ALCOHOL HAS NO NUTRITIONAL VALUE. 

 Alcohol has no food value and its action as a curative agent is extremely limited. According to Dr. Henry Monroe, "Every substance used by man as food consists of sugar, starch, oil, and glutinous matter mixed together in various proportions. These substances are intended to sustain the organism of animals. The glutinous principles of fibrin, albumin and casein are used to build structure while oil, starch and sugar are primarily used to generate heat in the body. 

It is clear that if alcohol is a food, it contains one or more of these substances. It must contain either the nitrogenous elements found chiefly in meats, eggs, milk, vegetables, and seeds, from which animal tissues are built up and wastes repaired, or the carbonaceous elements found in fat, starch, and sugar, in the consumption of which heat and strength are developed. 

"The distinction of these groups of foods," says Dr. Hunt, "and their relations to the tissue-producing and heat-generating capacities of man, are so definite and so confirmed by animal experiments and by the many tests of scientific, physiological, and clinical experience, that no attempt to dismiss the classification has prevailed. It is not possible to draw so sharp a line as to limit the one to the production of tissue or cells and the other to the production of heat and power by ordinary combustion, and to deny any power of interchangeability in case of special demand or defective supply of a variety. This does not invalidate the fact that we are able to use them as definite markers." 

The manner in which these substances, when absorbed by the body, are assimilated and how they produce strength, is well known to the chemist and physiologist, who is in a position, in the light of well-established laws, to determine whether or not alcohol possesses food value. For years the most competent men of the medical profession have studied this subject with the greatest care, and have subjected alcohol to every known test and experiment, and the result is that it has been, by common consent, excluded from the class of tissue-creating foods. "We have never seen," says Dr. Hunt, "but one suggestion that alcohol might do this, and it is only a vague supposition. One author (Hammond) thinks it possible that it may "somehow" enter into combination with the products of decomposition of tissues, and "under certain circumstances it might yield its nitrogen to the construction of new tissues." No parallel in organic chemistry, nor any evidence in animal chemistry, can be found to surround this supposition of the areola as a possible hypothesis." 

Dr. Richardson says: "Alcohol contains no nitrogen; it has none of the qualities of structural food; it is incapable of being converted into any of them; it is not, therefore, a food in the sense of being a constructive agent in the construction of the body." Dr. W. B. Carpenter says, "Alcohol can supply nothing essential to the true nutrition of the tissues." Dr. Liebig says: "Beer, wine, spirits, etc., furnish no element capable of entering into the composition of the blood, the muscular fibers, or any part which is the seat of the life principle." Dr. Hammond, in his Tribune Lectures, where he advocates the use of alcohol in certain cases, says: "It is not demonstrable that alcohol undergoes a transformation into tissue." Cameron, in his Manual of Hygiene, says, "There is nothing in alcohol that can nourish any part of the body." Dr. E. Smith, F.R.S., says, "Alcohol is not a real food. It interferes with nutrition." Dr. T.K. Chambers says, "It is clear that we must cease to regard alcohol, as food, in any sense." 

"Hunt, "We detect in this substance no ingredient capable of fabricating tissue, nor in its decomposition any combination, such as we may find in cellular food, nor any evidence, either in the experience of physiologists or in the trials of dieticians, it is not surprising that we find in it neither the expectation nor the fulfillment of the purpose of nutrition.

constructive power". 

Since alcohol contains nothing that can be used to build up the body or to eliminate its waste products, it is appropriate to examine its capacity to produce heat. 

Production of heat.

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"The first usual test for a force-producing food," says Dr. Hunt, "and the one answered by the other foods of this class, is the production of heat in the combination of oxygen with it. This heat is synonymous with vital force, and is, to a large extent, a measure of the comparative value of the so-called respiratory foods. If we examine fats, starches and sugars, we can trace and estimate the processes by which they give off heat and are transformed into life force, and we can evaluate the capacities of the various 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 is one of this class of foods, we rightly expect to find some of the evidence which attaches to hydrocarbons." 

