1884.] 
Analyses of Books. 
745 
approach to a perfedt food. It is to be regretted that obstinate 
prejudice prevents its use for human food in Britain. The potato 
he places low in the dietary scale, and deplores the fadt that 
English people look on all other vegetables as mere luxuries. 
The lentil he considers the most nutritious, as well as the most 
digestible, of all forms of vegetable food. 
When speaking of alcoholic drinks, the author points out that 
no natural wine can contain more than 14 per cent of alcohol, 
since at this point fermentation is arrested. He denounces the 
increasing use of the rank, coarse potato-spirit of Prussia, loaded 
with “ fusel ” for the fortification of natural wines and the manu- 
facture of totally spurious ones. 
On the subject of alcoholic drinks Dr. Willoughby takes a judi- 
cious mean path. Whilst utterly condemning their common 
random use, especially on an empty stomach, he insists that they 
have their time and place. Alcohol “ undoubtedly checks meta- 
bolism, and much nonsense has been written on this point, even 
by such men as Dr. A. Carpenter, as if this process could not be 
too active. ” The fallacious character of the conclusions of 
Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy is shown. These experimentalists, 
‘ if they deserve the name, dosed men and other animals with 
enormous quantities of alcohol, and because they could detect a 
certain quantity in the urine, &c., inferred that none of it was 
consumed.” 
Cocoa, when freed from a portion of its fat, the author con- 
siders almost a perfect food, but he deprecates the common 
practice of mixing it with starch. 
He protests against the common and increasing use of ice and 
iced water, which interfere with digestion, and may even give a 
serious shock to the nerve centres. At the same time he exposes 
the fallacy that ice-water is always pure. It once fell to our lot 
to examine the feasibility of a scheme for purifying the sewage of 
large towns by freezing. We found that the ice retained a large 
share, not only of the suspended, but of the dissolved pollutions. 
The nutritive value of Liebig’s extract of meat is pronounced 
less than nothing, since its constituents actually accelerate meta- 
bolism. 
On the use of milk the author gives the caution that foot and 
mouth disease is diredtly communicable by this secretion. As 
regards tubercular disease the evidence is less decisive, though 
there is strong reason to believe that danger really exists if the 
milk is used regularly. The flesh of animals “ should be con- 
demned unconditionally when evidence is had of cattle plague, 
epizootic pneumonia, sheep-pox, acute rheumatism, pig-typhoid 
and scarlatina, erysipelas, anthrax, and trichina.” 
Under the head of adulteration our author shows the short- 
coming of the existing laws. Thus no adtion can be taken against 
the vendors of the so-called “ French Coffee,” or “ Coffee as in 
France,” — the most disgraceful falsehood uttered since Chaucer 
VOL. VI. (third series) 3 D 
