explorer, says:--

"While fresh animal food, and especially fat, is absolutely
essential to the inhabitants and travelers in Arctic countries,
alcohol, in almost any shape, is not only completely useless,
but positively injurious."

Lieutenant Johnson, who accompanied Nansen upon his northern expedition,
said, when interviewed by a reporter of the London _Daily News_:--

"The common opinion that alcohol becomes in some way a necessity
in cold countries is entirely a mistaken one. This has been
conclusively proved by the expedition. In making up his list of
the _Fram's_ equipments, Nansen did not include any spirits,
with the exception of some spirits of wine for lamps and
stoves."

In the list of stores taken upon the long sledging expedition after
leaving the _Fram_ no liquors are mentioned. See _Farthest North_, by
Nansen. The omission of spirits was not because of any "temperance
fanaticism," but because the experience of former Arctic expeditions had
shown clearly that men freeze more readily after partaking of alcohol
than when they totally abstain from it.

That wine is not a fuel-food was shown conclusively in the
Franco-Prussian war during the siege of Paris. Food was scarce in the
French Army, and wine was liberally supplied. The men complained
bitterly of the extreme chilliness which affected them. Dr. Klein, a
French staff surgeon, was reported in the _Medical Temperance Journal_
of England, October 1873, as saying of this:--

"We found most decidedly that alcohol was no substitute for
bread and meat. We also found that it was no substitute for
coals. We of the army had to sleep outside Paris on the frozen
ground. We had plenty of alcohol, but it did not make us warm.
Let me tell you there is nothing that will make you feel the
cold more, nothing which will make you feel the dreadful sense
of hunger more, than alcohol."

There is no evidence against alcohol stronger than that which shows it
to be not heat-producing, as commonly believed, but a reducer of heat in
the body. Indeed, this question of bodily temperature is used in recent
times to decide whether a man who has fallen upon the street is troubled
by apoplexy, or influenced by alcoholism. If the clinical thermometer
shows the temperature to be above normal, it is apoplexy; if below
normal, it is alcoholism.

"Alcohol is clearly proved to be not a fuel-food, for if it wer