What Becomes Of The Alcohol We Drink

Now, nf ter au investigation of a very elabórate cliaracter, Dr. Anstie and Drs. Thudichum and Dnpree havo satisfactorily proved that only a very small portion of the spirit which ia taken into a living body is expelled out of that body as alcohol, in the secretions, and thiit there must be some other means by which the spirit is disposed of in tho system. In one very romarkuble and memorable experiment, Dr. Anstir. gavo a dog, weighing ten pounde, the liberal dose of 2,000 grains of alcohol m ten days, and on the last day of tho ten ho adminifttered ninety-five grains of tho spirit as a final dose, and tïien two hours afterward killed the dog, and immediately subjected the whole body- blood, secretion, flesh, membranes, brain and bono- to rigorous analysis, and he found in the whole texture of the body only about twenty-three and one-half grains of spirit. Tho other 1,976 grains had clearly, thcrefore, been turned into something else within tho living system. These experiments diroctly refor to our qnery - the settlement of the foodpower of alcohol as a doctrine of physiological science. Before reasoning out this proposition, we must state certain facts which it seems impossible to reconcile with nny other tlieory than that alcohol is a food. Dr. Anstie relates the case of an old soldier who was under his care at tho Westminstcr Hospital in 18G1, who had lived for twenty ycars upon a diet composed of a bottíe of unsweetcned gin and " one small finger-length of foüsted bread " per day, and who maintained tho structures of his body for this long poriod upon that vory remarkable régimen. Similarly, au old lloman soldier admired by the Emperor Augustus, when asked how he managed to keep up such a splendid development, replied, "latas vino, extus oleo" - "With wine within and oil