat fortuitous.
The action of alcohol on the addicted takes the form of an
allergy which means that these unfortunates can never imbibe
the smallest of tots with safety. No doubt, aversion techniques,
including electric shock treatment, will claim their successes
(even the Lysistrata approach by wives of alcoholics in Australia
has, on occasions, proved effective) but the overall picture is far
from satisfactory. A fair summary of the situation would seem to
be that the general public has yet to accept the fact that the
alcoholic is a person with a disease problem and that, so far,
neither medicine nor any other profession has been able to
find a cure for alcoholism. Its spread during the last decade,
after a period of recession, has probably been aided and abetted
by the increase in consumption per head of the population of
wines, spirits and beer during 1971 by 3.6%, 16.6% and 3.5%
to totals of 3 pints, 7.7 pints and 184 pints respectively, according
to figures issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Food.
Excessive drinking does not necessarily lead to alcoholism
and the late Dr. Jellinek suggested that in certain individuals
there would seem to be a predisposing constitutional factor
favouring its development. In others a genetic association could
be postulated for, in his own experiments, 52%, of his alcoholics
had an alcoholic parent. Expectancy of alcoholism among children
of alcoholics is approximately 25%, compared with 2% for