Wine is the least harmful of alcoholic drinks. In moderate amounts and at proper times its influence upon the organism is favorable. In addition to its transient stimulating properties, it exerts a salutary and lasting influence upon the nutrition of the body. Only after prolonged and extreme abuse, such as is sometimes seen in wine-growing countries, does it lead to alcoholism.
3. Malt liquors—beer, ale, porter, stout, etc.—are fermented beverages made from a wort of germinated barley, and usually rendered slightly aromatic by hops. This process is known as brewing. Malt liquors, of which beer may be taken as the type, contain from 3.75 to 8 per cent. by volume of alcohol, free carbon dioxide, variable quantities of saccharine matters, dextrin, nitrogenized matters, extractive, bitter and coloring matters, essential oil, and various salts. Much importance has been ascribed to the quantity of malt extractive in beer: it has even been seriously spoken of as fluid bread. But, granting the nutritive value of the malt extractives, it is, as compared with the nutritive value of the grain from which they are derived, so small that beer must be regarded as a food of the most expensive kind.
Sound beer is wholesome and nutritious, and serves a useful purpose in the every-day life of a considerable part of the earth's population. But it is wholesome only in moderate amounts. Its excessive consumption results in progressive deterioration of mind and body. Undue accumulation of fat, diminished excretion of urea and carbon dioxide, are followed by disturbances of nutrition. Incomplete oxidation of the products of tissue-waste leads to the abnormal formation of oxalates, urates, etc., to gout, derangements of the liver, and gall-stones. In long-continued excesses in beer one of the effects of the lupulin is to enfeeble the powers of the reproductive organs. The inordinate consumption of beer induces intellectual dulness and bodily inactivity, and lessens the powers of resistance to disease. The dangers of acute and chronic alcoholism are obvious. Five glasses of beer of 5 per cent. alcohol strength contain as much alcohol as half a beer-glassful of spirits of 50 per cent.
The moderate consumption of beer in communities is to some extent a safeguard against alcoholism. To secure this end, however, the beer must be sound and of light quality. The stronger beers, and especially those which are fortified with coarse spirits, besides the direct dangers attending their use, tend rapidly to the formation of spirit-drinking habits.
The action of alcohol varies according to its degree of concentration, the quantity ingested, and its occasional or habitual use. On the one hand, when well diluted, taken in small amount and occasionally only, it may be without permanent effect upon any function or structure of the body; on the other hand, its frequent administration in large doses and but little diluted is, sooner or later, surely followed by widespread tissue-changes of the most serious kind.
The Physiological Action of Alcohol.—Alcohol is very rapidly taken up by absorbent surfaces. According to Doziel,6 it has been detected in the venous and arterial blood and in the lymph of the thoracic duct a minute and a half after its ingestion. It is very slightly if at all absorbed by the unbroken skin. Denuded surfaces and extensive wounds permit its absorption, as in the case of surgical dressings, and instances of intoxication from this cause have been recorded. It is also freely absorbed in the form of vapor by the pulmonary mucous surfaces. Some surfaces, as the pleura and peritoneum, absorb it, as has been demonstrated by the effects following its injection into those cavities. Its constitutional effects are also rapidly developed after hypodermic injection. Under ordinary circumstances, however, it is by the way of the absorbents and veins of the gastric mucous membrane that alcohol finds its way into the blood. It is probable that the greater part of the alcohol taken into the stomach undergoes absorption from that organ, and that very little of it reaches the upper bowel. Alcohol is readily absorbed by the rectal mucous membrane. Having entered the blood, it reaches all the organs of the body, and has been recovered by distillation not only from the blood itself, but also from the brain, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and various secretions.7
6 Pflüger's Archiv für Physiologie, Band viii., 1874.
7 Strauch, De demonstratione Spiritus Vini in corpus ingesti, Dorpati, 1862.
Lentz and other observers believe that certain organs have a special affinity for alcohol. The author named and Schulinus place the brain first in this respect, and in the next rank the muscles, lungs, and kidneys. But Lallemand and Perrin regard the liver and the brain as having an equal affinity for alcohol. The opinion of Baer, who rejects the view that alcohol has an especial predilection for particular organs, is more in accordance with known physiological law. This observer holds that alcohol, having found its way into the blood, circulates uniformly throughout the whole organism, and explains the greater amount recoverable from certain organs as due to the fact that these organs contain more blood than others.
The elimination of alcohol is at first rapid, afterward very gradual. It begins shortly after ingestion, and in the course of two or three hours one quarter, and perhaps much more, of the amount passes from the organism. Nevertheless, after the ingestion of large amounts traces of alcohol were discovered on the fifth day in the urine by Parkes and Wollowicz, although the elimination by the lungs had entirely ceased.