Here's mud in your eye

Andrew Varley reviews To Your Good Health: The Wise Drinker's Guide by Dr Thomas Stuttaford

Until quite recently the name of Thomas Stuttaford was known only vaguely to me. If asked, I suppose I would have said he was the Editor of the Times' medical attendant. I might well have had a type in mind. You know the sort of thing, an amiable old buffer, half moon spectacles, robust tweeds, club tie. Definitely no nonsense about psychology, newly-invented diseases, or, God forbid, counselling. Probably from a solid, middle-ranking public school of Anglican temper, and, say, St Thomas'. Now, when his name is the currency of daily conversation --- well, mine, at least --- I learn that he was a Conservative member of the Lower House. Not only that, having been ejected from the Commons by the voters of Norwich South, he tried to get back in at two subsequent general elections. The Isle of Ely preferred Clement Freud. I do not know how I feel about that. On the one hand, I can be confident that he is not an earnest research medic officiously striving to extend my life well beyond the tolerable Biblical span, on the other, it seems rum to trust one's health to the care of a man who was anxious to be Member of Parliament. He also served in the 10th Hussars.

In my drinking days, it was a matter of some importance to consult understanding doctors. It was not my good fortune to find one whose background was the Members' Smoking Room and a cavalry mess. Dr Stuttaford's surgery, I like to imagine, must be a convivial place. Perhaps his patients pass round To Your Good Health: The Wise Drinker's Guide and

discuss vintages in the complacent certainty of enviable cardiovascular health. I cannot think for what other reason the book was written. Surely it cannot have been for the purpose for which I see it most used? Everyone I speak to in the field of alcohol rehabilitation admits the same experience in recent weeks: the problem drinker quoting Dr Stuttaford as authority for his abuse. Anyone whose alcohol intake falls effortlessly within the sensible limits defined by the government is not interested enough in booze to buy books on the subject. If achieving the limit is not effortless, then there is a problem. A History of Malt Whisky or The Wines of Bordeaux are not usually found on the shelves of moderate imbibers, still less so is a book extolling the health-giving properties of alcohol. Problem drinkers, on the other hand, are in denial and look for anything which helps them maintain this. These, along with people with an interest in the success of the drink industry, are the natural readers of Dr Stuttaford's book.

The drink industry will be delighted with To Your Good Health. Dr Stuttaford wants people to drink. He tells us so in one of the many anecdotes which litter the book. (Dr Stuttaford is very anecdotal and I am sure he entertains his neighbours at dinner parties. Indeed, a friend confirms this after sitting next to him at the Eton Medical Society Dinner, so my speculation about his school may be wide of the mark. I hope he is not sensitive on the subject.) He tells the story of a patient of his. This man, it is emphasised, was a very important City figure, the director of a bank. Unfortunately for a man in his position, he was allergic to alcohol when this was combined with the pressures normally associated with his job. This, it seems, was a serious disability when entertaining clients. Red wine led to arthritic swellings and it was necessary for the poor man's wife to unfasten his collar at night such was the painful state of his hands. He might "manage a glass or two of Chateau Lafite" if all was going well at work and home, but the awful possibility of a lunch without booze loomed. Fortunately for the bank's continued success, help was at hand. Dr Stuttaford found a cocktail of drugs which alleviated the symptoms of arthritis and allowed the director to put away the claret without offending clients. Personally, I would take indications of sobriety in my banker as a good thing, but this may be an eccentric view. The whole point of the story, which Stuttaford tells at some length, is that simply not drinking alcohol was an alternative so appalling that it could not be taken seriously: it was necessary to have recourse to a doctor able to supply one set of drugs in order to allow the successful ingestion of another. There is something seriously wrong with a banking system, let alone a medical practice, which allows this incident to be trotted out as an edifying example of responsible use of alcohol. By the way, the banker, relieved in retirement from the stress of lunching with clients, finds he is able to "drink as much as the next man." We are not told who the next man is.

