INFLUENCE ON THE HUMAN SYSTEM. 97 



The less I am engaged in brain or hand work 

 the less I smoke, and vice versa. I make up for 

 the extravagant cost by scrupulously denying 

 myself other pleasures and luxuries, rarely drink- 

 ing wine or spirits, and then only for the aid of 

 carbon when the lungs are to be exposed to the full 

 front of oxygen in the cold frosty breeze.* My 



•5^ Having alluded to this natural property of alcohol in 

 the Introduction, perhaps it may be useful to explain my 

 views on the subject. A complete and practical knowledge 

 of the two grand divisions of all the elements required by 

 the living animal for the functions of life may be acquired 

 by referring to Liebig's ' Letters on Chemistry.' I must 

 here confine myself to the elements of respiration, or rather to 

 one of them, included in the terms wine, beer, spirits. The 

 reasons given in the Introduction are so cogent, so all- 

 important to the normal continuance of health, that I feel 

 compelled to believe, in advance of Liebig, that alcohol is 

 absolutely generated in the digestive process of all animals. 

 Startling as the theory may seem, the consideration of cor- 

 roborating facts may, perhaps, induce the reader to think it 

 probable, if not certain. It is well known that all the vege- 

 tables we eat contain starch, all the fruits contain sugar. 

 Now starch can easily be converted into sugar ; the process 

 of malting is a familiar instance. Barley is merely soaked 

 in water, spread out on a floor in heaps, where it heats and 

 forms sugar. The temperature which it attains at that 

 result is about 10^ above the atmosphere — say 70'^ F. Now 

 if we take this malt-sugar, or cane-sugar, or the sugar-juice 

 of the grape, adding water to the former, and keep them at 

 a temperature of about 70^, the same sugar will be changed 

 into alcohol, which we easily obtain by distillation, under 

 the respective names of whisky from barley, oats, rye, and 



H 



