Alcohol has no food price and is exceedingly restricted in its action as a remedial agent. Dr. Henry Monroe says, "every quite substance used by man as food consists of sugar, starch, oil and glutinous matter mingled along in numerous proportions. These are designed for the support of the animal frame. The glutinous principles of food fibrine, albumen and casein are used to create up the structure whereas the oil, starch and sugar are chiefly used to get heat within the body".
Now it's clear that if alcohol could be a food, it'll be found to contain one or additional of those substances. There should be in it either the nitrogenous components found chiefly in meats, eggs, milk, vegetables and seeds, out of that animal tissue is made and waste repaired or the carbonaceous components found in fat, starch and sugar, within the consumption of that heat and force are evolved.
"The distinctness of those teams of foods," says Dr. Hunt, "and their relations to the tissue-producing and heat-evolving capacities of man, are thus definite and thus confirmed by experiments on animals and by manifold tests of scientific, physiological and clinical expertise, that no plan to discard the classification has prevailed. To draw thus straight a line of demarcation on limit the one entirely to tissue or cell production and therefore the different to heat and force production through normal combustion and to deny any power of interchangeability underneath special demands or amid defective provide of 1 selection is, indeed, untenable. This doesn't within the least invalidate the actual fact that we tend to are ready to use these as ascertained landmarks".
How these substances when taken into the body, are assimilated and the way they generate force, are standard to the chemist and physiologist, who is ready, within the light-weight of well-ascertained laws, to see whether or not alcohol will or doesn't possess a food price. For years, the ablest men within the medical profession have given this subject the foremost careful study, and have subjected alcohol to each known check and experiment, and therefore the result's that it's been, by common consent, excluded from the category of tissue-building foods. "We have not," says Dr. Hunt, "seen however one suggestion that it may thus act, and this a promiscuous guess. One author (Hammond) thinks it potential that it's going to 'somehow' enter into combination with the product of decay in tissues, and 'under bound circumstances may yield their nitrogen to the development of recent tissues.' No parallel in organic chemistry, nor any proof in animal chemistry, will be found to surround this guess with the areola of a potential hypothesis".
Dr. Richardson says: "Alcohol contains no nitrogen; it's none of the qualities of structure-building foods; it's incapable of being remodeled into any of them; it's, therefore, not a food in any sense of its being a constructive agent in increase the body." Dr. W.B. Carpenter says: "Alcohol cannot provide something that is crucial to the true nutrition of the tissues." Dr. Liebig says: "Beer, wine, spirits, etc., furnish no component capable of stepping into the composition of the blood, muscular fibre, or any half that is that the seat of the principle of life." Dr. Hammond, in his Tribune Lectures, within which he advocates the utilization of alcohol in bound cases, says: "It isn't demonstrable that alcohol undergoes conversion into tissue." Cameron, in his Manuel of Hygiene, says: "There is nothing in alcohol with that any a part of the body will be nourished." Dr. E. Smith, F.R.S., says: "Alcohol isn't a real food. It interferes with alimentation." Dr. T.K. Chambers says: "It is obvious that we tend to should stop to take alcohol, as in any sense, a food".
"Not detecting during this substance," says Dr. Hunt, "any tissue-making ingredients, nor in its calling it off any mixtures, like we tend to are ready to trace within the cell foods, nor any proof either within the expertise of physiologists or the trials of alimentarians, it's not wonderful that in it we should always realize neither the expectation nor the conclusion of constructive power."
Not finding in alcohol something out of that the body will be engineered up or its waste equipped, it's next to be examined on its heat-producing quality.
Production of warmth.
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"The initial usual check for a force-producing food," says Dr. Hunt, "and that to that different foods of that category respond, is that the production of warmth within the combination of oxygen therewith. This heat means that important force, and is, in no little degree, a live of the comparative price of the so-called respiratory foods. If we tend to examine the fats, the starches and therefore the sugars, we are able to trace and estimate the processes by that they evolve heat and are become important force, and may weigh the capacities of various foods. we discover that the consumption of carbon by union with oxygen is that the law, that heat is that the product, which the legitimate result's force, whereas the results of the union of the hydrogen of the foods with oxygen is water. If alcohol comes in any respect underneath this category of foods, we tend to rightly expect to search out a number of the evidences that attach to the hydrocarbons."
What, then, is that the results of experiments during this direction? they need been conducted through long periods and with the best care, by men of the very best attainments in chemistry and physiology, and therefore the result's given in these few words, by Dr. H.R. Wood, Jr., in his Materia Medica. "No one has been ready to detect within the blood any of the normal results of its oxidation." That is, nobody has been ready to realize that alcohol has undergone combustion, like fat, or starch, or sugar, and thus given heat to the body.
Alcohol and reduction of temperature.
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instead of increasing it; and it's even been employed in fevers as an anti-pyretic. thus uniform has been the testimony of physicians in Europe and America on the cooling effects of alcohol, that Dr. Wood says, in his Materia Medica, "that it doesn't appear value whereas to occupy house with a discussion of the topic." Liebermeister, one amongst the foremost learned contributors to Zeimssen's Cyclopaedia of the apply of medication, 1875, says: "I long since convinced myself, by direct experiments, that alcohol, even in comparatively giant doses, doesn't elevate the temperature of the body in either well or sick folks." thus well had this become known to Arctic voyagers, that, even before physiologists had demonstrated the actual fact that alcohol reduced, rather than increasing, the temperature of the body, that they had learned that spirits lessened their power to resist extreme cold. "In the Northern regions," says Edward Smith, "it was proved that the whole exclusion of spirits was necessary, so as to retain heat underneath these unfavorable conditions."
Alcohol doesn't cause you to sturdy.
