7 
last few years, but it may be safely said that the older views are still 
generall}^ current in medical circles and medical literature. Thus, 
the belief was formerly quite general that alcohol has a specific action 
in retarding the metabolism of body material, both fat and proteid; 
alcohol in moderate quantities was said to prevent waste” or ‘‘con- 
serve the tissues.” Thus, the obesity so often found in alcoholics 
was attributed to a direct interference with the oxidation of fats ; the 
increased excretion of uric acid, observed after alcohol, was attrib- 
uted to diminished oxidation — the view then being held that urea 
was normally formed from uric acid and that the processes of oxida- 
tion involved were retarded by alcohol. “Later as the functions of 
the nonnitrogenous nutrients of food came to be better understood 
and the fact established that alcohol is oxidized, as they (the non- 
nitrogenous nutrients) are, in the body, became fully established, 
the view has become common that its effect in retarding or pro- 
tecting metabolism is to be explained by its action as food rather 
than as a drug — that, in other words, it tends, by its ovm oxidation, 
to prevent the oxidation of other materials.” ® According to these 
newer views the obesity is due to an excess of food; i. e., the food 
remains unoxidized not because the body is rendered incapable of 
oxidizing it, but because an excess of more easil}^ oxidizable food is 
pro^dded.^ The argument of diminished oxidation based on the 
increased excretion of uric acid is still supported, but in a form very 
different from the original. As this is about the onl}" specific instance ^ 
in which such an action is attributed to alcohol a few words may be 
devoted to it. A brief review of the current views on the formation 
of uric acid will make this supposed relation clear. Uric acid is 
believed to arise from the nucleic acids of either the food or the tissue 
(and from h^^poxanthin, of unknown origin, of the muscle), that 
having the former origin being the “exogenous,” that of the latter, 
the “endogenous,” uric acid. A specific intracellular enzyme — 
nuclease — hydrolyzes nucleic acids with the production of purin 
bases and other substances; the guanin and adenin thus formed are 
transformed under the influence of other specific enzymes — guanase 
and adenase — into xanthin and h^^poxanthin, respectively; hypoxan- 
thin is converted, by means of an oxidase, into xanthin and this, by 
“Atwater, Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem, Vol. II. 
& Bunge attributes the effect of alcohol in causing obesity to its effect upon the brain 
which makes the person indisposed to muscular exercise (Leheb. der physiol, v. 2, p. 
538, 1905. 
c The experiments of Simonowsky and Schoumoff (Pfliiger’s Archiv, v. 33, p. 251; 
1883-84) on the inhibiting action of alcohol upon the oxidation in the body of benzol 
to phenol are often quoted; apparently, however, no conclusions can be drawn from 
them on account of the inexactness of the method used for determining the phenol. 
24417— No. 33—07 2 
