nious French chemists, after a series of original experiments, supposed themselves to have proved that "alcohol is eliminated from the organism in totality and in nature," and that it "is never transformed, never destroyed in the organism." Their conclusion therefore, is, that "alcohol is not food," as a scientific proposition, although as matter of practice they do go for light wines. In a pamphlet entitled "Is Alcohol Food or Physic," which I bought at the rooms of the "Temperance Alliance" in Boston, in which these gentlemen are upheld as supposed destroyers of the theory of which Liebig may be termed the father, I find that their experiments are contrasted favorably with others, because they were made on an empty stomach; and that these French experiments are confessedly pathological, rather than dietetic. The argument drawn from them, assumes, in great part, that inferences can be fairly drawn from effects produced by narcotic, or poisonous doses, (as for instance, the case of a man who died thirty-two hours after drinking a pint of brandy,) to the case of a person, using with temperance as a part of his meal, and in due proportion with other food, an article of mild drink in which it is combined. The same reasoning would in like manner, justify the argu

ment that, because a decoction of green tea, of a given strength, will surely cause death, therefore a cup of weak tea taken with supper,-containing as it does, a portion of theine, the characteristic principle of tea, is a deleterious drink, and proportionally poisonous. It also overlooks the mysterious subtleties of animal life, and those, still more mysterious and elusive, which connect the moral with the animal economy. It fails to observe the existence of a vital chemistry, some of the phenomena of which are observable, but whose laws thus far defy our capacity for logical definition. It even overlooks the varying action of the different alcoholic drinks, disclosed in the experiments of Dr. Edward Smith; for example, brandy and gin lessening the quantity of carbonic acid evolved in respiration, while it was increased, on the other hand, by the use of ale, and by the use of rum.

Animal chemistry is in its infancy. The positive knowledge on the points undertaken to be so dogmatically affirmed, on the strength of those recent French experiments, is relatively little; and men of science do not concur with their deductions.

Dr. Anstie, after having discussed and examined the many experiments both of Smith and of Lallemand and his friends, nevertheless declares, in view

of their facts and those disclosed by the experiments of himself and of Baudot and others, his non-concur- ́ rence with the Lallemand theory; and, (comparing it with æther and chloroform,) he says of alcohol that it seems as if it "was intended to be the medicine of those ailments which are engendered of the necessary every day evils of civilized life, and has therefore been made attractive to the senses, and easily retained in the tissues, and in various ways approving itself to our judgment as a food; while the others, which are more rarely needed for their stimulant properties, and are chiefly valuable for their beneficent temporary poisonous action, by the help of which painful operations are sustained with impunity, are in a great measure deprived of these attractions, and of their facilities for entering and remaining in the system."*

One of the most able English scientific critics of these French experiments further says:†

"Dr. Brinton, [in his work on Food and Digestion,] who is by no means unreasonably prejudiced in favor of alcohol, has given it as the result of his very large experience, that persons who abstain altogether from alcohol, break down, almost invariably, after a certain number of years, if they

*Stimulants and Narcotics. p. 401.

+ Cornhill Magazine, No. 33, September, 1862. Art., Does Alcohol act as a Food? p. 329.

are constantly employed in any severe intellectual or physical labor. Either their minds or their bodies give way suddenly, and the mischief once done is very hard to repair. This is quite in accordance with what I have myself observed, and with what I can gather from other medical men and it speaks volumes concerning the way in which we ought to regard alcohol. If, indeed, it be a fact, that in a certain high state of civilization men require to take alcohol every day, in some shape or other, under penalty of breaking down prematurely in their work, it is idle to appeal to a set of imperfect chemical or physiological experiments, and to decide, on their evidence, that we ought to call alcohol a medicine or a poison, but not a food. In the name of common sense, why should we retain these ridiculous distinctions for any other purpose than to avoid catastrophes? If it be well understood that a glass of good wine will relieve a man's depression and fatigue sufficiently to enable him to digest his dinner, and that a pint of gin taken at once will probably kill him stone dead, why haggle about words? On the part of the medical profession, I think I may say that we have long since begun to believe that those medicines which really do benefit our patients act in one way or another as foods, and that some of the most decidedly poisonous substances are those which offer, in the form of small doses, the strongest example of a true food action?

"On the part of alcohol, then, I venture to claim that though we all acknowledge it to be a poison, if taken during health in any but quite restricted doses, it is also a most valuable medicine-food. I am obliged to declare that the chemical evidence is as yet insufficient to give any complete explanation of its exact manner of action upon the system; but that the practical facts are as striking as they could well

be, and that there can be no mistake about them. And I have thought it proper that, while highly-colored statements of the results of the new French researches are being somewhat disingenuously placed before the lay public, there should not be a total silence on the part of those members of the profession who do not see themselves called upon to yield to the mere force of agitation."

And just a dozen years ago, Dr. James Jackson, the venerable, beloved and most eminent Nestor of the medical profession in America, bore this public testimony concerning the medicinal employment of spirits and wines:

"I would never order them to one whom I suspected to be deficient in prudence and self-control. But, keeping these things in mind, I have often directed the use even of brandy. In doing this, I have been in the habit of saying to the patient, ‘If I ever hear of your indulging to excess in the use of this, or any similar article, I will call on you and exhort you to stop.' In one instance, and only one in the course of a long life, have I been called upon to redeem my pledge. This was in the case of a worthy lady, some twenty years after I had directed the measured use of brandy. At my request, she immediately gave up the use of all spirituous and fermented liquors, and I have reason to believe that she never resumed them. I do not, then, call the risk very great of such prescriptions, when made with proper caution. In regard to the benefit, in some cases of dyspepsia, and in various other cases, I have not any doubt. And, that I may tell the whole, let me say, that