326 HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY 



Alcohol. — The question of the use of alcohol has been of 

 late years a matter of absorbing interest and importance among 

 physiologists. Dr. Atwater performed a series of very^ careful 

 experiments by means of the respiration calorimeter, to ascertain 

 if alcohol is of use to the body as food.^ In these experiments, 

 the subjects were given, instead of their daily allotment of carbo- 

 hydrates and fats, enough alcohol to supply the same amount of 

 energy that these foods would have given. The amount was calcu- 

 lated to be about two and one half ounces per day, about as much 

 as would be contained in a bottle of light wine.^ This alcohol was 

 administered in small doses six times during the day. Professor 

 Atwater's results may be summed up briefly as follows: — 



1. The alcohol administered was almost all oxidized in the 

 body. 



2. The potential energy in the alcohol was transformed into heat 

 or muscular work. 



3. The body did about as well with the rations including alcohol 

 as it did without it. 



The committee of fifty eminent men appointed to report on the 

 physiological aspects of the drink problem, reported that a large 

 number of scientific men state that they are in the habit of taking 

 alcoholic liquor in small quantities, and many report that they do 

 not feel harm thereby. A number of scientists seem to agree that, 

 within limits, alcohol may be a kind of food, although a very poor 

 food. The following statements support this view: — 



"The conclusion to which all the evidence points is that alcohol is a food, 

 and in certain circumstances, such as febrile conditions, it may be a very- 

 useful food; but in health, when other kinds of food are abundant, it is 

 unnecessary, and as it interferes with oxidation, it is an inconvenient kind 

 of food." — T. Lauder-Brunton, A Text-book of Pharmacology, Thera- 

 peutics and Materia Medica (London, 1887), page 768. 



"If oxidized even to a small extent, and the evidence, as indicated, 

 points to the oxidation of by far the larger proportion of it, ninety five 

 per cent alcohol must be regarded in the scientific sense as a food. . . . 



* Alcohol is made up of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. It is very easily oxidized, 

 but it cannot, as is shown by the chemical formula, be of use to the body in tissue 

 building because of its lack of nitrogen. 



^ Alcoholic beverages contain the following proportions of alcohol : beer, from 

 2 to 5 per cent; wine, from 10 to 20 per cent; liquors, from 30 to 70 per cent. 

 Patent medicines frequently contain as high as 60 per cent alcohol. 



