$16  Therapeutic  Properties  of  Alcohol.     { A^ober Pi897 m> 
ported  annually.  The  source  of  this  supply  is  abundant,  and  as  the 
industry  develops  it  is  likely  to  enter  more  into  competition  with 
ordinary  camphor.  Neither  of  these  plants  can  be  grown  in  the 
United  States,  except  possibly  in  southern  Florida,  without  protec- 
tion against  cold. 
Approved  : 
James  Wilson, 
Secretary  of  Agriculture. 
Washington,  D.  C,  August  12,  1897. 
J   
ON  THE  THERAPEUTIC  PROPERTIES  OF  ALCOHOL 
AND  THE  REASONS  WHY  THE  FERMENTED  AND 
DISTILLED  LIQUORS  USED  AS  BEVERAGES 
SHOULD  NOT  BE  RECOGNIZED  IN  THE 
PHARMACOPCEIA   AS  MEDICINAL 
AGENTS.1 
By  N.  S.  Davis,  A.M.,  M.D.,  LL.D. 
Pure  ethyl  alcohol,  undiluted,  is  regarded  by  all  chemists  and  in- 
telligent physicians  as  an  active  poison,  rapidly  destructive  of  both 
vegetable  and  animal  life  whenever  brought  into  contact  with  either. 
The  presence  of  absolute  alcohol  in  contact  with  any  living  tissue 
immediately  arrests  all  natural  metabolic  and  vital  processes  in  such 
tissue,  and  causes  it  to  become  corrugated  or  shrunken  and  dead. 
Swallowing  absolute  alcohol,  undiluted,  as  quickly  destroys  the 
vitality  of  the  membranes  of  the  mouth,  throat  and  stomach,  and 
kills  the  individual,  as  does  pure  carbolic  acid.  Consequently,  alco- 
hol, in  its  pure  and  undiluted  state,  is  not  capable  of  being  used  as 
a  medicine,  but  when  largely  diluted  with  water,  as  it  is  in  all  the 
fermented  and  distilled  beverages,  its  direct  corrosive  or  corrugating 
effect  upon  the  membranes  it  comes  in  contact  with  is  so  much 
diminished  that  it  is  capable  of  being  absorbed  and  conveyed  in  the 
blood  to  all  parts  of  living  body.  In  this  diluted  condition,  there- 
fore, it  early  began  to  be  used  both  as  a  medicine  and  as  a  popular 
drink;  and  as  the  most  readily  appreciable  effect  was  to  diminish  the 
1  Presented  to  the  Section  on  Materia  Medica,  Pharmacy  and  Therapeutics  at 
the  Forty-eighth  Annual  Meeting  of  the  American  Medical  Association,  held 
at  Philadelphia,  June  1-4,  1897,  and  taken  from  the  Journal  of  the  American 
Medical  Association,  of  August  21,  1897. 
