Alcohol has no meals value and is distinctly limited in its motion as a remedial agent. Dr. Henry Monroe says, "each form of substance employed with the aid of guy as food consists of sugar, starch, oil and glutinous be counted mingled together in numerous proportions. These are designed for the help of the animal body. The glutinous standards of food fibrine, albumen and casein are employed to accumulate the shape while the oil, starch and sugar are chiefly used to generate warmth in the frame".
Now it’s far clear that if alcohol is a food, it’ll be discovered to comprise one or extra of those materials. There should be in it both the nitrogenous factors found mainly in meats, eggs, milk, greens and seeds, out of which animal tissue is built and waste repaired or the carbonaceous factors determined in fats, starch and sugar, inside the intake of which heat and force are evolved.
"The distinctness of those organizations of meals," says Dr. Hunt, "and their relations to the tissue-generating and warmth-evolving capacities of guy, are so definite and so confirmed via experiments on animals and through manifold checks of scientific, physiological and medical experience, that no try to discard the classification has prevailed. To draw so instantly a line of demarcation as to limit the only entirely to tissue or cell manufacturing and the opposite to warmth and force manufacturing through normal combustion and to disclaim any strength of interchangeability beneath unique demands or amid defective deliver of one range is, certainly, untenable. This does now not inside the least invalidate the truth that we are capable of use these as ascertained landmarks".
How those materials while taken into the frame, are assimilated and how they generate force, are widely recognized to the chemist and physiologist, who’s in a position, within the light of nicely-ascertained legal guidelines, to determine whether or not alcohol does or does now not possess a meals fee. For years, the ablest men within the clinical profession have given this situation the most careful study, and feature subjected alcohol to every acknowledged test and experiment, and the result is that it has been, with the aid of not unusual consent, excluded from the elegance of tissue-constructing ingredients. "We have never," says Dr. Hunt, "visible but a single concept that it is able to so act, and this a promiscuous wager. One creator (Hammond) thinks it possible that it can ‘somehow’ enter into aggregate with the goods of degradation in tissues, and ‘under certain occasions might yield their nitrogen to the development of recent tissues.’ No parallel in natural chemistry, nor any proof in animal chemistry, may be found to surround this bet with the areola of a likely hypothesis".
Dr. Richardson says: "Alcohol contains no nitrogen; it has not one of the traits of structure-constructing meals; it’s far incapable of being transformed into any of them; it’s far, therefore, not a meals in any experience of its being a optimistic agent in constructing up the frame." Dr. W.B. Carpenter says: "Alcohol can not supply something that’s important to the real nutrition of the tissues." Dr. Liebig says: "Beer, wine, spirits, and many others., furnish no detail able to getting into the composition of the blood, muscular fibre, or any part that’s the seat of the principle of life." Dr. Hammond, in his Tribune Lectures, in which he advocates using alcohol in positive 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 which any part of the body can be nourished." Dr. E. Smith, F.R.S., says: "Alcohol isn’t a real meals. It interferes with alimentation." Dr. T.K. Chambers says: "It is obvious that we must quit to regard alcohol, as in any feel, a food".
"Not detecting in this substance," says Dr. Hunt, "any tissue-making elements, nor in its breaking apart any combos, along with we’re able to hint in the mobile foods, nor any evidence either in the enjoy of physiologists or the pains of alimentarians, it is not splendid that during it we have to discover neither the expectancy nor the conclusion of optimistic energy."
Not locating in alcohol some thing out of which the frame can be constructed up or its waste furnished, it is next to be examined as to its warmth-generating exceptional.
Production of warmth.
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"The first common test for a force-producing food," says Dr. Hunt, "and that to which other ingredients of that magnificence reply, is the manufacturing of warmth in the combination of oxygen therewith. This warmness approach crucial pressure, and is, in no small diploma, a measure of the comparative value of the so-referred to as breathing ingredients. If we have a look at the fats, the starches and the sugars, we can hint and estimate the techniques with the aid of which they evolve warmness and are modified into crucial force, and might weigh the capacities of various ingredients. We locate that the consumption of carbon by using union with oxygen is the law, that warmth is the product, and that the legitimate end result is pressure, while the end result of the union of the hydrogen of the foods with oxygen is water. If alcohol comes at all underneath this magnificence of foods, we rightly expect to locate some of the evidences which connect to the hydrocarbons."
