ALCOHOL 567 



ALCOLOL FROM A SCIENTIFIC POINT OF VIEW 



By Dr. J. FRANK DANIEL 



UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 



SOME problems permit of a ready and satisfactory solution with 

 but little difficulty, while in fullness others remain obscure for 

 generation upon generation, being resolved slowly and at great pains. 

 In the latter class stand the problems involved in the study of alcohol. 

 Some of these, although investigated for centuries, have been but 

 recently solved or are still in the process of solution. Other associated 

 problems remain which are but little better understood to-day than they 

 were in the time of Aristotle. 



Of this group of problems, solved or in the process of solution, I 

 should like to consider in order the following parts : 



Alcohol: I. Its Discovery and Nature. 



II. The Eelative Toxicity of the Various Alcohols. 



III. The Destiny of Alcohol in the Body. 



IV. The Action of Ethyl Alcohol on the Body -and on its Output of 



Physical and Mental Work. 



I. The Discovery and Nature of Alcohol 



Through many ages nature has been elaborating a substance which 

 has come to affect human progress most profoundly. This substance 

 we to-day call alcohol. Although the existence of alcohol was surmised 

 almost four centuries before the Christian era, yet practically twelve 

 centuries intervened before its extraction, and ten centuries more 

 elapsed before its nature and the biological significance of its origin 

 were fully made out. 



To appreciate the conditions confronting men who attacked prob- 

 lems of the sort in the infancy of science, we should look back to those 

 ages in which natural phenomena called forth extravagant explanations, 

 a day when apparatus and laboratories were unknown and, above all, 

 a time when the scientific momentum, which is ours because they 

 labored, was yet unborn. Under such conditions the work on alcohol 

 was begun. 



Alcohol Early Detected in Wine 



Two important observations were early made concerning wine. 

 The first of these was that wine, unlike water, if thrown into the fire 

 emits a flame. When questioned as to the cause of the phenomenon 

 Aristotle answered that the flame was due to an exhalation contained 

 in the wine. Later, Pliny related that the wine from Falernus Ager 

 blazed up at the contact of a flame — a wine, as Berthelot remarks, evi- 

 dently rich in inflammable exhalation. 



Since men of that period knew that sea water vaporized and con- 



