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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



sary to consider them in two distinct classes : 

 1. Those which contain alcohol, i. e., the various 

 wines, spirits, and beers ; and, 2. Those which 

 are non-alcoholic, as tea, coffee, and chocolate. 

 Before I examine the effects of the more com- 

 mon beverages of the first class, it is necessary 

 that I should review briefly certain points in con- 

 nection with what has been called the " Alcohol 

 Controversy." That controversy has turned 

 chiefly on the question whether alcohol is or is 

 not to be regarded as a food. Everybody admits 

 that it is a poisonous agent when administered in 

 large doses, and everybody also admits, except 

 certain irreconcilable enthusiasts, that it is useful 

 as a medicine, under certain conditions, in both 

 large and small doses. On looking over the rec- 

 ords of this dispute, one cannot help being struck 

 with the fact that those who desired to decide 

 the question against alcohol were never, in any 

 of their experiments, content with giving it in 

 moderate quantities, but invariably used large, 

 intoxicating doses, and in the majority of in- 

 stances doses which were actually poisonous; 

 and from its effects in such quantities all their 

 conclusions are deduced. This is certainly not 

 satisfactory, for such a mode of procedure could 

 only have the effect of proving what, I take it, 

 every one is ready and anxious to admit — that 

 the use of alcohol in poisonous or intoxicating 

 doses cannot on any grounds be justified. But 

 it leaves, as I shall hope to show, the moderate 

 and occasional use of alcoholic beverages unaf- 

 fected. 



Years ago Liebig classed alcohol among heat- 

 forming foods. Like starch and sugar, it con- 

 tains carbon and hydrogen, which can undergo a 

 process. of combustion within the organism by the 

 aid of oxygen admitted from without, and thus 

 contribute to maintain the heat of the body — a 

 most important function of food. Of course, in 

 order to prove that alcohol does act thus as a 

 food, it is necessary to show that it undergoes 

 decomposition within the animal body. Some fif- 

 teen or twenty years ago, three French chemists 

 (Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy) originated a series 

 of experiments, from which they concluded that 

 this view of Liebig, that alcohol acts as food, was 

 altogether erroneous. They appealed to their 

 experiments as proving that all the alcohol taken 

 into the system left it unchanged, passing out of 

 the body in the secretions. To use a French 

 expression, alcohol simply " made a promenade 

 around the organism." It was not decomposed. 

 It was not burned within the body. It was not a 

 food. This view was gratefully accepted and 



made the most of by the total abstainers in this, 

 country. It was put forward so authoritatively, 

 and with such an appearance of conclusiveness, 

 that those who had long held a contrary opinion 

 were for the moment staggered. Yet these French 

 chemists were wrong. They had given to dogs 

 enormous doses of alcohol — nine ounces, in one 

 instance, that is, an equivalent to three quarts of 

 sherry. Three quarts of sherry to one dog ! Was 

 it to be wondered at that much unchanged alco- 

 hol appeared in the secretions ? We are indebted 

 to the late Dr. Anstie for an exposure of the fal- 

 lacies of these experimenters. He, in conjunc- 

 tion with Dr. Dupre, proved that alcohol, when 

 given in small and moderate doses, was almost 

 wholly consumed within the organism, and that 

 only a trifling portion passed out of the body in 

 the secretions ; and Anstie's conclusions were 

 confirmed by the experiments of Schulinus. 



So that Liebig's theory that there was a rapid 

 and complete combustion of alcohol within the 

 system turns out to be very near the truth. We 

 may conclude, then, that when alcohol is taken 

 in non-poisonous doses, a small portion is rapidly 

 eliminated by the secreting organs, and the re- 

 mainder is burned within the body as hydro-car- 

 bonaceous food. The oxygen necessary for this 

 combustion, if not thus utilized, would have been 

 expended in the oxidation of the proteine or 

 albumenized tissues of the body, so that in pro- 

 portion to the amount of alcohol oxidized or 

 burned there is a corresponding diminution in the 

 combustion of the nitrogenized tissues. Hence 

 the usefulness of alcohol in some acute febrile 

 diseases, and hence the French expression, ap- 

 plied to alcohol as well as to tea and coffee, that 

 they are boissons d'epargne. It was because of 

 this property of sparing the tissues that Liebig 

 spoke of the use of alcoholic beverages as eco- 

 nomical. If a laboring-man drank a pint or 

 two of beer, he needed much less bread and 

 meat. It also accounts for Dr. Hammond's 

 personal experience related in his " Physiological 

 Researches " (p. 55). He states that, having 

 placed himself on a very insufficient allowance 

 of food, he took daily with each meal half an 

 ounce of alcohol, and under this regimen he 

 found he gained rather than lost weight, and 

 preserved, at the same time, the highest mental 

 and bodily vigor. A case mentioned by Dr. An- 

 stie is to the same effect : •" A male, eighty-three 

 years of age, intemperate for many years, took one 

 bottle of gin per diem for twenty years ; ate only 

 one small fragment of toasted bread in the day." 

 Being acquainted with many other facts of like 