What, then, is the end result of experiments in this course? They were carried out via lengthy intervals and with the finest care, by means of guys of the highest attainments in chemistry and body structure, and the result is given in those few phrases, through Dr. H.R. Wood, Jr., in his Materia Medica. "No one has been capable of stumble on within the blood any of the everyday consequences of its oxidation." That is, nobody has been able to discover that alcohol has undergone combustion, like fats, or starch, or sugar, and so given heat to the frame.
Alcohol and reduction of temperature.
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in place of increasing it; and it has even been utilized in fevers as an anti-pyretic. So uniform has been the testimony of physicians in Europe and America as to the cooling consequences of alcohol, that Dr. Wood says, in his Materia Medica, "that it does now not appear worth at the same time as to occupy area with a discussion of the difficulty." Liebermeister, one of the most learned individuals to Zeimssen’s Cyclopaedia of the Practice of Medicine, 1875, says: "I long considering that convinced myself, with the aid of direct experiments, that alcohol, even in comparatively huge doses, does not elevate the temperature of the body in both properly or ill humans." So nicely had this turn out to be known to Arctic voyagers, that, even earlier than physiologists had proven the fact that alcohol reduced, rather than increasing, the temperature of the body, that they had discovered that spirits lessened their power to resist intense bloodless. "In the Northern areas," says Edward Smith, "it turned into proved that the entire exclusion of spirits changed into necessary, with the intention to maintain heat underneath these damaging situations."
Alcohol does now not make you sturdy.
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If alcohol does now not include tissue-building fabric, nor give warmness to the frame, it can not likely add to its strength. "Every sort of electricity an animal can generate," says Dr. G. Budd, F.R.S., "the mechanical electricity of the muscular tissues, the chemical (or digestive) power of the stomach, the intellectual strength of the brain accumulates thru the nutrition of the organ on which it relies upon." Dr. F.R. Lees, of Edinburgh, after discussing the query, and educing evidence, feedback: "From the very nature of factors, it will now be seen how not possible it’s far that alcohol can be strengthening meals of either type. Since it cannot become a part of the frame, it can’t therefore make a contribution to its cohesive, natural electricity, or fixed energy; and, since it comes out of the body simply because it went in, it cannot, via its decomposition, generate warmness pressure."
Sir Benjamin Brodie says: "Stimulants do not create apprehensive power; they merely permit you, because it had been, to dissipate that which is left, after which they go away you extra in need of rest than before."
Baron Liebig, to this point lower back as 1843, in his "Animal Chemistry," pointed out the fallacy of alcohol generating power. He says: "The circulate will seem improved on the fee of the force available for voluntary motion, however with out the manufacturing of a greater amount of mechanical force." In his later "Letters," he once more says: "Wine is quite superfluous to man, it’s miles constantly observed via the expenditure of power" while, the actual function of meals is to present strength. He adds: "These drinks sell the trade of matter in the frame, and are, consequently, attended via an inward loss of energy, which ceases to be productive, as it is not employed in overcoming outward difficulties i.E., in operating." In different phrases, this extraordinary chemist asserts that alcohol abstracts the energy of the system from doing beneficial work within the subject or workshop, if you want to cleanse the residence from the defilement of alcohol itself.
The late Dr. W. Brinton, Physician to St. Thomas’, in his first rate paintings on Dietetics, says: "Careful remark leaves little question that a mild dose of beer or wine might, in most cases, right now diminish the maximum weight which a wholesome character may want to carry. Mental acuteness, accuracy of belief and delicacy of the senses are all to this point hostile by alcohol, as that the most efforts of every are incompatible with the ingestion of any moderate quantity of fermented liquid. A unmarried glass will often suffice to take the edge off each thoughts and body, and to reduce their potential to some thing under their perfection of labor."
