NATURE AND DESTINATION OF FOOD. 117 



of foreign spirits; 18,327,104 gallons of wine; 1,070,844,942 gallons of 

 beer; and about 18,500,900 gallons of cider and British wine were con- 

 sumed. The proportion of Alcohol in Beer varies from 1 to 12 per cent.; 

 in the light wines of France and Germany from X-15 per cent., and in the 

 stronger Spanish wines from 15 to 25 per cent. Besides Alcohol, all wines 

 contain certain volatile Ethers, and more or less of the Acetic, Tartaric, 

 and Tannic Acids. Sugar and Extractives are also commonly present. The 

 use of Alcohol, in combination with water and with organic and saline com- 

 pounds, in the various forms of " fermented liquors," deserves particular 

 notice, on account of the numerous fallacies which are in vogue respecting 

 it. In the first place, it may be safely affirmed that Alcohol cannot answer 

 any one of those important purposes for which the use of Water is required 

 in the system ; and that, on the other hand, it tends to antagonize many of 

 those purposes, by its power of precipitating most of the organic compounds, 

 whose solution in water is essential to their appropriation by the living 

 body. Secondly, the ingestion of alcoholic liquors cannot supply anything 

 which is essential to the due nutrition of the system; since we find not only 

 individuals, but whole nations maintaining the highest vigor and activity, 

 both of body and mind, without ever employing them as an article of diet. 

 Thirdly, there is no reason to believe that Alcohol, in any of its forms, can 

 become directly subservient to the nutrition of the tissues; for it may be 

 certainly affirmed that, in common with non-azotized substances in general, 

 it is incapable of transformation into albuminous compounds; and there is 

 no sufficient evidence that even Fatty matters can be generated in the body 

 at its expense. Fourthly, the experiments of Austie and Dupre show that 

 when Alcohol is consumed in moderate quantities, as of two ounces in di- 

 vided doses, in the course of the day, the merest traces only are eliminated 

 by the excretions. There can be little doubt, therefore, that it undergoes 

 oxidation in the system. 1 And M. Dupre has shown that weight for weight 

 Alcohol evolves about four times the amount of heat or actual energy that 

 is evolved by lean beef. 2 Fifthly, the operation of Alcohol upon the living 

 body is essentially that of a stimulus; increasing for a time, like other stim- 

 uli, the vital activity of the body, and especially that of the nervo-muscular 

 apparatus, so that a greater effect may often be produced in a given time 

 under its use than can be obtained without it; but being followed by a cor- 

 responding depression of power, which is the more prolonged and severe in 

 proportion as the previous excitement has been greater. The results of the 

 researches of Ringer, 3 Anstie and Dupre, Binz, and others, show that Alco- 



1 And this accounts for the fact that some persons who consume large quantities 

 of fermented liquors become very fat; the hyclrocarbonaceous matters in the system 

 being prevented from undergoing the combustive process to which they would other- 

 wise be subject. Much of the fatty deposit in intemperate persons has the char- 

 acter of " fatty degeneration ;'' the tendency to which is very marked in persons of 

 this class. 



2 iMM. Durov, Lallemand, and Perrin, Du role de 1'Alcool et des Anesthetiques 

 dans POrganisme, I860, Dr. Marcet, Chronic Alcoholic Intoxication, IS'J'2, and Dr. 

 E. Smith, Cyclical Changes, and more recently, Dr. Ssubotin, Zeitschrift fiir Biol- 

 ogie, Band vii, 1871, p. 361, thought that a considerable quantity of the alcohol 

 ingested was discharged unchanged : but as Anstie and Dupre have shown in their 

 papers in the Lancet, 18t>5, and Practitioner, 1872, 1873 in which references will 

 be found to the principal authors on this interesting subject this view arose either 

 from erroneous observations and inefficient modes of testing for alcohol, or to very 

 large doses being administered to small animals like the rabbit, in which case, no 

 doubt, a considerable quantity is eliminated unchanged. See also in relation to this 

 subject Dr. Kichardson, Reports Brit. Assoc. for the Adv. of Sci., 1864 and 1819; 

 Schulinus, Archiv f. Heilk., 1866; Parkes and Wollowicz, Proceed. Hoy. Sue., 1870. 



3 Lancet, 1866, vol. ii, p. '208. 



