is not known to have any of the usual power of foods, and use it
on the double assumption that it delays metamorphosis of tissue, and
that such delay is conservative of health, is to pass outside of the
bounds of science into the land of remote possibilities, and confer the
title of adjuster upon an agent whose agency is itself doubtful. * * * *

"Having failed to identify alcohol as a nitrogenous or non-nitrogenous
food, not having found it amenable to any of the evidences by which the
food-force of aliments is generally measured, it will not do for us to
talk of benefit by delay of regressive metamorphosis unless such process
is accompanied with something evidential of the fact--something
scientifically descriptive of its mode of accomplishment in the case at
hand, and unless it is shown to be practically desirable for
alimentation.

"There can be no doubt that alcohol does cause _defects_ in the
processes of elimination which are natural to the healthy body and which
even in disease are often conservative of health. In the pent-in evils
which pathology so often shows occurrent in the case of spirit-drinkers,
in the vascular, fatty and fibroid degenerations which take place, in
the accumulations of rheumatic and scrofulous tendencies, there is the
strongest evidence that

"ALCOHOL ACTS AS A DISTURBING ELEMENT

"and is very prone to initiate serious disturbances amid the normal
conduct both of organ and function.

"To assert that this interference is conservative in the midst of such a
fearful accumulation of evidence as to result in quite the other
direction, and that this kind of delay in tissue-change accumulates
vital force, is as unscientific as it is paradoxical.

"Dickinson, in his able expose of the effects of alcohol, (_Lancet_,
Nov., 1872,) confines himself to pathological facts. After recounting,
with accuracy, the structural changes which it initiates, and the
structural changes and consequent derangement and suspension of vital
functions which it involves, he aptly terms it the 'genius of
degeneration.'

"With abundant provision of indisputable foods, select that liquid which
has failed to command the general assent of experts that it is a food at
all, and because it is claimed to diminish some of the excretions, call
that a delay of metamorphosis of tissue conservative of health! The
ostrich may bury his head in the sand, but science will not close its
eyes before such impalpable dust."

Spea