Alcohol & childhood : the medical and surgical aspect of the question being the report of the afternoon conference held at Sion College, His Grace the Duke of Westminster, K.G., in the chair.

Date:
[1890?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Alcohol & childhood : the medical and surgical aspect of the question being the report of the afternoon conference held at Sion College, His Grace the Duke of Westminster, K.G., in the chair. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    under tlie presidency of your Grace. Seeing the names of the eminent physicians who will address you, I feel, indeed, that my presence is not necessary. Their large observation and experience will give most valuable inform¬ ation concerning the causation of disease, physical or mental, in children. Careful observation on the life history, derived from asylums, workhouses, children’s hospitals, and prisons will throw light on the vexed ques¬ tion of heredity now keenly debated. It will help, too, to assist in putting true views of education. Your speakers to-day will speak with authority, and lay before you facts important for the well-being of the people. I have the honour to be my Lord Duke, Your Grace’s faithful servant, Hy. W. Acland, The Secretary of the Junior Division read letters explaining their absence from a number of gentlemen unable to attend the Conference. Amongst others were the following important communications :— Sir H. Thompson. Sir Henry Thompson.—I must deny myself, I confess unwillingly, the opportunity you are good enough to offer me, of expressing in public an opinion concerning the employment of alcoholic drinks in the dietary of children. My opinion may perhaps be recorded here, and it is based on wide experience, that during the earlier years of life the practice in question is invariably undesirable, indeed, more or less injurious. If alcohol be taken at all during childhood and youth, it ought to be under the sanc¬ tion of high authority, and should be regarded by the child, as well as by his friends, as a medicine, not as an article of diet, under which latter denomination no child should be permitted to regard it. He will learn soon enough that many forms of it are taken as a luxurious adjunct to diet, but he is badly trained if he does not also learn that habitual indulgence in the habit surely produces more or less serious defects in almost all constitutions. Ill-health in later
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