Dr. F.R. Lees, F.S.A., writing with regards to alcohol as a meals, makes the following citation from an essay on "Stimulating Drinks," published with the aid of Dr. H.R. Madden, as long ago as 1847: "Alcohol isn’t always the natural stimulus to any of our organs, and subsequently, features achieved in outcome of its software, tend to debilitate the organ acted upon.
Alcohol is incapable of being assimilated or transformed into any natural proximate precept, and for this reason, cannot be considered nutritious.
The strength experienced after the usage of alcohol is not new strength introduced to the system, but is manifested by using calling into exercising the fearful strength pre-existing.
The last exhausting effects of alcohol, because of its stimulant homes, produce an unnatural susceptibility to morbid action in all of the organs, and this, with the plethora superinduced, becomes a fertile source of ailment.
A individual who habitually exerts himself to such an extent as to require the each day use of stimulants to push back exhaustion, can be in comparison to a gadget running underneath excessive pressure. He becomes a good deal more obnoxious to the reasons of disease, and will honestly break down sooner than he might have finished under extra favorable occasions.
The extra frequently alcohol is had recourse to for the reason of overcoming feelings of debility, the extra it is going to be required, and through constant repetition a period is at period reached whilst it can not be foregone, unless reaction is concurrently delivered approximately by a transient total change of the behavior of lifestyles.
Driven to the wall.
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Not locating that alcohol possesses any direct alimentary fee, the scientific advocates of its use had been pushed to the idea that it’s far a type of secondary meals, in that it has the energy to delay the metamorphosis of tissue. "By the metamorphosis of tissue is supposed," says Dr. Hunt, "that change that is continuously going on inside the gadget which entails a constant disintegration of fabric; a breaking up and averting of that which is not aliment, making room for that new supply that is to preserve lifestyles." Another clinical writer, in relating to this metamorphosis, says: "The importance of this technique to the maintenance of lifestyles is effortlessly proven via the injurious consequences which observe upon its disturbance. If the release of the excrementitious substances be in any way impeded or suspended, these materials acquire both within the blood or tissues, or each. In effect of this retention and accumulation they end up poisonous, and unexpectedly produce a derangement of the important features. Their impact is principally exerted upon the apprehensive gadget, through which they produce most frequent irritability, disturbance of the unique senses, delirium, insensibility, coma, and subsequently, loss of life."
"This description," comments Dr. Hunt, "appears almost meant for alcohol." He then says: "To claim alcohol as a food because it delays the metamorphosis of tissue, is to claim that it in some manner suspends the ordinary behavior of the legal guidelines of assimilation and nutrients, of waste and restore. A main recommend of alcohol (Hammond) therefore illustrates it: ‘Alcohol retards the destruction of the tissues. By this destruction, pressure is generated, muscle groups settlement, mind are developed, organs secrete and excrete.’ In different phrases, alcohol interferes with a lot of these. No wonder the author ‘isn’t always clear’ the way it does this, and we are not clean how such delayed metamorphosis recuperates.
Not an originator of essential pressure.
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which isn’t regarded to have any of the same old energy of meals, and apply it to the double assumption that it delays metamorphosis of tissue, and that such postpone is conservative of health, is to bypass outside of the boundaries of technological know-how into the land of far off opportunities, and confer the title of adjuster upon an agent whose corporation is itself dubious.
Having didn’t discover alcohol as a nitrogenous or non-nitrogenous food, no longer having determined it amenable to any of the evidences through which the meals-force of aliments is normally measured, it’s going to now not do for us to talk of gain via delay of regressive metamorphosis until such technique is followed with something evidential of the truth something scientifically descriptive of its mode of feat within the case to hand, and until it’s far shown to be almost ideal for alimentation.
There may be no doubt that alcohol does motive defects within the strategies of elimination that are herbal to the healthful frame and which even in disease are regularly conservative of fitness.