BRANDY AS A DIGESTIVE

Marlborough Express, Volume XIX, Issue 115, 18 May 1883, Page 2

BRANDY AS A DIGESTIVE

A good deal of interest has been excited in the medical world by the curious case lately investigated by Surrey coroner, where a man had lived for years on an entirely liquid diet of milk and rum, and had neither grown thinner nor appareutly suffered in health from this peculiar practice. The question whether alcohol can be made a substitute for solid food had before this been vigorously debated in France by two schools of savants — one headed by Matthias Duval, upholding the affirmative view, and the other, led by M. Perrin and others, maintaining the negative. These schools have for some time past been conducting experiments for the support of their respective theories upon the vile bodies of certain luckless dogs The alcohol was administered in all sorts of various quantities, with and without food; and although the conolusion (which seems to have been proved by, the case in Surrey) was not arrived at by the aid of Parisian dogs, the experiments nevertheless added something to the professional study of gastronomic science. For it appeared, in the first place, that pure alcohol given without food causes a severe burning and lesion of the intestinal organs ; secondly, that when given with or after a substantial meal in moderate quantities it facilitates digestion; and thirdly, that if given in too large quantities, even with food, it has a directly contrary effeot. Thus, of two dogs to whioh 290 grammes of lood iad been given, with a moderate dose of brandy in the first case and three times as much in the seoond, the former had digested his solid food in five hours, while the latter, after a similar period, had digested none at all. We have heard plenty about the drunken pig, dosed experimentally with spirituous drinks ; but these trials of the canine race have not been so commonly said or sung.— Globe.