230 NUTRITIONAL PHYSIOLOGY 



served that the use of alcoholic relishes gives no sanction 

 to drinking apart from meals. 



Alcohol in the stomach has the effect of increasing the 

 local blood-flow, and it is well established that absorp- 

 tion is thereby promoted. Whether it takes its place 

 with the extractives or meat as a chemical agent to 

 excite gastric secretion is not so certain. It is hard to 

 discriminate between the influence which it exercises 

 through the central nervous system and that which it may 

 exert upon the stomach wall in a more direct manner. 

 The maximum favorable effect upon the digestion is pro- 

 duced by a small quantity of alcohol. Larger quantities 

 are notoriously apt to nauseate and to precipitate dis- 

 graceful scenes, all too common in connection with elab- 

 orate banquets. 



Alcohol as a Food. There has been a great deal of 

 opposition to the claim that alcohol can be reckoned a 

 food. It has seemed to many of its antagonists that the 

 admission weakens their position, but this is not neces- 

 sarily the case. ' To say that alcohol may be a food is not 

 to deny that it is a dangerous one. Professor Atwater 

 was roundly censured by leaders of the total abstinence 

 movement for a publication which is really a powerful 

 tract in favor of their position. He had said that alcohol 

 might serve as a food, and all his earnest warnings against 

 it were regarded as discounted. His experimental work 

 on the subject is entirely conclusive. 



The fact has been reiterated that the chief use of food 

 is to undergo oxidation with release of energy. Alcohol 

 in considerable amounts may be oxidized to carbon dioxid 

 and water in the human system. When it is thus oxidized 

 the heat value of each gram is about 7 Calories. There 

 seems to be no provision for the retention of alcohol against 

 a future time of need nor for its conversion into glycogen 

 or fat. Its oxidation is bound to take place with little 

 delay, and it is in this respect not so adaptable to the 

 changing demands of the organism as is carbohydrate. 

 Nevertheless we must grant that it may take its place 



