270 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



additional equivalent of water. If now we could effect the inverse reaction, 

 grape sugar would be transformed into cane sugar, and as the former can 

 easily be obtained from woody fiber or starch, the inverse process would ena- 

 ble us to transform sawdust into cane sugar, or table sugar. 



M. Bertholet has moreover submitted his experiments to another carburet 

 of hydrogen "propylene." Submitted to the action of sulphuric acid, and 

 to successive distillations, it gave a spirituous liquor which presents the most 

 striking analogy with ordinary alcohol, and which from this quasi-identity has 

 been called propylic alcohol. 



According to Marx, this discovery, put forward by Berthelot, was made 

 twenty-seven years ago by Hennel, who, in the Philosophical Transactions for 

 1828, p. 365, says: "By combining olefiant gas with sulphuric acid, we may 

 form sulphovinic acid, from which we may obtain at pleasure, by varying the 

 circumstances of decomposition, either alcohol or ether." The method of 

 performing this experiment now recommended is to pass common coal gas 

 through sulphuric acid, and then to add water in excess. 



ACTION OF ALCOHOL UPON THE STOMACH. 



The following facts respecting the action of alcohol upon the stomach and 

 tissues, communicated by Dr. A. A. Hayes of Boston, are somewhat duTerent 

 from the generally-received opinions on this subject : 



Undiluted alcohol consists of 4 equivalents of carbon, 6 of hydrogen, and 2 

 of oxygen. This substance in its undiluted state, introduced into the stomach, 

 causes death, and is ranked by toxicologists among the narcoto-acrid poisons. 

 In a diluted state, mixed with from one to eight times its volume of water, it 

 represents the active principles of nearly all the alcoholic liquors. Leaving 

 out of view the volatile aromatic oils, the sugar, the vegetable matter, etc., of 

 the distilled and fermented liquors, we have to consider the mixed vapor of 

 alcohol and water, exhaling in the body at the temperature of 98 Fahrenheit. 

 This vapor, when it comes in contact with oxygen, either as a gas or dissolved 

 in fluids, undergoes a rapid change, resulting in the formation of aldehyde, 

 which consists of 4 equivalents of carbon, 4 of hydrogen, and 2 of oxygen. 



This substance is the uniform product of the exposure of the mixed vapor 

 of alcohol and water, in contact with extended and porous surfaces, to the 

 smallest quantity of oxygen the alcoholic vapor can combine with at 98 

 Fahrenheit. 



The evidence of its production in the system obtained by Ducheck and 

 others, is sustained by appropriate chemical experiments. As alcohol cor- 

 rugates the tissues and coagulates the blood, it does not probably pass into 

 the circulation (and in experiments which seem to show its existence in the 

 blood, etc., aldehyde was probably mistaken for alcohol, which it very nearly 

 resembles). Aldehyde boils at 71 Fahrenheit, and therefore exists in the 

 system only as a vapor, capable, if restrained, of exerting a high tension. Its 

 affinity for oxygen is very strong, and by the union of one of its equivalents 

 of hydrogen with oxygen, water is formed, and the substance is changed to 

 acetous acid. Probably the oxydation is carried one step further in the body, 



