under the restrictions applicable to the administration of fatal drugs. They affirm this of alcohol taken in whatever doses, averring, as it has been concisely expressed by another, "that whatever is true of the excessive use of alcohol is true also in proportionate degree of the moderate and occasional use." Dr. Carpenter, Registrar of the University of London, and the leading scientific authority with the advocates of prohibition, declares in set terms that "The action of Alcohol upon the animal body in health is essentially poisonous." Let us therefore at the outset investigate this assumption that alcohol is necessarily a poison, with an eye to see, (in the language of Liebig concerning tea and coffee, substances akin to, though differing somewhat from, alcohol in their working on the human frame,) "whether it depend on sensual and sinful inclinations merely that every people of the globe has appropriated some such means of acting on the nervous life.”* Twenty years ago alimentary substances were classified by Liebig as Respiratory Food, and as Plastic Food, the line of distinction between them, in composition, being the absence or presence of * Liebig's Letters on Chemistry, 3d London edition, p. 456.. nitrogen, and the line of distinction between them in their transformation in the human body, being according to Liebig's theory, that though both are burned by the inhaled oxygen, yet the former is burned directly by it, without previous transformation into the human tissues, while part of the latter, before final consumption, becomes human tissue. Concisely stated, Liebig's two classes of food are, therefore, I. Certain non-azotized substances, which, from their large amount of carbon, serve (as fuel,) to keep up the animal heat, and which he names the elements of respiration. II. Certain nitrogenized substances, which are adapted to the formation of blood, (out of that, muscle, and the tissues,) and which he terms the plastic elements of nutrition. Liebig's theory of combustion or oxidation, and the sharpness of his distinction between his classes, have been modified by recent scientific disputants; but his position that alcoholic beverages taken in fit combinations, and in due moderation, perform the functions of food, remains unshaken. He says, "Besides fat and those substances which contain carbon and the elements of water, man consumes, in the shape of the alcohol of fermented liquors, another substance, which in his body, plays exactly the same part as the non-nitrogenized constituents of food. "The alcohol, taken in the form of wine or any other similar beverage, disappears in the body of man. Although the elements of alcohol do not possess by themselves the property of combining with oxygen at the temperature of the body, and forming carbonic acid and water, yet alcohol acquires, by contact with bodies in the condition of eremacausis or absorption of oxygen, such as are invariably present in the body, this property to a far higher degree than is known to occur in the case of fat and other non-nitrogenized substances."* Not only have many physiologists and chemists adopted this general theory, but even those others, who modify the theory of Liebig as stated by himself, nevertheless classify alcoholic drinks in the category of foods.† * Animal Chemistry, 3d edition: London. pp. 97, 98. See, among other authorities, Clinical Medicine, by W. T. Gairdner, Physician to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, and Lecturer on the Practice of Medicine; and Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical; the Conditions and Course of the Life of Man, by Prof. John W. Draper, pp. 27, 28. or, See, also, the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, for January 31, 1867, which contains a brief account of Dr. Frankland's deductions from his own experiments and those of Professors Fick and Wislicenus, concerning the capacity of non-azotized food to supply power and repair waste. In the result which we shall reach concerning alcohol, it makes no practical difference whether Liebig's division of food stands or falls. If alcohol be food, it matters not to the question of a Prohibitory Law, whether it be Respiratory Food or Plastic Food. Dr. Carpenter himself, admits alcohol, in one work,* into the category of foods, classifying it with the oleaginous group of foods, although in another work,† denouncing it as poison. As Mr. Lewes tersely says of him on just this point:"We have only to disentangle his confusion and we find him an ally." Alcohol contains the carbon and hydrogen which belong to the normal elements of the body, and common experience in all wine-growing and beerdrinking countries, and the experience of invalids and convalescents everywhere, who are often supported almost entirely on alcoholic fluids, show that they are assimilated. Therefore (though not proper, undiluted, any more than saltpetre, or oxygen are good food by themselves,) it is capable of acting, and does act, in certain beverages, as a food. * Human Physiology, p. 475. † Physiology of Temperance and Total Abstinence. That light wines, ale, beer and cider act (when moderately used,) as a poison, is contradicted also by common experience, by examples like the lifelong practice of Cornaro, and the testimony of entire nations and successive ages. Cornaro from his fortieth year to his death, restricted himself to a daily allowance of twelve ounces of solid food and fourteen ounces of wine. Of him Dr. Carpenter writes:*—— "The smallest quantity of food upon which life is known to have been supported with vigor during a prolonged period, is that on which Cornaro states himself to have subsisted. This was no more than twelve ounces a day chiefly of vegetable matter, with fourteen ounces of light wine, for a period of fifty-eight years." Born at Venice in 1467, he died at Padua in 1566. Commenting upon this statement by Dr. Carpenter, Mr. George Henry Lewes, (author of the Physiology of Common Life,) says:†-"Observe the proportion of wine in this diet, and then ask how it is in the face of such facts, that Dr. Carpenter can deny the nutritive value of alcohol.” Concerning wine Liebig says: * Human Physiology, p. 387. + Westminster Review, No. cxxv., July, 1855. |