CHAPTER VII.
LIQUOR.
Is it advisable to take a "drink" before breakfast?
This is a question of the greatest importance, and requires a very clear and impartial answer; for which our space is almost too limited.
Liquor is no article of food; if for a moment it were considered as such, we should find that it is even less nutritious than water with sugar in it. What makes liquor a necessary article, especially so to the working-classes, is a certain quality it possesses, a quality just as dangerous as it is good.
Liquor is a favorite beverage because of the alcohol it contains; this is nothing else than sugar which has undergone fermentation. Alcohol may be made from all those plants from which starch can be obtained; for, by the proper process, starch may be changed into gluten, gluten into sugar, and sugar into alcohol. Alcohol therefore conveys more nutriment to the human body than sugar itself, while it has qualities that the sugar does not possess, and which make it an article as popular as it is dangerous. If taken in small quantities, alcohol affects the body like medicine; in large portions, like poison. We are therefore not surprised if partly we cannot do without it, and if, on the other hand, we hear it condemned every day. What makes its enjoyment so very dangerous is, that although it is no article of food, it offers to the hungry a kind of substitute for food, and, what is worse, a substitute which is often the cheapest, and of most rapid effect in regard to quieting one's appetite. It is owing to this that its enjoyment may produce the most fatal and pernicious evils that ever were inflicted upon unhappy man.
Let us now learn the medicinal qualities of liquor, so that we may see that it is natural for it to be a favorite; and by exhibiting the dangers of its enjoyment, we shall succeed best in showing that people are justified in condemning its intemperate use; but it will also be seen that, in spite of the evident hurtfulness, its entire banishment would be a foolishness not resulting in good.
Liquor, if taken in a very small dose, possesses the quality of increasing the quantity of gastric juices. It excites the sides of the stomach, and by this promotes the secretion of the juice by which food is dissolved. It often occurs, that if but a minute quantity of fat has been taken, it envelops the food in the stomach; and as the gastric juice dissolves fat only with great difficulty, this food often remains undigested in the stomach, and nutrition then is carried on but defectively. Digestion, therefore, may be greatly improved, if the stomach is so affected as to secrete a greater quantity of gastric juice; this is often done by means of spice—for example, by putting a little pepper upon bacon or ham. The pepper itself does not help dissolve food, but excites the salivary glands and the stomach, thus increasing the gastric juice which performs digestion.
If fat has been eaten, the same effect may be produced by a little liquor. Indeed, it is even preferable to spice, inasmuch as it contains ether, which alone is able to dissolve fat.
Thus we have seen that liquor is a kind of medicine. And although every one must strive to do without medicine, still he must not condemn it; he should scorn rather the wantonness which throws itself on the mercy of medicine. It is right to oppose the enjoyment of much fat; but if once too much of it has been taken, there is no reason why we should remonstrate against the medical application of a small quantity of liquor. To those who believe that they see in alcohol the evil spirit himself, it may some time or other happen, that even they eat a little too much fat, and then seek relief by taking some patent or other medicine, dropped on sugar. Most medicines used in such cases, however, are nothing but mixtures of sulphuric ether and alcohol; and if alcohol is the evil spirit, he is certainly not changed into an angel by putting him on sugar.