CHAPTER II.

PROPOSITION: THAT INTOXICATING LIQUORS ARE USELESS AND INJURIOUS AS ARTICLES OF DIET.

It is a common belief that alconolic liquors are useful, and even necessary to a good state of health and to long life; and though this belief may not absolutely regulate, the personal or social consumption of those liquors, it is of the first importance that this opinion, if erroneous, should be disproved. Health and strength are blessings of a very high order; to the multitude they are invaluable as the means of manual work and industrial support; and although, in countless cases, health and life itself are sacrificed at the shrine of some custom or pleasure, it is very evident that ignorance concerning strong drink, joined to a laudable concern for the maintenance of health, has much to do with the daily use of some alcoholic liquor, especially among the more respectable and thoughtful of all classes.

I. INTOXICATING LIQUORS USELESS.

In maintaining that alcoholi: liquors are useless, it is not necessary to show that they contain nothing which is useful to the consumer. It is practically sufficient for the argument that they contain nothing of any sensible utility which does not exist in other articles of diet, free from objectionable combinations, and purchasable at a cheaper rate. The superstition of ages has attached to fermented drinks properties not residing in other dietetic substances; but scientific analysis and widespread experience have exploded this superstition-one which will, in

due time, come to be as generally discounted as the belief in witchcraft and the evil-eye. Scientific analysis proves that distilled liquors, when pure, consist only of alcohol and water, the service rendered by the water being to qualify the potency of the intoxicating spirit. In fermented liquors the nutritive elements are of the smallest quantity and lowest type of quality, as can be proved by any housewife who boils a pint of ale till all the watery and alcoholic parts have evaporated, when the residuum, a waxy and distasteful deposit, represents all the solid and "feeding" particles of the ale. The residuum of a glass of wine is almost imperceptible to the naked eye, and though in some high-priced wines, inaccessible to the mass of the people, there are more useful fixed ingredients, these are derived from the grapes employed in the manufacture of the wines, and are not the product of the fermenting process. There is, in short, nothing in any alcoholic liquor except the alcohol which does not exist elsewhere in abundance, and capable of being purchased at less cost, and with an assurance of freedom from those adulterating acts by which the ordinary intoxicating beverages are made still further unsuited for daily use. There is in this country no real guarantee against adulteration of the liquors bought; and the wines of commerce, like the beers and ales of the public-house, are "doctored" to an extent that renders it absurd to attribute to them any marked sanitive effect. Such adulterations would neutralize any benefit derivable from them did they contain specially nutritive properties; but, on the contrary, these properties are deficient in such a degree that nourishment costing shillings or pounds to procure in the shape of such liquors can be obtained for pence and half-pence in the form of grain, flesh, and fruits. What analysis exhibits to the eye, experience has made clear to the reflection of mankind. Instead of alcoholic liquors being necessary, as some have asserted,

Intoxicating Liquors Useless.

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or useful, as others have more cautiously contended, it is conclusively made evident by the experience of millions of persons that men and women are nourished and strengthened, can enjoy health and live long, without any alcoholic drinks; and so little can this conflux of personal testimony be questioned that it is now customary with political economists to class alcoholic beverages; not with necessaries, but with luxuries, and even to set them apart by themselves as "stimulants" that have no pretence to the consideration which articles of utility may demand when fiscal impositions are in debate. In truth, the defenders of strong drink have ceased to use the language once accredited as firmly as Gospel truth. They know that, nutritively tested, intoxicating liquors have nothing to recommend them, and they therefore confine all their praise to the alcohol-of which the unlearned drinker of beer may never have heard, but the effect of which he has mistaken for the nourishment of which he has really stood in need. It is now conceded that whatever special virtue there may be in alcoholic fluids must proceed from the alcohol, whence they derive their distinctive odor and strength; and that, if alcohol be not useful, the controversy is at an end. When enquiry is made after the special uses of alcohol, we are referred, 1st, to its use as fuel to the body; 2dly, to its use as an arrester of waste; 3dly, to its use as a promoter of digestion; 4thly, to its use as a stimulant in the performance of daily or unusual work.

