Make that a double

Doctors plugged an Italian tourist into a drip-feed of vodka to save him at a hospital in Australia that ran out of the medicinal alcohol it would normally have used for treatment.

The 24-year-old Italian was brought to Mackay Base Hospital in northeastern Queensland and was diagnosed as having ingested a large quantity of ethylene glycol, a common ingredient of anti-freeze that can cause renal failure.

The man was given pharmaceutical-grade alcohol when he arrived, but the hospital's supplies soon ran out. So they went out and bought a case of vodka.

''We decided the next best way to get alcohol into the man's system was by feeding him vodka through a naso gastric tube,'' a doctor said.

''The patient was drip-fed about three standard drinks an hour for three days in the intensive care unit,''