Alcohol as a Food.

White Ribbon, Volume 2, Issue 20, 1 February 1897, Page 10

Alcohol as a Food.

By Sir B. W. Richardson, M D. 1 am recording a matter of history of personal history—on this question when 1 say that 1, for one, had no thought of alcohol except as a food. I thought it gave additional strength. 1 thought it enabled us to endure mental and bodily fatigue. I thought it cheered the heart, and lifted up the mind into greater activity. But it so happened that 1 was asked to study the action of alcohol, along with a whole series of chemical bodies, and to investigate their bearing in relation to each other. And so 1 took alcohol from the shell of my laboratory, as I might any other drug or chemical there, and I asked it, in the course of experiments extending over a long period, 44 What do you do ?” I asked it. 44 Do you warm the animal body when you are taken into it ?” The answer cameinvariably, 44 1 donot,except in a mere Hush of surface excitement. There is, in fact, no warming, but on the contrary, an effect of cooling and chilling the body.” Then I turn round to it in another direction, and ask it, 44 Do you give muscular strength ? ” I test it by the most rigid analysis and experiment I can adopt I test muscular power under the influence of it in various forms ami degrees, and its reply is, 44 1 give no muscular strength.” I turn to its effect upon the organs of the body, and find that while it expedites the heart s action it reduces tenacity ; and, turning to the nervous system, 1 find the same reply—that is to s iy, I find the nervous system more quickly worn out under the intiuence of this agent than if none of it is taken at all I ask it, 44 Cac G build up any of the tissues of the y ?” The answer again is in the negative — 44 1 build nothing. If I do anything I add fatty matter to the body, but that is a destructive agent, piercing the tissues, destroying their powers, and making them less active in their work.” Finally, 1 sum it all up. I find

it to l>e an agent that gives no strength, that reduces the tone of the blood vessels and heart, that reduces the nervous power, that builds up no tissues, can be of no use to me or any other animal as a substance for food. On that side of the question my mind is made up- that this agent, (in the most moderate quantity, is perfectly usekss for any of the conditions of life to which men are subjected, except under the most exceptional conditions, which none but skilled observers need declare