98 TOBACCO : ITS HISTORY. 



habitual beverage is very mild " family ale," 

 and pure chocolate, which I get made expressly 



wheat ; rum from cane-sugar ; and brandy from grape-juice 

 sugar. All malt liquors being retained in that condition, in 

 like manner contain alcohol, the result of fermentation. 

 Excepting the sugar still remaining in the latter, all these 

 fluids owe their beneficial effects entirely to the alcohol 

 "vrhich they contain. Their flavour has nothing whatever 

 to do with it ; nay, it may be owing to substances positively 

 injurious to the body. Now the natural heat of the body is 

 precisely adapted, in the healthy state, to efiect a similar 

 fermentation after having changed the starch into sugar, 

 "which last is constantly found in the blood. That alcohol 

 has not been found seems to result simply from the fact that 

 it must be sought in arterial blood, or blood which has not 

 lost a portion of its carbon in transitu through the lungs in 

 the respiratory process. As if to confirm this theory, a 

 French chemist has lately discovered that the liver secretes 

 sugar as well as bile. And this fact answers the objection 

 that may be made in the case of carnivorous animals, which 

 consume no substance containing those elements of the respi- 

 ratory function; their liver supplies the element. Besides, 

 every carnivorous animal instantly kills and sucks the blood 

 of its herbivorous victim at the 7ieck, apparently for the 

 purpose of imbibing the fluid with its normal alcohol and 

 certainly sugar. We have hitherto attributed this sudden 

 infliction of death to a merciful ordination of Providence. 

 Without questioning such ordination, I may be permitted to 

 prefer an explanation of the fact more in accordance M^ith 

 the wonderful harmony of creation. I may further add, 

 that the alcohol of the blood may, as in artificial circum- 

 stances, have passed into the acetic fermentation in the 

 state of disease, and even to the putrefactive. Many facts in 

 pathology seem to warrant the supposition, as exhibited in 

 the morbid animal secretions. 



It is clear that these views apply directly to that dreadful 

 malady consumption. Cod-liver oil owes all its efficacy to its 



