ALCOHOL— ITS  ACTION  AND  USES. 
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scientific  world  at  large.  No  doubt  can  be  entertained  of  the 
importance  of  a  consideration  of  the  subject — a  consideration, 
however,  into  which  our  limits  will  not  allow  us  fully  to  enter. 
If  there  were  one  cherished  view  which  we  thought  chemistry 
had  taught  us,  it  was  surely  that  alcohol  was  oxidised  in  the 
system,  and  thus  made  subservient,  if  not  to  the  formation  of 
some  of  the  tissues  of  the  body,  at  any  rate  to  the  maintenance 
of  animal  heat.  However  indisposed  physiologists  may  have 
been  of  late  years  to  give  in  their  adhesion  to  the  theories  of 
Liebig  as  to  the  division  of  alimentary  materials,  we  think  that 
most  have  been,  and  probably  many  will  still  be,  disposed  to 
consider  the  substance  we  are  speaking  of  in  the  light  of  a  heat- 
producing  agent.  Our  opinions  on  this  point  have,  however, 
been  somewhat  rudely  assailed,  and  the  position  which  alcohol 
has  occupied  as  a  dietetic  article  is  threatened  with  imminent 
danger.  As  from  the  chemists  we  received  the  theory  of  its 
combustible  nature,  so  from  chemical  research  and  experiment 
now  comes  the  opposite  doctrine  of  its  entire  elimination,  un- 
changed, from  the  body. 
Considering  the  vast  amount  of  alcohol  which  is  daily  con- 
sumed, whether  as  a  general  article  of  diet,  or  in  the  treatment 
of  disease,  it  becomes  a  matter  of  essential  importance  that  cor- 
rect principles  should  be  laid  down  with  reference  to  its  modus 
operandi^  and  the  manner  in  which  it  is  disposed  of  in  the  sys- 
tem. We  cordially  hail,  therefore,  the  appearance  of  the  work 
of  Messrs.  Lallemand,  Perrin,  and  Duroy  (Du  Role  de  F Alcohol 
et  des  Anesthesiques  dans  V  Organisme,  Paris,  I860,)  which 
gives  us  the  results  of  the  most  recent  experiments  and  re- 
searches on  the  subject,  A  careful  perusal  of  this  work  has  con- 
vinced us  that  some  of  our  views  of  the  dietetic  value  of  alcohol 
require  modification ;  but  we  cannot,  on  that  account,  allow  the 
evidence  which  is  brought  forward,  and  which  does  not  appear 
to  us  conclusive  on  the  point,  to  make  us  discard  altogether  the 
substance  of  which  we  are  speaking  from  our  list  of  alimentary 
materials.  * 
If  we  were  briefly  to  sum  up  the  facts  which  the  researches  of 
the  above  authors  seem  to  have  established,  they  would  be  these  ;  , 
— That,  after  any  fluid  containing  alcohol  is  taken,  the  latter 
becomes  eliminated,  unchanged,  by  the  various  secreting  organs 
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