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If alcohol doesn't contain tissue-building material, nor offer heat to the body, it cannot probably augment its strength. "Every quite power an animal will generate," says Dr. G. Budd, F.R.S., "the mechanical power of the muscles, the chemical (or digestive) power of the abdomen, the intellectual power of the brain accumulates through the nutrition of the organ on that it depends." Dr. F.R. Lees, of Edinburgh, once discussing the question, and educing proof, remarks: "From the terribly nature of things, it'll currently be seen how not possible it's that alcohol will be strengthening food of either kind. Since it cannot become a section of the body, it cannot consequently contribute to its cohesive, organic strength, or mounted power; and, since it comes out of the body simply because it went in, it cannot, by its decomposition, generate heat force."
Sir Benjamin Brodie says: "Stimulants don't produce nervous power; they simply enable you, as it were, to burn up that that is left, and then they leave you additional in want of rest than before."
Baron Liebig, to this point back as 1843, in his "Animal Chemistry," noticed the fallacy of alcohol generating power. He says: "The circulation can seem accelerated at the expense of the force on the market for voluntary motion, however while not the assembly of a bigger quantity of mechanical force." In his later "Letters," he once more says: "Wine is kind of superfluous to man, it's constantly followed by the expenditure of power" whereas, the important perform of food is to convey power. He adds: "These drinks promote the modification of matter within the body, and are, consequently, attended by an inward loss of power, that ceases to be productive, as a result of it's not used in overcoming outward difficulties i.e., in working." In different words, this nice chemist asserts that alcohol abstracts the ability of the system from doing helpful work within the field or workshop, so as to cleanse the house from the defilement of alcohol itself.
The late Dr. W. Brinton, Physician to St. Thomas', in his nice work on Dietetics, says: "Careful observation leaves very little doubt that a moderate dose of beer or wine would, in most cases, directly diminish the most weight that a healthy person may raise. Mental acuteness, accuracy of perception and delicacy of the senses are all to this point opposed by alcohol, as that the most efforts of every are incompatible with the ingestion of any moderate amount of fermented liquid. one glass can usually suffice to require the sting off each mind and body, and to cut back their capability to one thing below their perfection of labor."
Dr. F.R. Lees, F.S.A., writing on the topic of alcohol as a food, makes the subsequent quotation from an essay on "Stimulating Drinks," revealed by Dr. H.R. Madden, as back then as 1847: "Alcohol isn't the natural stimulus to any of our organs, and hence, functions performed in consequence of its application, tend to debilitate the organ acted upon.
Alcohol is incapable of being assimilated or converted into any organic proximate principle, and hence, can't be thought of nutritious.
The strength experienced once the utilization of alcohol isn't new strength added to the system, however is manifested by calling into exercise the nervous energy pre-existing.
The ultimate exhausting effects of alcohol, because of its stimulant properties, turn out an unnatural susceptibility to morbid action in all the organs, and this, with the plethora superinduced, becomes a fertile supply of disease.
A person who habitually exerts himself to such an extent on need the daily use of stimulants to push back exhaustion, is also compared to a machine operating underneath high pressure. He can become rather more obnoxious to the causes of disease, and can definitely break down earlier than he would have done underneath additional favorable circumstances.
The additional frequently alcohol is had recourse to for the aim of overcoming feelings of debility, the additional it'll be needed, and by constant repetition a amount is at length reached when it can't be foregone, unless reaction is simultaneously led to by a short lived total modification of the habits of life.
Driven to the wall.
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Not finding that alcohol possesses any direct alimentary price, the medical advocates of its use are driven to the idea that it's a form of secondary food, in that it's the ability to delay the metamorphosis of tissue. "By the metamorphosis of tissue is supposed," says Dr. Hunt, "that modification that is consistently happening within the system that involves a relentless disintegration of material; a calling it off and avoiding of that that is not any longer aliment, creating space for that new provide that is to sustain life." Another medical author, in concerning this metamorphosis, says: "The importance of this method to the upkeep of life is quickly shown by the injurious effects that follow upon its disturbance. If the discharge of the excrementitious substances be in any means impeded or suspended, these substances accumulate either within the blood or tissues, or both. In consequence of this retention and accumulation they become toxic, and rapidly turn out a derangement of the important functions. Their influence is principally exerted upon the nervous system, through that they turn out most frequent irritability, disturbance of the special senses, delirium, insensibility, coma, and at last, death."
"This description," remarks Dr. Hunt, "seems nearly meant for alcohol." He then says: "To claim alcohol as a food as a result of it delays the metamorphosis of tissue, is to say that it in a way suspends the traditional conduct of the laws of assimilation and nutrition, of waste and repair. a number one advocate of alcohol (Hammond) so illustrates it: 'Alcohol retards the destruction of the tissues. By this destruction, force is generated, muscles contract, thoughts are developed, organs secrete and excrete.' In different words, alcohol interferes with of these. No marvel the author 'is not clear' how it will this, and that we aren't clear how such delayed metamorphosis recuperates.
Not an originator of significant force.
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which isn't known to own any of the same old power of foods, and use it on the double assumption that it delays metamorphosis of tissue, which such delay is conservative of health, is to pass outside of the bounds of science into the land of remote potentialities, and confer the title of adjuster upon an agent whose agency is itself uncertain.
Having didn't establish alcohol as a nitrogenous or non-nitrogenous food, not having found it amenable to any of the evidences by that the food-force of aliments is mostly measured, it'll not do for us to speak of profit by delay of regressive metamorphosis unless such method is accompanied with one thing evidential of the actual fact one thing scientifically descriptive of its mode of accomplishment within the case at hand, and unless it's shown to be practically fascinating for alimentation.
There {can be|are usually|will be|is|may be} little doubt that alcohol will cause defects within the processes of elimination that are natural to the healthy body and that even in disease are often conservative of health.
