FOODS AND DIETARIES 345 



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. 



On the other hand, we know that although alcohol may techni- 

 cally be considered as a food, it is a very unsatisfactory food and, 

 as the following statements show, it has an effect on the nervous 

 system which foods do not have. 



Alcohol a Poison. A commonly accepted definition of a poison 

 is that it is any substance which, when taken into the body, tends to 

 cause serious detriment to health or the death of the organism. That 

 alcohol may do this is well known by scientists. The follow- 

 ing quotations show that a large number of very eminent pro- 

 fessors and physicians have this belief. 



" The rather recent experiments of Atwater, which were made under 

 special conditions to exclude everything but the one question of the heat 

 and energy-producing action of alcohol in the human body, have been 

 published and quoted over and over again as showing that it is in all 

 respects a valuable food and not in any way deleterious to the system. 

 The fact that these experiments had no reference to the action of the 

 agent on the circulatory or nervous systems, which are by far its most 

 important effects, is never mentioned. The single truth that alcohol is 

 consumed in the body, producing heat and energy, proves no more that 

 it is a useful food, as one of Professor Atwater's colleagues says, than 

 would the fact that, gunpowder burns up, producing heat and energy, 

 prove it a profitable fuel for the stove." Journal of the American 

 Medical Association, Editorial, Nov. 25, 1899, page 1365. 



" Life is not to be accounted for upon the theory of oxidation pro- 

 cesses, but rather to be viewed under the aspect that with the vital 

 processes is associated a constant consumption of energy and transfor- 

 mation of the same into other forms, work and heat. This puts a new 

 aspect upon the theory that alcohol is a fuel food. Only substances 



