The late Dr. W. Brinton, Physician to St. Thomas’, in his great work on Dietetics, says:  “Careful observation leaves little doubt that a moderate dose of beer or wine would, in most cases, at once diminish the maximum weight which a healthy person could lift.  Mental acuteness, accuracy of perception and delicacy of the senses are all so far opposed by alcohol, as that the maximum efforts of each are incompatible with the ingestion of any moderate quantity of fermented liquid.  A single glass will often suffice to take the edge off both mind and body, and to reduce their capacity to something below their perfection of work.”

Dr. F.R.  Lees, F.S.A., writing on the subject of alcohol as a food, makes the following quotation from an essay on “Stimulating Drinks,” published by Dr. H.R.  Madden, as long ago as 1847:  “Alcohol is not 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, cannot be considered nutritious.

“The strength experienced after the use of alcohol is not new strength added to the system, but is manifested by calling into exercise the nervous energy pre-existing.

“The ultimate exhausting effects of alcohol, owing to its stimulant properties, produce an unnatural susceptibility to morbid action in all the organs, and this, with the plethora superinduced, becomes a fertile source of disease.

“A person who habitually exerts himself to such an extent as to require the daily use of stimulants to ward off exhaustion, may be compared to a machine working under high pressure.  He will become much more obnoxious to the causes of disease, and will certainly break down sooner than he would have done under more favorable circumstances.

“The more frequently alcohol is had recourse to for the purpose of overcoming feelings of debility, the more it will be required, and by constant repetition a period is at length reached when it cannot be foregone, unless reaction is simultaneously brought about by a temporary total change of the habits of life.

“Owing to the above facts, I conclude that the DAILY USE OF STIMULANTS IS INDEFENSIBLE UNDER ANY KNOWN CIRCUMSTANCES.”

DRIVEN TO THE WALL.

Not finding that alcohol possesses any direct alimentary value, the medical advocates of its use have been driven to the assumption that it is a kind of secondary food, in that it has the power to delay the metamorphosis of tissue.  “By the metamorphosis of tissue is meant,” says Dr. Hunt, “that change which is constantly going on in the system which involves a constant disintegration of material; a breaking up and avoiding of that which is no longer aliment, making room for that new supply which is to sustain life.”