672 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 
constituted no reason why men should not take alcohol, for narcotics were wanted 
for hyperactive minds. Sugar in excess produced fatty degeneration of the tissues, 
as well as excess of alcohol, and cirrhosis of the liver was far rarer in Scotland than 
in England, while the consumption of alcohol was at least equal in proportion in 
the two countries. Alcohol had a special value as a food, for it was so easily 
absorbed. The objections to it were that it was an expensive type of food, and 
that it might lead to a continuous and undesirable habit. But it was a question 
whether this habit of taking small quantities was sufficient to justify us in com- 
pletely stopping its use. 
Sir Vicror Horstey said that the scientific examination of alcohol should 
be an accurate determination of its so-called stimulating effects, and, if such 
really existed, how soon did the paralysing and narcotic stage begin? Dr. Dixon’s 
results could not be accepted until it was proved that the alcohol perfused through 
the tissue was actually used up. Further, the well-known effect of alcohol in 
increasing the diastolic relaxation of the walls of the heart could not be regarded 
as either a stimulation effect or an advantage to the circulation. With respect to 
the ergograph as a method of investigation, the majority of investigators using 
it decided against alcohol, but he thought it was not a sufficiently delicate or 
accurate method. In medicine,as Dr. Sturge and he had shown in a recently pub- 
lished book, alcohol was during the last thirty years being given up as a stimulant, 
oWing to its inefficiency and its serious depressant after-effects. This change of 
view on the part of the medical profession was a true scientific result based on 
many years’ observation. As alcohol was thus found wanting, physiologically and 
therapeutically, its abolition ought to be considered from the point of view of 
social science. The Physical Deterioration Committee appointed by the House of 
Commons proved that the first greatest evil, socially, was defective housing, and 
that the second was alcohol. From patriotic reasons, therefore, total abstinence 
should be our ideal and practice. Yet the majority took alcohol for its so-called 
pleasurable effects, the only results of which were natural. inefficiency, poverty, 
vice, disease, and crime. 
Mr. C. J. Bonp exhibited and explained a series of diagrammatic curves showing 
that the consumption of alcohol, which had dropped gradually at different periods 
between 1845 and 1900, was intimately connected with the rise and fall in the 
nation’s commercial prosperity, and had a certain connection with the accumulating 
scientific evidence as to the small value of alcohol as a food. The rise and fall in 
its consumption also had an effect upon the number of inmates in our asylums. 
From 1900 to the present day there had been a continuous decline in this nation’s 
consumption per head of alcohol, which was a tendency none ought to deplore. 
Dr. Rerp Hunt, of Washington, described a series of experiments on young 
guinea-pigs, to which small doses of a few cubic centimetres of 5 or 10 per cent. 
alcohol solution were daily given with their food. On four generations, over a 
period of two years, it was shown that they grew as quickly, reached maturity as 
soon, were just as fertile, as were those to which alcohol was not given. There 
was never a symptom of intoxication, no loss of weight, and no pathological 
changes. The comparison was strictly analogous to human beings who were 
‘moderate drinkers.’ Nobody seemed to have discussed deeply the question of 
the increased tolerance for alcohol in the bodies of animals or meu who had 
become accustomed to its presence. There was an increased power produced on 
the part of the physical body to oxidise aleohol, In respect of the comparison of 
sugar and alcohol, however, he had found that, while sugar increased resistance 
to poison, alcohol lessened it. He’ had made experiments with guinea-pigs and 
acetonitril, and alcohol seemed to lessen the resistance to the formation of prussic 
acid from the acetonitril introduced into the body. Most probably the continued 
use of alcohol produved, he thought, definite physiological changes in the body 
processes, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil. 
Dr. WALLER closed the discussion, which he characterised as having been of 
very great interest and importance. He hoped that at the next meeting of the 
Association more positive answers and more definite statistics would be given in 
respect of the at present doubtful questions raised. There ought to be more 
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