1. The use of alcohol as "fuel to the body,”—in other words, the production of heat by the oxidation or combustion of the spirit was a theory first promulged by Professor Liebig, who included alcohol under respiratory food, while admitting that it had nothing in common with nutritious or plastic food. But the learned professor, who was induced to make this classification from purely chemical analogy, also furnished a scale showing "ap

proximately how much of each respiratory material must be taken in the food in order, with the same consumption of oxygen, to keep the body at the same temperature. during equal times"; and in this scale, placing fat and oil at 100, as a standard, starch was placed at 240, cane sugar at 249, grape sugar at 263, alcohol at 266; so that, as a warmer of the body, the value of alcohol was but a little over one-third that of fatty and oily substances, and inferior to the sugar by whose destruction it was called forth. "The effect of fat is the slowest in being produced, but it lasts much longer. Of all respiratory matters alcohol acts most rapidly;" * so that, besides the effect being sooner spent, the greater affinity of alcohol for oxygen was calculated to retard the removal, by oxidation, of those waste matters whose retention in the blood is always attended with danger, if not positive injury to the health. It is obvious that this theory could never justify the use of alcohol so long as the other and better kinds of respiratory food were procurable, as they always are, and at less expense; but the theory itself, after yielding unreasoning satisfaction to the opponents of total abstinence, was scientifically assailed by the experiments of Drs. Lallemand and Perrin, and M. Duroy, as recorded in their great prize treatise on the "Action of Alcohol." In this work, published in 1860, a minute account is given of numerous carefully conducted experiments, resulting in the discovery that alcohol is eliminated unchanged from the body by the various excretory organs, for many hours after it has been consumed. ‡ These experiments were repeated by Dr. Edward Smith,

* See "Familiar Letters on Chemistry," by Justus von Liebig-Letters xxvii. and xxix.

+ See Appendix F.

‡ That alcohol is present in the blood and brain for many hours after being consumed, and in a quantity sufficient to kindle a flame, had been previously shown by the researches of Mr. Hare, M.R.C.S., Dr. Ogston, Dr. Kirk, and especially by Dr. Percy, in his prize thesis on Alcohol, published in 1839.

The Action of the Body on Alcohol.

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F.R.S.; and though, both in France and England, exception has been taken to the conclusions drawn by the original French experimentalists, because a large part of the alcohol swallowed was not accounted for, the scientific mind of this country generally accepts the experiments as conclusive against Liebig's theory, which taught that alcohol is more rapidly burnt off than other respiratory food, and that all the alcohol imbibed is disposed of in this mode. Seeing that for a period of eight and ten hours alcohol is eliminated unchanged by the lungs, the proof of any combustion (oxidation) within the body rests upon the supporters of Liebig's theory. Against that theory there are several powerful facts: first, the catalogue of well-established cases where alcohol has been found in the blood and brains of persons who have died under its influence, and in such quantity as to kindle on the application of a flame. Secondly, the inability to trace any of the derivatives of Alcohol, which ought to be discernible if alcohol is oxidized as the theory requires. Thirdly, the incontrovertible lowering of the animal temperature after the imbibition of alcohol, a result quite irreconcilable with the doctrine that alcohol, by its rapid combustion, helps sensibly, though briefly, to warm the human body. The utility of alcohol as a heat-producer may, therefore, be denied-first, because it is highly probable that it undergoes no decomposition in the animal economy; and, secondly, because, if it does so to any extent, it is much inferior to other substances which (1) are also nutritious (while alcohol is not); (2) do the work of warming more gradually and permanently; (3) are more cheaply procured; (4) and are entirely free from those irritant and other injurious effects of alcohol to which we shall afterwards advert.

2. The use of alcohol as an arrester of waste" is a plea which, if founded on fact, would make strongly in favor of its general disuse. Waste of tissue is necessary to its