[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
St4,—Surgeon Rear-Admiral C. M. Beadnell claims that in America and certain European countries " percentage analyses of the blood have been proved efficient." Efficient for what ? The blood test can only indicate the alcohol content of the blood, and cannot determine the effect of any given quantity of alcohol on any individual.
Individual variation as regards susceptibility to alcohol is notorious, and in a review of 2,50o cases of road accidents in Germany Dr. K. Hoffmann found that out of 75o persons with less than t mg. of alcohol (equal to about three large whiskies or three to four pints of beer) per c.cm.. of blood, only ten were definitely intoxicated, whereas out of 250 persons with more than 2 mg. per c.cm. 13o were classed as definitely intoxicated and 19 as sober.
Professor J. E. W. MacFall, Professor of Forensic Medicine at Liverpool University, says the blood test is all nonsense, and Professor .A. J. Clark, Professor of Materia Medica at the University of Edinburgh, at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in Belfast, " challenged the accuracy of modern attempts to test whether a man is drunk or sober by laboratory methods."—I am, $ir, &c.,
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