Is Alcohol Food or Physic?

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And so it will be with every sport as soon as it is chronically afflicted with the betting plague. If it should ever fall on our model game, cricket-may the day be far distant!-we shall hear of the Haywards of that time being accompanied by a body guard wherever they go, lest some ruffian who stands to lose fifty pounds if Cambridgeshire should win, might gash his right hand; and Dr. Letheby or Mr. Grace Calvert will have to attend in the tent to test the bitter beer before the Jacksons, Stevensons, and Caffyns of the day be allowed to drink it. But long before that time gentlemen will have deserted the cricket-field, as they are now deserting the race-course; and a fine, manly sport, invaluable for bringing all classes together to contend in a friendly spirit, will be degraded, like the Turf, into a mere vehicle for gambling.

ART. V.-1. Works of Dr. Lees. Vol. I. London, 1851. 2. Ale, Wine, Spirits, and Tobacco. A Lecture, by John Barclay, M.D., Leicester. Second Edition, 1861.

THE

HE confidence we expressed, in reviewing the French discoveries on the action of alcohol, nine months ago, that they would powerfully tend to complete the revolution of opinion already initiated, has been justified by the issue of the controversy. Those discoveries have not only shaken the faith of the most intelligent medical teachers in the dietetic properties of alcohol,--they have given a shock to the fashionable epidemic of freely prescribing strong drinks in a large class of disorders, wherein, as it is now both declared and demonstrated, their use has been followed by 'wholesale slaughter.' So Dr. Murchison has stated in his October address to his students; while the great Medical Quarterly compares the plan with the still extant Spanish and Italian system of Sangrado, boldly asserting that the results of bleeding and of stimulating are merely a balance of destruction.' We shall not now examine the conclusions' of the faculty as to the medical uses of alcohol, our present aim being to trace the course of the discussion opened in our previous paper, and to record such facts, and expose such fallacies, as the retrospective review may seem to demand.

If the reader who may possess the first work named at the head of this article will turn to it, he will find an elaborate dissection of a lecture read ten years ago before the Literary Society of Leicester, by one Dr. Barclay, who, uninstructed by the past, has again favoured the philosophers of that city with a hash-up of the old material. This second lecture is as nearly a model specimen of platitudinarian philosophy, and of dull and incorrect composition, as any literary critic could well desire for the exercise of his satirical or logical propensities-would, in fact, afford protracted amusement to the reader in dissection. This, however, does not Vol. 4.-No. 16.

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fall within the scope of Meliora,' and we should have noticed the production in no way, save for the accident, that, running in the channel of the prejudices of a clever but unveracious periodical, a notice in its columns has lifted the country practitioner' into a little prominence, by getting rid of an edition of his pamphlet. It becomes interesting, therefore, to inquire what are the character and calibre of the arguments to which so many drinkers eagerly rush, at the signal of a 'Saturday Review'? The answer will afford a curious insight into the sort of mental culture that distinguishes so many persons in the nineteenth century, and which sufficiently explains the observation made by Sir Henry Holland in 1852, that during the last twenty years he had known the rise and decline of five or six fashions in medical doctrine or treatment, some of them affecting the name of "systems," and all deriving too much support from credulity, even among medical men themselves.' When, from deficient intellectual discipline, the doctors are the victims of verbal imposture and hypothesis, who can wonder that either legalzied or unlicensed quackery should flourish amongst the patients?

In his first lecture, in 1851, Dr. Barclay had said :--

According to all observations hitherto made, neither the expired air, nor the perspiration, nor the secretions, contain any trace of alcohol after indulgence in spirituous liquors.'

To this Dr. Lees replied: "This is simply not true: Dr. Percy's experiments prove that several of the secretions and excretions of the body do contain very sensible quantities.' Dr. Barclay, at pages 16, 17 of his second lecture, revives the doctrine of Liebig as to alcohol being decomposed in the system, and, therefore, food; i.e. just three months after the French physiologists had exploded the fanciful theory altogether. Worse than this, Dr. Barclay, in his Advertisement' to his second edition, says that Dr. Lees took much pains to confute a statement I have never made, viz. that alcohol is never eliminated.' The citation above will show who is in error; but the next exhibits Dr. Barclay very disingenuously engaged in obscuring the truth, even after the real facts had been publicly declared in Leicester

MM. Lallemand and Perrin find that alcohol is to be discovered unchanged in more organs of the body than had hitherto been supposed.'

