104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from the left arm, joins with the retiiruing blood from the left side 

 of the head on its way to the heart. It is so greedy for water that it 

 will pick it up from all the watery textures of the body, and deprive 

 them of it, until, by its saturation, it can take up no more, its power 

 of reception being exhausted ; after which it diffuses itself into the 

 current of circulating fluid. When we dilute alcohol with water be- 

 fore drinking it, we quicken its absorption ; and, if we do not dilute it 

 sufficiently, it is diluted in the stomach by the transudation of water in 

 the stomach, until the required reduction for its absorption is effected. 



Now, after an investigation of a very elaborate character, Dr. 

 Anstie and Drs, Thudichum and Dupre have satisfactorily proved 

 that only a very small portion of the spirit which is taken into a liv- 

 ing body is expelled out of that body as alcohol, in the secretions, and 

 that there must be some other means by which the spirit is disposed 

 of in the system. ^In one very remarkable and memorable experiment. 

 Dr. Anstie gave a dog, weighing ten pounds, the liberal dose of two 

 thousand grains of alcohol in ten days, and, on the last day of the ten, 

 he administered ninety-five grains of the spirit as a final dose, and 

 then two hours afterward killed the dog, and immediately subjected 

 the whole body blood, secretion, flesh, membranes, brain and bone 

 to rigorous analysis, and he found in the whole texture of the body 

 only about T6\ grains of spirit. The other 1,976 grains had clearly, 

 therefore, been turned into something else, within the living system. 



These experiments directlv refer to our query the settlement ot 

 the food-power of alcohol as a doctrine of physiological science. 



Before reasoning out this j^roj^osition, we must state certain facts 

 which it seems impossible to reconcile Avith any other theory than 

 that alcohol is a food. Dr. Anstie relates the case of an old soldier 

 who was under his care at the Westminster Hospital in 1861, who 

 had lived for twenty years upon a diet composed of a bottle of un- 

 sweetened gin and " one small finger-length of toasted bread " per day 

 and who maintained the structures of his body for this long period 

 upon that very remarkable regimen. Similarly an old Roman soldier 

 admired by the Emperor Augustus, when asked how be managed to 

 keep up such a sj^lendid development, replied Intils vino, extiis oleo 

 " With wine within, and oil without." 



Dr. Robert D'Lalor tells us that some thirty years ago, in foreign 

 climes and in unhealthy districts, he lived for two years upon wine and 

 brandy, with very little solid food ; and at the end of the period was 

 neither perceptibly poisoned, starved, nor emaciated. Laborers, nav- 

 vies, coal-heavers, and others, who take no beer, eat nearly as much 

 again as those who take a moderate allowance of beer. Dr. D'Lalor 

 declares that he knows many vigorous and healthy men in London, 

 not only waiters, potmen, publicans, and the like, but tradesmen and 

 merchants, who eat but little solid iood, but have plenty of wine, 

 porter, gin, etc. 



