•^°juiy^^92o: }    Alcohol:  Its  Relation  to  Science,  Etc.  47 5 
great  war,  Germany  was  producing  ten  gallons  to  our  one,  a  fact 
which  has  had  an  important  bearing  upon  German  supremacy  in 
the  vast  field  of  industrial  chemistry. 
The  part  borne  by  alcohol  in  the  war  is  worthy  of  much  more 
space  than  the  limits  of  this  brief  paper  afford.  It  is  interesting 
howev^er,  to  recall  the  fact  that  when  the  great  German  offensive 
was  on  in  191 8  and  the  British  and  French  armies  stood  "with  their 
backs  against  the  wall,"  General  Pershing  sent  an  order  to  the 
United  States  for  1,000  tons  of  mustard  gas  per  day,  to  be  delivered 
forthwith.  To  produce  a  ton  of  mustard  gas  requires  a  ton  of  al- 
cohol; hence  to  arrange  for  the  filHng  of  this  enormous  order,  the 
War  Industries  Board  was  obliged  to  mobilize  the  entire  distilling 
industry  of  the  United  States  and  turn  it  for  the  time  being  from 
all  other  classes  of  production  to  the  making  of  alcohol.  But  for 
the  intervention  of  the  armistice  it  is  probable  that  the  distillers 
of  the  United  States  for  many  months  would  have  been  able  to 
furnish  nothing  but  the  raw  material  for  the  deadly  gas  that  was  so 
signally  aiding  the  Allies  in  the  winning  of  the  war. 
You  are  all  familiar  with  completely  denatured  alcohol,  which, 
since  1906  has  been  permitted  to  be  freely  sold  and  used  for  a  variety 
of  industrial  and  domestic  purposes.  Few  of  you,  however,  have 
been  brought  into  close  contact  with  specially  denatured  alcohol 
which,  after  distillation,  is  modified  by  the  use  of  a  large  number  of 
different  chemical  agents  for  consumption  in  an  enormous  variety 
of  industries.  A  single  formula  of  the  thirty-five  now  in  use  has 
been  approved  for  employment  in  the  manufacture  of  nearly  two 
hundred  articles  ranging  from  smokeless  powder  to  artificial  flowers, 
and  from  transparent  soaps  to  the  ink  used  in  the  interstate  brand- 
ing of  meats. 
ALCOHOIv  IN  MEDICINE. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  the  average  layman  should  be  at  a  loss 
to  know  where  to  turn  for  reliable  information  concerning  the  function 
of  alcohol  in  medicine.  This  uncertainty  is  largely  due  to  wholesale 
misrepresentation,  in  part  deliberate  and  in  part  due  to  ignorance, 
by  over-zealous  partisans  of  the  cause  of  prohibition.  It  has  been 
one  of  my  most  exasperating  experiences  during  the  past  two  or 
three  years  to  listen  to  statements  made  before  important  committees 
of  Congress  by  certain  of  these  zealots  to  the  eff^ect  that,  if  the  supply 
of  alcohol  should  be  immediately  cut  off,  medical  science  would  in 
