Dr. Richardson says:  “Alcohol contains no nitrogen; it has none of the qualities of structure-building foods; it is incapable of being transformed into any of them; it is, therefore, not a food in any sense of its being a constructive agent in building up the body.”  Dr. W.B.  Carpenter says:  “Alcohol cannot supply anything which is essential to the true nutrition of the tissues.”  Dr. Liebig says:  “Beer, wine, spirits, etc., furnish no element capable of entering into the composition of the blood, muscular fibre, or any part which is the seat of the principle of life.”  Dr. Hammond, in his Tribune Lectures, in which he advocates the use of alcohol in certain cases, says:  “It is not 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 is not a true food.  It interferes with alimentation.”  Dr. T.K.  Chambers says:  “It is clear that we must cease to regard alcohol, as in any sense, a food.”

“Not detecting in this substance,” says Dr. Hunt, “any tissue-making ingredients, nor in its breaking up any combinations, such as we are able to trace in the cell foods, nor any evidence either in the experience of physiologists or the trials of alimentarians, it is not wonderful that in it we should find neither the expectancy nor the realization of constructive power.”

Not finding in alcohol anything out of which the body can be built up or its waste supplied, it is next to be examined as to its heat-producing quality.

ALCOHOL NOT A PRODUCER OF HEAT.

“The first usual test for a force-producing food,” says Dr. Hunt, “and that to which other foods of that class respond, is the production of heat in the combination of oxygen therewith.  This heat means vital force, and is, in no small degree, a measure of the comparative value of the so-called respiratory foods. * * * If we examine the fats, the starches and the sugars, we can trace and estimate the processes by which they evolve heat and are changed into vital force, and can weigh the capacities of different foods.  We find that the consumption of carbon by union with oxygen is the law, that heat is the product, and that the legitimate result is force, while the result of the union of the hydrogen of the foods with oxygen is water.  If alcohol comes at all under this class of foods, we rightly expect to find some of the evidences which attach to the hydrocarbons.”

What, then, is the result of experiments in this direction?  They have been conducted through long periods and with the greatest care, by men of the highest attainments in chemistry and physiology, and the result is given in these few words, by Dr. H.R.  Wood, Jr., in his Materia Medica.  “No one has been able to detect in the blood any of the ordinary results of its oxidation.”  That is, no one has been able to find that alcohol has undergone combustion, like fat, or starch, or sugar, and so given heat to the body.  On the contrary, it is now known and admitted by the medical profession that