io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



long life greatly beyond the period at which it would cease if no 

 nourishment is given ; that, during the progress of acute diseases, it 

 very commonly supports not only life, but also the bulk of the body, 

 during many days of abstinence from common foods ; and that, al- 

 though the physician and physiologist fail to explain chemically how 

 it is that the result is brought about, it may, nevertheless, be safely 

 affirmed that the influence exerted over the body by alcohol is, essen- 

 tially, of a food-character, 



" It may be well," observes a writer in the Edhiburgh Review^ 

 " for even advanced and accomplished physiologists to bear in mind 

 that there may be 'more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt 

 of in their philosophy.' There would at least be nothing more star- 

 tling in the discovery that the physiological dogma which affirms that 

 the products of the reduction of comf)lex organic substances (such as 

 alcohol) cannot be employed as the food of animal life had to be 

 reconsidered, and in some particulars reversed, or revised, than there 

 has been in the recent reversal of the Liebig dogma, that nitrfigenous 

 principles alone can be used for constructive purposes, and the simpler 

 hydrocarbons alone for the production of animal warmth." 



And, in this point of view, Dr. Anstie argues that many sub- 

 stances which are ranked as even " poisonous " to the system must 

 not be taken to be absolutely " foreign " to the organism, except in a 

 relative sense, when even such agents as mercury and arsenic, given 

 in small doses for long periods, produce what is termed a tonic influ- 

 ence, improving the quality of the blood and the tissues, and do this 

 in such a way that it is scarcely possible to maintain that they con- 

 tract no organic combination. 



Dr. Anstie fi-equently dwells on the notable fact that in all cases 

 of disease where alcohol is used successfully as a medicinal support 

 as in the case of exhaustive fevers its presence as an alcoholic ema- 

 nation, whether in the breath or in other secretions, is absent alto- 

 gether, as if, in those cases, the whole force of the agent was absorbed 

 in its beneficent operation. He also declares that in such instances 

 its exciting and intoxicating powers appear to be in abeyance, and 

 that the recovery from acute disease where this medicine has been 

 successfully employed is invariably more rapid and complete than it is 

 in altogether similar cases which have been treated without alcohol. 



If alcohol be oyily a heat-producing food, it may be remarked that 

 nowadays Liebig's well-known theory is no longer absolute, since it 

 is established that great labor may be performed for a short period 

 without the use of a nitrogenous diet that is, with one exclusively 

 carbonaceous. Hence, perhaps, the claim of alcohol to constitute a 

 food. Although forming none of the constituents of blood, alcohol 

 limits the combination of those constituents, and in this way it is 

 equivalent to so much blood. As Moleschott says : " He who has little 

 can give but little, if he wish to retain as much as one who is prodi- 



