THE ACTION OF ALCOHOL 553 



alcohol can only harm their cause by still refusing to accept 

 these results. For the recognition that alcohol resembles sugars 

 and fats in its fate in the tissues by no means implies that it 

 is a suitable food in disease or in health. The same is true 

 of vinegar and even of morphine under certain conditions. 

 Before an oxidisable substance can be contemplated as a 

 substitute, therefore, it must be shown that, given in quantities 

 which have any significance in calories, it has no greater 

 possibilities for harm than normal foods. Can alcohol be taken 

 without toxic effects on the tissues in general, quite apart from 

 those on the brain and more specialised organs ? On this 

 point experiment has shown that when alcohol is substituted 

 for other forms of food in persons unaccustomed to its use, 

 it sometimes fails to act as an equivalent for some days, during 

 which the deficiency has to be made up by the combustion of 

 other available sources of energy. This has been supposed 

 to indicate some specific toxic action of alcohol on the tissues ; 

 but there are grounds for believing that alcohol does not 

 stand alone in this relation, but that the same phenomenon 

 occurs when other unaccustomed but unimpeachable forms of 

 food are suddenly substituted for those which the tissues have 

 hitherto consumed. In this point, then, alcohol appears to behave 

 in the same way as other nitrogen-free foods. 



But another series of investigations has shown that alcohol 

 leaves the tissues in an impaired state in regard to the measures 

 which the organism normally takes to protect itself from 

 injuries either by living organisms or by poisons. No experi- 

 ments were needed to show that the abuse of alcohol lessens 

 the resistance to invasion by pathogenic organisms ; the records 

 of pneumonia in our hospitals and of cholera in the East 

 indicate this beyond the shadow of a doubt. But these fail 

 to show beyond question that the habitual use of alcohol in 

 small quantities, or its therapeutic use, has this effect ; and the 

 whole interest of the question at present lies in the dietetic 

 use of alcohol as contrasted with the drunkard's abuse of it. 

 A number of animal experiments on the subject have been 

 performed by inoculations of pathogenic bacteria, or of their 

 toxines, before or after the administration of alcohol, the mortality 

 being compared with that of animals inoculated in the same 

 way but not treated with alcohol. In these the results have 

 almost uniformly been arrayed against the use of alcohol, but, 