Dr Stuttaford uses the expression "in these Calvinistic days". His intention, in choosing this particular adjective, is to tell us that any objection to alcohol is dour, repressed, and judgemental.

It is a hackneyed method, much favoured by Dr Goebbels, of rubbishing an opponent's case by saddling him with views and intentions he does not hold. There is a case being made for certain limited health benefits from alcohol and Dr Stuttaford does a good job of popularising its arguments. He omits to mention that they are very far from being generally accepted in the medical world whilst at the same time, again by facile use of anecdote, minimising the risks involved in the use of alcohol. This is sad, because in many parts of the book he speaks with sound good sense and rightly highlights some of the more florid dangers of abusive drinking. But why tell the tale of the City solicitor who, in aged widowhood, tippled all day to the horror of his family? Stuttaford paints a picture of a kindly old soul, doing harm to no-one, passing the last days of his life in gentle toping, but harried by Goneril and Regan who want him in a home enduring "enforced teetotalism". Grim thought, isn't it? Or what about Lady Smith, the widow of another Tory MP, drinking whisky from a silver teapot? Charm-ingly eccentric because her social position and money cushioned her.

Although Dr Stuttaford is as discriminating when he reports research as he presumably is when selecting vintages, the principal danger of To Your Good Health lies in these asides. The reader is asked to accept Stuttaford's assessment of each situation. It is hard to escape the conclusion that for him, the bankers, city magnates, and dowagers who pass through his consulting room suffer only from an endearing failing which impinges on no-one else. Real drunks, who do not drink madeira with coffee in the morning, who would not know a bottle of Chateau Lafite if hit on the head with one, and whose whisky drinking is not out of Georgian silver, are vulgar fellows a world away from the author's fantasy. The reader is being seduced into a conspiracy: we are gentlemen, we enjoy fine wine, decent malt; we discriminate, have civilised tastes. I shot that kind of line for years.

Dr Stuttaford is keen to display an historical knowledge and scatters authorities liberally throughout the book. Galen, Hippocrates, and Pliny rub shoulders with Chesterton, Rabelais, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Their views on booze are usually quoted uncritically. I was surprised not to find Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan in the Index: both of them spoke favourably of alcohol. There is no reason to expect medical men to be familiar with Charles II's mistresses, but Faber and Faber fail their author when the Duchess of Portsmouth's name is misspelled in both text and index.

What is this tendentious book for? It seems to me that the only answer is to encourage us to drink. Sensibly, Dr Stuttaford would say. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. What else can you make of this statement in the Introduction? "This tranquilising effect ...has made it (alcohol) a desirable part of any celebratory occasion by allowing us to be our natural selves." There you have it, drink is sexy (consult Macbeth's Porter), it is part of celebration, it empowers, but, more than this, "it allows us to be our natural selves." I am in two minds as to whether this statement is contemptible or pitiful. What is certain is that a man capable of penning such a sentiment has no business influencing attitudes to alcohol. But it makes me worry about Thomas Stuttaford himself. He thinks it is only possible to achieve authenticity by using a mind-affecting drug.

Perhaps this is a cry for help. I have the number of a good counsellor, if Dr Stuttaford needs him.

To your Good Health: The Wise Drinker's Guide is by Published by Faber and Faber.

BOOZE AND THE FAMILY Justifying the moderate drinker carries the risk of encouraging the abusive drinker. Why do it? On the one hand... "An alcoholic drink, because it dulls those parts of the brain which respond to the stress and strains of life, enables the weary worker to shrug off the worries of the day and concentrate on his family" DR THOMAS STUTTAFORD ...and on the other... "Dad drinks and hits Mum. I took an overdose last week - I want to die. I can't talk to Mum because it only adds to her problems. It's all my fault." CINDY, aged 15 "Dad gets drunk every day, he hits me and Mum...we don't provoke him...he broke my arm once. If I have bruises he locks me in the house and stops me going to school. He says that if we ever tell anyone he will kill us...I'm scared...it's getting worse." TRACY, aged 12