Another medical writer, in referring to this metamorphosis, says:  “The importance of this process to the maintenance of life is readily shown by the injurious effects which follow upon its disturbance.  If the discharge of the excrementitious substances be in any way impeded or suspended, these substances accumulate either in the blood or tissues, or both.  In consequence of this retention and accumulation they become poisonous, and rapidly produce a derangement of the vital functions.  Their influence is principally exerted upon the nervous system, through which they produce most frequent irritability, disturbance of the special senses, delirium, insensibility, coma, and finally, death.”

“This description,” remarks Dr. Hunt, “seems almost intended 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 way suspends the normal conduct of the laws of assimilation and nutrition, of waste and repair.  A leading advocate of alcohol (Hammond) thus 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 other words, alcohol interferes with all these.  No wonder the author ‘is not clear’ how it does this, and we are not clear how such delayed metamorphosis recuperates.  To take an agent which is

“NOT KNOWN TO BE IN ANY SENSE AN ORIGINATOR OF VITAL FORCE;

“which 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.