oes conversion into tissue." Cameron, in
his Manuel of Hygiene, says: "There is nothing in alcohol with which any
part of the body can be nourished." Dr. E. Smith, F.R.S., says: "Alcohol
is not a true food. It interferes with alimentation." Dr. T.K. Chambers
says: "It is clear that we must cease to regard alcohol, as in any
sense, a food."

"Not detecting in this substance," says Dr. Hunt, "any tissue-making
ingredients, nor in its breaking up any combinations, such as we are
able to trace in the cell foods, nor any evidence either in the
experience of physiologists or the trials of alimentarians, it is not
wonderful that in it we should find neither the expectancy nor the
realization of constructive power."

Not finding in alcohol anything out of which the body can be built up or
its waste supplied, it is next to be examined as to its heat-producing
quality.

ALCOHOL NOT A PRODUCER OF HEAT.

"The first usual test for a force-producing food," says Dr. Hunt, "and
that to which other foods of that class respond, is the production of
heat in the combination of oxygen therewith. This heat means vital
force, and is, in no small degree, a measure of the comparative value of
the so-called respiratory foods. * * * If we examine the fats, the
starches and the sugars, we can trace and estimate the processes by
which they evolve heat and are changed into vital force, and can weigh
the capacities of different foods. We find that the consumption of
carbon by union with oxygen is the law, that heat is the product, and
that the legitimate result is force, while the result of the union of
the hydrogen of the foods with oxygen is water. If alcohol comes at all
under this class of foods, we rightly expect to find some of the
evidences which attach to the hydrocarbons."

What, then, is the result of experiments in this direction? They have
been conducted through long periods and with the greatest care, by men
of the highest attainments in chemistry and physiology, and the result
is given in these few words, by Dr. H.R. Wood, Jr., in his Materia
Medica. "No one has been able to detect in the blood any of the ordinary
results of its oxidation." That is, no one has been able to find that
alcohol has undergone combustion, like fat, or starch, or sugar, and so
given heat to the body. On the contrary, it is now known and admitted by
the medical profession that

ALCOHOL REDUCES THE TEMPERATURE OF THE BODY,

instead of increasing it;