“There is nothing in alcohol with which any part of the body can be nourished.”—Cameron’s Manual of Hygiene.
“Alcohol contains no nitrogen; it has none of the qualities of the structure-building foods; it is incapable of being transformed into any of them; it does not supply caseine, albumen, fibrine or any other of those substances which go to build up the muscles, nerves and other active organs.”—Sir B. W. Richardson.
“It is not demonstrable that alcohol undergoes conversion into tissue.”—Dr. W. A. Hammond.
If it is a food why do all writers and experimenters exclude it from the diet of children, and why is the caution always given people to not take it upon an empty stomach? Foods are supposed to be particularly suited to an empty stomach.
Foods induce healthy, normal action of all the bodily functions.
The chapter upon “Diseases Produced by Alcohol” is evidence that by this test alcohol shows up in its true nature as a poison, and not a food. Alcohol destroys healthy normal action of all the bodily functions, and builds up impure fat, fatty degeneration, instead of strong, firm muscle. Dr. Parkes, one of the most famous of English students of alcohol, says:—
“These alcoholic degenerations are certainly not confined to the notoriously intemperate. I have seen them in women accustomed to take wine in quantities not excessive, and who would have been shocked at the imputation that they were taking too much, although the result proved that for them it was excess.”
Dr. Ezra M. Hunt, late secretary of New Jersey State Board of Health, remarks:—
“The question of excess occurs in sickness as well as in health, and all the more because its determination is so difficult and the evil effects so indisputable. The dividing line in medicine, even between use and abuse, is so zigzag and invisible that common mortals, in groping for it, generally stumble beyond it, and the delicate perception of medical art too often fails in the recognition.”
All non-alcoholic writers assert that the continuous use of alcohol as a medicine is equally injurious to all the bodily functions as the employment of it as a beverage. Calling it medicine does not change its deadly nature, nor does the medical attendant possess any magical power by which a destructive poison may be converted into a restorative agent.