TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 669 
the different phenomena leading up from different beginnings, by different routes 
to the same end. 
These theses are shown in a consecutive review of the changes in a normally 
dividing cell. 
Tn the complex process taken as a whole we can find no promise of an explana- 
tion by the exclusive play of physical and chemical processes known outside the 
living organism. Still more is the history incompatible with a reference to any 
one single dominating force, such as osmosis (Leduc), or changes in electrostatic 
potential due to transformations of colloids (Ralph R. Lillie, G. Mann, Angel 
Gallardo), 
5. Report on the ‘ Metabolic Balance Sheet’ of the Individual Tissues. 
See Reports, p. 401. 
MONDAY, AUGUST 5. 
Discussion on the Physiological and Therapeutical Uses of Alcohol. 
Professor Ousuny said that, though the exaggerations of anti-alcoholists had 
produced a reaction in the public mind, the uses of alcohol in medicine in the 
past had been entirely erroneous. He proposed to confine his observations to the 
action of alcohol on nutrition, on the brain, and on the circulation. There was an 
idea that alcohol both improved digestion and acted as a food itself; but a large 
number of investigations had not been able to confirm the idea of the improve- 
ment of the digestive processes as a whole, though sometimes they acted more 
quickly in individual cases. Alcohol might sometimes increase the taste for food, 
which was no doubt of great importance, and so improve gastric secretion ; yet, in 
general, there was no greater amount of food absorbed in the day whether alcohol 
was or was not used, because the increased gastric juice was devoid of or poor in 
ferments, and could scarcely promote the preparation of food for absorption. When 
moderation was departed from, the whole of the digestive processes were dis- 
organised. While the usefulness of alcohol in treating some digestive disorders 
mizht still be uncontroverted, for, its effects were very complex, Binz’s dictum 
that the healthy stomach needed no stomachic, and therefore no alcohol, must be 
the standpoint of the physician to-day. But it might be argued that the present 
artificial conditions of life necessitated measures unnecessary in a more healthful 
environment. Did not the jaded appetite demand exceptional measures, and might 
not wine be used to render food palatable and promote gastric secretion and 
digestion, just as other condiments, like mustard, are employed? The answer was 
that the objection to alcohol did not arise wholly from its effect on digestion, but 
from the tendency towards the habit being formed and from the specific action of 
alcohol on the brain. In respect to the food-value of alcohol, experiments over 
many years had shown that over 95 per cent. ingested underwent combustion in 
the tissues and was utilised by them as a source of energy for muscular strength 
and body-heat. Alcohol was therein strictly comparable to sugar, which was also 
an alcohol, though of a more complex nature. And, in fact, the more closely the 
metabolism under alcohol was examined, the more clearly was it seen to conform 
to that under an equivalent amount of carbohydrate ; and it seemed to him that 
the protagonists in the fight against alcohol could only harm their cause by still 
refusing to accept these results, for the recognition that alcohol resembled sugars 
and fats in its fate in the tissues by no means implied that it was a suitable food 
in disease or in health. The same was true of vinegar, or even of morphine, under 
1 Reprinted from The Times, August 6, 1907. 
