Alcohol — is it a Food. 



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supports the system iu disease, but enables man to endure 

 fatigue and bear up under protracted exertion. This posi- 

 tion, the truth of which is never questioned by many per- 

 sons, we believe to be essentially false. There are times 

 when alcohol cheers, refreshes, re-invigorates, and in some 

 such cases it does good, but such uses are properly medi- 

 cinal. It is after fatiguing labor and when, no further 

 exertion being called for, we can guard against the effects 

 of reaction, that alcohol is of service; not while we must 

 still labor and can obtain neither food nor rest. We all 

 remember the story of Franklin and the apprentices, and 

 in this anecdote there is doubtless more of truth than of 

 fiction. I do not believe that the report of travellers and 

 explorers ; of those generally who have had sufficient ex- 

 perience to enable them to form an intelligent opinion, 

 will show that the habitual use of alcoholic drinks relieves 

 fatigue or sustains the system when it is exposed to con- 

 tinued hardships. On the contrary I believe that the ex- 

 perience of those who have seen them used in the army and 

 upon ship-board, of those who have observed their effects 

 in polar and in tropical regions, where the greatest fatigue 

 and privations were of necessity endured, will bear out the 

 statement that alcohol has no value as a means of support 

 under such trying circumstances. In confirmation of this 

 view I would call attention to the results observed in the 

 recent English expedition of 75-76, to the polar regions 

 under Captain Xares as stated in a report published in the 

 London Times. According to this report there were in the 

 ship six ' teetotalars' and it appeared that these were far 

 less liable than their mates to scurvy or frost-bite. "In a 

 sledging party of seven, which was away from the ship for 

 eighty-four days, all seccumbed to scurvy except Ayles, 

 the only abstainer among them, and Lieutenant Aldrich 

 who was almost an abstainer. Four others of the abstainers 

 are also referred to as having kept their health perfectly, 

 though they took fully their share in the hard work of the 



