C₂H₅OH

LIQUOR, THE SERVANT OF MAN--Walton Hall Smith & Ferdinand C. Helwig --Little, Brown ($2).

>Beverage alcohol (C₂H₅OH) does not cause cirrhosis of the liver, heart trouble, arteriosclerosis, diabetes, Bright's disease. It does not even cause d.t.s (the drunkard's deficiency in diet causes the illusion of snakes). It is only slightly habit-forming (smoking and overeating are far more so).

> "Alcohol is a sex depressant and not a stimulant" (as Shakespeare rightly noted when he wrote: "It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. . . .").

>Users of alcohol produce better babies than teetotalers (alcohol kills the weaker sperm).

The foregoing statements were not spoken from the gutter. Author Smith is a writer and amateur chemist; Helwig is a physician who has opened about 5,000 corpses: their cold-sober documentation runs to 47 pages of 100-proof bibliography. Simple laboratory curiosity prompted their research.

Concerned with the "average" drinker rather than dipsomaniacs (whose drinking is effect rather than cause), Authors Smith & Helwig, no apologists for drunks, know how to say when. They warn, for example, against alcohol for colds and snake bites, point out that many a death technically attributed to accidents, suicide, homicide, bullets and knives should properly be classed as due to booze. They could, but do not, point out that the world's outstanding teetotalers today are Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini.

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