ALCOHOL, 19 
of energy ; alcohol can be made to burn thus within the human 
body to compensate for the wasteful expenditure of animal 
heat in fevers, when digestion is arrested, and fails to furnish 
caloric. Nevertheless, during health only a limited quantity 
of alcohol can be burnt within the body each day, at the rate 
of not more than an ounce and a half of whisky, or brandy ; this 
quantity being well diluted, and taken in doses of half an ounce, 
at intervals of at least four hours. Such a quantity is all that 
the average man of normal temperature can utilise; any 
excess beyond it will be harmful as a positive poison. Then 
again, alcohol is only a false stimulant, its action as such being 
in reality a protest of the heart’s muscular walls against the 
noxious irritant; and such stimulation is invariably followed 
by a corresponding subsequent depression. As a drug, alcohol 
vexes the heart, which then sends blood with a rush to stagnate 
within the outermost blood-vessels in the skin, causing this 
briefly to feel warmer, though the internal body suffers a cold 
enfeeblement of the general circulation. Indeed, this loss of 
heat inside the system is so devitalizing that it often predisposes 
to pneumonia. Thus it comes about that the net result of 
taking alcohol, in whatever form, is to lower the inner tempera- 
ture of the body. It is true that by dilating the blood-vessels of 
the general skin-surface a deceptive sense of warmth is induced 
because of the increased heat given off, for a short time only, 
by radiation, though alcohol does not really keep out the cold, 
but suffers the heat of the body to sensibly escape through the 
skin. During fevers, therefore, alcohol often renders helpful 
service by unlocking the surface blood-vessels, and thus setting 
free the mischievous, superabundant heat. If a person has been 
already exposed to chilling cold, and the blood has been repelled 
into the internal organs so as to stagnate there, with threatened 
congestion, then the timely administration of alcohol in a hot 
drink may save the situation by restoring a proper distribution 
of blood throughout the whole body. So that by all means let 
alcohol be thus taken when the person comes indoors wet, and 
shivering; but it must be carefully avoided when proceeding 
out of doors to encounter frost, and rain, whilst the internal 
temperature would become lowered by any such a dram. 
Alcohol has been proved to possess the power of producing. 
antitoxic effects of an active sort against the tubercular disease 
of consumptive sufferers. If dock labourers who indulge 