By no means, Dr. Barclay; for Dr. Lees had shown you in 1851, and your profession in 1843, that alcohol had been extracted from the urine and the bile, and was sensibly present in the breath and in the odour from the skin. It was a very different work which these physiologists have performed. The next statement would be a fine specimen of audacity, were it not an example of pure blundering

Dr. Barclay's Lecture.

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The experiments would not in any way affect the evidence as to the uses of alcohol while in the body. . . . They require careful repetition before they.. prove that more than a very small quantity of the alcohol ingested is given off unchanged.'

Dr. Barclay does not appear to comprehend these experiments, for they prove, by the most varied tests and processes, the exact contrary-that none but the very smallest quantity of alcohol can be left behind. Mark, however, the plea put forward for alcohol being food! It is decomposed in the body, says Dr. Barclay, replacing oil or other fuel food; therefore it is food, and not 'poison. Possibly, however, it might poison the organism before it was decomposed in the circulation, and then it would be poison first and fuel afterwards; but what we want explaining is this: If it have the alleged use in the body of being consumed as fuel, how can it come out of the breath and other excretions as alcohol? When coal is burnt up as fuel in the gas furnaces, does it come out as coal at the end of the gas-pipes? If alcohol be not used up in the body, how can it enable us to dispense with starch and sugar in our food,' as Dr. Barclay says it does? Will he still persist in saying that the French experiments do not affect his alleged use of alcohol in the body? It would be charity to suppose that his preface had been written in a fit of somnambulism.

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Dr. Barclay echoes the effete and tiresome common-places about 'temperance in all things,' and use' not being the same as 'abuse.' The teetotalers, we surmise, know that quite as well as himself; still the question returns-What is temperance?-what is use? At page 7 he tells us that alcohol can no more cure all diseases than any other drug,' and he repudiates the indiscriminate abuse of a powerful remedy.' Now, really, is this language properly applicable to our daily bread'? If alcohol be a 'powerful remedy for disease,' and a dangerous drug,' then it has nothing to do with ordinary health and diet, which, as we understand the matter, is the very essence of teetotal doctrine. Dietetic temperance, as De Quincey long since defined it, is adaptation to the organism; and if there be any normal want in the human system which alcohol can satisfy, then its use, in right measure and time, is certainly temperance. Why cannot Dr. Barclay show this simple fact, if fact it be, without so many words and such obscure and confused arguments? What want of the healthy body will he fix upon? and how will he show that alcohol is adapted to it?

Pages 15 to 18 are occupied with mention of the experiments of Böcker, Lehmann, and others, familiar to the teetotal world through the writings of Dr. Lees, so far back as 1853-4. Unfortunately for Dr. Barclay, his information is not only somewhat stale, but in great part discredited. He somehow contrives to arrive a day after the fair,' and he is then found dealing in goods

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which have gone quite out of fashion. A concrete example will explain our metaphor. Dr. Barclay revives the foolish theory as to tea and alcohol arresting the waste of tissue,' quoting that very number of the Medico-Chirurgical Review,' in the reply to which, in 1854, Dr. Lees anticipated the altered condition of opinion which has already come about, and gave that very explanation of the facts which Dr. E. Smith's experiments have more recently established (p. ccii). Long before the lecture of Dr. Barclay was delivered, however, Dr. E. Smith had proved that tea wasted the tissues; and even about the time that he was publishing his last edition, in which he speaks of alcohol as accessory food,' borrowing his notion from the old Medical Review' of 1854, the author of that article was himself not only reconsidering his views, but actually preparing to recant and publicly repudiate them, which he has since done!

