e
it would enable the body to resist cold, instead of making it
colder; and in the extreme degrees of cold it would go on
burning like other fuel-foods, and would maintain, instead of
helping to destroy, life."--Richardson's _Lesson Book_.

Yet because it creates a glow of warmth in the skin immediately after
drinking it, thousands of people will discredit all evidence that it is
a reducer of bodily heat. Clinical thermometers, and after-sensations of
chilliness, are unheeded, for "Wine is a mocker," and multitudes are
willing to be deceived by it.

So, also, with the conclusions against it as a strengthening agent;
because it dulls the sense of hunger and of fatigue, those who crave it
will declare in the face of all scientific testimony that it strengthens
them, and takes the place of food. They will cite, too, the cases of
people who "lived upon whisky" during an illness of greater or less
duration. Of the sustaining of life upon alcohol only, Dr. N. S. Davis
has said:--

"The falsity of all such stories is made apparent by the fact
that nineteen-twentieths of all the alcoholic drinks given to
the sick are given in connection with sugar, milk, eggs or
meat-broths, which furnish the nutriment, and would support the
patients better if given with the same perseverance without the
alcohol than with it. While we have quite a number of examples
of men living on nothing but water forty or fifty days, I have
never seen or learned of a well-authenticated case of a man's
taking or receiving into his system nothing but alcohol for half
of that length of time, without becoming sick with either
gastro-duodenitis, nephritis, or delirium tremens."

_Some of the defenders of the medicinal use of alcohol claim that since
it has been shown to reduce tissue waste it should be classed as an
indirect food, a conserver of tissue._ Of this claim, Dr. N. S. Davis
says in the _Bulletin of the A. M. T. A._, November, 1895:--

"A careful study of the conditions and processes necessary for
both tissue building or nutrition, and tissue waste or
disintegration, in all the higher order of animals, will show
that neither process can be materially retarded without
retarding or preventing the other. Both processes take place
only in bioplasm or vitalized matter, supplied with oxygen,
water and heat. Neither the assimilation of new material food,
nor its