300 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
in noticing the book, to confine our attention to one chapter alone, a9 it is 
really of most importance, and as the editor puts it forward as entirely new, 
the other sections of the work being merely reprints. This chapter is that 
upon the Physiology of Alcohol, and we may say of it at once that it is a 
fair and tolerably impartial, if a little superficial, account of the bearings of 
the question, whether alcohol is a poison or a food. In his account of the 
various species of alcoholic drink the author is perfectly correct in his state- 
ment of the nature of the three classes of alcohol — that for the scent manu- 
facturer, that for the apothecary, and that for ordinary consumption ; that 
form which is sent out to be consumed among savage tribes we know 
nothing of. But in his statement as to the effect which alcohol produces 
in experiments upon the frog’s foot, &c., we differ from him totally. We 
are quite aware that such statements have been made by scientific men : 
that, for example, weak spirits cause an increase in the circulation of frogs’ 
feet, and strong spirits absolutely abolish it, and totally destroy the texture 
of the part. Such experiments are totally valueless as practical tests. We 
know, from the result of many experiments on the subject, that the effects 
of alcohol on the frog’s foot are most uncertain, and that often it requires 
strong spirits of wine to produce such an effect as that described. Besides, 
when it is removed the part quickly recovers. And again, why should we 
calculate that the same thing would occur in the circulation of a warm- 
blooded animal as happens in a cold-blooded one P We do not object to 
such experiments ; but what we do object to is the wholesale fashion in 
which some too quick-witted individual proceeds to draw most mathematical 
conclusions from these results. Again, the author can clearly not have been 
a medical man, or else he must have been wonderfully ignorant when he 
wrote such a sentence as the following one in connection with the absorp- 
tion of alcohol. He says, “ It ts not absorbed through the same channels whereby 
the food gains access to the blood; the villi do not take it up, the laeteals contain 
no appreciable trace of it.” Surely no medical man would have fallen into so 
dire a mistake as to imagine that all absorption save that of alcohol takes 
place through the laeteals. Why, the thing is absurd on the very face of it. 
Allow us to state that an exceptional quantity of matter, merely the fatty 
materials, are taken up through the laeteals; and all really nitrogenous 
matter, your flesh meat, sugar, bread and potatoes, pass not through the 
laeteals, but by the very same channels through which the alcohol passes 
— by the blood-vessels that surround the stomach. 
Having pointed out so great an error, it is of course plain that the author 
has not been medically educated, and therefore we must receive many other 
of his statements with caution. But we entirely agree with him in 
his general result, that alcohol should be taken in moderation, and that 
less should be indulged in by plethoric and excitable persons than by 
lymphatic temperaments, as they are called. In all that relates to the 
general effects of alcoholic stimulants, we are entirely in unison with 
the author of this chapter ; and it is only when he becomes physiological 
that we are compelled to urge disagreement. For instance, he says that 
part of the alcohol is carried off ; to this we of course agree ; but when he 
tells us it is by the alimentary canal, we are at a loss to understand him ; 
if he said by the kidneys and skin, we could at once have admitted his asser- 
