Alcohol ^ is it a Food. 133 



it. But in those cases in whicli there is an extraordinary 

 demand made upon these regenerative powers, as for ex- 

 ample in the repair of injuries resulting from accident or 

 disease, we are enabled to form a pretty correct judgment 

 of the eftects of alcohol upon them. Xow Dr. Carpenter, 

 in his Prize Essay on the Use and Abuse of Alcoholic 

 Liquors, has shown that in those who habitually use alco- 

 holic drinks, union of wounds does not take place so 

 readily by ' first intention,' as in those who abstain from 

 them. He cites the experience of Havelock in India who 

 in his Narrative, referring to the wounded after the victories 

 in India, says: "The medical officers of this arm}- have 

 distinctly attributed to their previous abstinence from 

 strong drink the rapid recovery of the wounded at 

 Ghuznee,^ and also quotes from Atkinson, who in his 

 work on Afghanistan states, more explicitly, that " all the 

 sword cuts, which were very numerous, and many of them 

 very deep, united in a most satisfactory manner, which he 

 decidedly attributed to the men having been without rem 

 for the previous six weeks. ''^ To these statements, so many 

 others of similar bearins: misrbt be added that we seem 

 justified in the belief, — and more especially when the 

 fact that no positive evidence can be adduced to prove that 

 alcohol is capable of assimilation is taken into considera- 

 tion, — that alcohol is not only incajtable of being trans- 

 formed into any of those substances of which the tissues are 

 made up, but that it actually interferes with the nutiitive 

 and reparative processes. As to this view there seems to 

 be now but little if any difference of opinion among recent 

 writers and observers. 



But it has often been urged, if alcohol cannot be trans- 

 formed into nitrogeuized substances, may it not be con- 



* Carpenter, op. cit. p. 136. 

 •Und, p. 137. 