It would be unsafe to construe the phraseology of our lecturer literally; otherwise we might ask him to reconcile such language (p. 6) as the victims, it is not fair to say of the bottle, but of their own vicious, depraved, and uncontrolled desires,' with that which (p. 8) speaks of persons who have delivered themselves over to the power of the demon of drink' (p. 6), 'the irresistible desire for strong drink'? He insinuates, indeed, a natural instinct for these things: but the idea seems quite as absurd as a native gorilla or human instinct for pipes and tobacco. It is the business of our philosopher' to explain the origin of these depraved desires. Has it no concern with the power of the demon of drink'? or is drink an angel until the folk deliver themselves up to it? Is it a fact, too, that people assume their chains with their eyes open, i.e. voluntarily, and by some single conscious act? Dr. Barclay asserts that alcohol has no more tendency to produce excess than tea; or, in other words, that Confucius might just as truly have said, Bohea is a mocker; Souchong is raging,' as the Hebrew sage that wine is a mocker '—and he who is deceived thereby is not wise.' At be taken that no bad habits be formed during illness, when stimupage 32 we are told Great care should lants have been necessary.' Now, are we to understand that this caution is equally needed in regard to tea and coffee?

At page 14 Dr. Barclay quotes the loose statement that of 500,000 persons in America who had signed the pledge, 350,000 had broken it. We should like to know who, in the busy States, found time to collect the statistics? by what machinery it was done? and over what time it extends? Some one has evidently made a rude guess, and upon this Dr. Barclay makes an absurd and hasty commentTruly, an awful outburst of Nature!" What other solemn obligation has ever been thus overruled by what I am justified in calling an instinct? The truth which the vow-breakers testify to, is that which modern philosophical investigations prove, that alcoholic drinks.. are proper alimentary matter.'

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Professors

Teetotal Fidelity in America.

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Professors Lehmann, Moleschott, Lallemand, and Perrin unite with Dr. E. Smith and Dr. King Chambers in saying that alcohol is not food; yet, says Dr. Barclay, in italics, the contrary is 'proved! As to the American statistics, Dr. Barclay is as far wrong as with his own. The only possible source of reliable figures on such a subject will be the books of the Sons of Temperance, or some other similar body. We have the last annual report of the 'Sons' before us, from which it appears that out of 51,020 members reported, only 9,792 violated their pledge, of which number one-half signed again, and 2,685 were reinstated in the order. The proportion of 7,107 to 51,020 is certainly in rather broad contrast to the ratio between 350 and 500, and reduces the awfulness' of the outburst exceedingly. We should like

to ask Dr. Barclay a few questions as a man of the world, if not as a philosopher. Has he not heard that most men, in one shape or another, or at one time or another, make professions or take vows of honesty, purity, and fidelity? Does he, with his knowledge of society, not to speak of the Gazette,' the dock, the bankruptcy and divorce courts, the statistics and revelations of prostitution, truly believe that any but a very small minority of the world fulfil these vows and pledges? Shall we plead for sin, therefore, that it is an awful outburst of nature'?-a reaction against ascetic virtue? Shall we be justified in calling it an instinct'? Is 'the truth' these millions of vow-breakers testify to, this-that 'sin is proper alimentary matter for the soul'? If not, what does such pernicious sophistry signify or tend to? Why make language so fatally ambiguous as to become an apology and excuse for the great fountain of sensuality and social demoralization?

In our former article we reproduced the language of Dr. Michel Levy and of Dr. Edward Smith, in which it is stated that the action of alcohol from (miscalled) moderation to dead drunkenness is one progressive unbroken series of abnormal effects, differing in degree not in kind. Dr. Barclay, at page 14, quarrels with this old temperance doctrine and modern scientific truth. The difference, he says, between the effect of a little' and 'much' is as marked as between agreeably warm water and a scald !—that only the excess is poison.' He further compares alcoholic use to 'rust or iron-mould,' but abuse to the burning spark' which explodes the mine. How does this accord with the subsequent statement (pp. 21 to 23) as to the habit of frequently taking a drop; for even the same amount of spirits taken at a bout of intoxication,* will do a man an infinite deal more harm if divided into repeated doses, and taken at short intervals during the day'?

*He means to say, an amount of spirits equal to that which is often taken at a weekly bout of drunkenness.' In the first edition, once in a week' follows the word intoxication.'

We