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Beverages, including Chocolate. Cases 65-69.—These 
are represented by both the alcoholic and non-alcoholic 
classes. Of the latter, one of the most important is pure 
or nearly pure drinking water obtainable from the hollow 
leaf-stems of the traveler’s palm, from the stems of some 
tropical vines, from young cocoanuts, and some other 
plant parts. Other non-alcoholic beverages represented 
are tea, coffee, maté or Paraguay tea, and various fruit 
juices. Of the alcoholic group, malt liquors: such as beer 
and ale, many wines and distilled liquors are shown. In 
our Guide to the Economic Museum may be found suitable 
references to the origin and manufacture of these beverages 
and to their special effects on the human system. 
Proximate Principles or Plant Constituents. Cases 70- 
75.—These cases contain the most valuable, as well as 
the most instructive set of collections in our Museum. 
A “proximate principle” of a plant, or animal, is any sub- 
stance having a definite and fixed chemical composition 
as it exists naturally in the living body. As illustrations 
of such substances, we may mention starch, sugar, cellulose, 
saponin, castor-oil, and quinine. It will be noted that 
they represent nutrient as well as medicinal substances. 
In fact, it is the proximate principles of plants which 
give to them any useful properties that they possess when 
absorbed into the human system. When any vegetable 
food is eaten, it is only its nutrient proximate principles 
which are extracted and absorbed by the digestive organs, 
the remainder being excreted as waste. When vegetable 
substances are used as medicines, a similar process takes 
lace. The medicinal constituent or constituents are 
extracted by the system and produce their medicinal 
effects, either on the entire body or on the particular tissue 
or organ for which they have their selective affinity, the 
rest of the plant being non-assimilant. It is often pre- 
ferable, instead of giving the entire vegetable substance, 
either as a food or medicine, to extract the useful proximate 
principles and use them in their purified form. This very 