So what is the result of the experiments that have been conducted along these lines? They have been conducted for long periods and with the greatest care, by men of the highest knowledge of 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, starch, or sugar, and thus given heat to the body.  

Alcohol and temperature reduction.

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instead of increasing it; and it was even used in fevers as an antipyretic. The testimony of physicians in Europe and America on the cooling effects of alcohol is so uniform that Dr. Wood says, in his Materia Medica, "that it does not seem worth while to occupy space with a discussion of the subject." Liebermeister, one of the most learned contributors to Zeimssen's Cyclopaedia of the Practice of Medicine, 1875, says: "I have long been convinced by direct experience that alcohol, even in relatively large doses, does not raise the temperature of the body either in healthy or sick persons." Arctic travelers knew this so well that even before physiologists had demonstrated that alcohol reduced, rather than increased, body temperature, they had learned that spirits diminished their ability to withstand severe cold. "In the northern regions," says Edward Smith, "it has been proved that the total exclusion of spirits was necessary, in order to conserve heat under these unfavorable conditions." 

Alcohol does not make you strong.

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If alcohol contains no tissue-building material, and gives no heat to the body, it cannot add to its strength. "G. Budd, F.R.S., "Every kind of power that an animal can generate, the mechanical power of the muscles, the chemical (or digestive) power of the stomach, the intellectual power of the brain, is accumulated by the nutrition of the organ on which it depends." Dr. F.R. Lees, of Edinburgh, after discussing the question and educating the evidence, remarks: "From the very nature of things, it will now be seen how impossible it is that alcohol can strengthen food of either kind. Since it cannot become a part of the body, it cannot, therefore, contribute to its cohesion, organic force, or fixed power; and, since it leaves the body as it entered it, it cannot, by its decomposition, generate a thermal force." 

Sir Benjamin Brodie says: "Stimulants do not create nervous force; they merely enable you, so to speak, to use up what is left, and then they leave you more in need of rest than before."

Baron Liebig, already in 1843, in his "Animal Chemistry," pointed out the error of the generating power of alcohol. He says: "The circulation will be accelerated at the expense of the force available for voluntary movement, but without the production of a greater quantity of mechanical force." In his later "Letters" he says again, "Wine is quite superfluous to man, it is constantly followed by an expenditure of power" whereas, the true function of food is to give power. He adds, "These drinks promote the change of matter in the body, and are, therefore, accompanied by a loss of inner power, which ceases to be productive, because it is not employed in overcoming external difficulties, that is, in working." In other words, this great chemist says that alcohol withdraws the power of the system from useful work in the field or workshop, in order to cleanse the house of the taint of alcohol itself. 

The late Dr. W. Brinton, physician at St. Thomas', in his great work on dietetics, says: "Careful observation leaves little doubt that a moderate dose of beer or wine would immediately diminish, in most cases, the maximum weight that a healthy person can lift. Mental acuity, accuracy of perception, and delicacy of the senses are all so impaired by alcohol that one's maximum efforts are incompatible with the ingestion of any moderate quantity of fermented liquid. One drink is often enough to exhaust the body and mind and reduce their capacity to less than perfection. 

Dr. F. R. Lees, F. S. A., writing on the subject of alcohol as food, makes the following quotation from an essay on "Stimulating Beverages," published by Dr. H. R. Madden, as early as 1847: "Alcohol is not the natural stimulus of any of our organs, and consequently the functions performed in consequence of its application tend to weaken the organ on which it acts. 

Alcohol is incapable of being assimilated or converted into a related organic principle, and therefore cannot be considered nutritious. 

The strength experienced after the use of alcohol is not a new strength added to the system, but is manifested by the exercise of pre-existing nervous energy. 

The exhausting effects of alcohol, due to its stimulating properties, produce an abnormal susceptibility to morbid action in all the organs, and this, with the superinduced plethora, becomes a fertile source of disease. 

A person who habitually exerts himself to the point of requiring the daily use of stimulants to avoid exhaustion, may be compared to a machine working under high pressure. He or she will become much more vulnerable to the causes of illness and will certainly collapse sooner than he or she would have done under more favorable circumstances. 

The more one resorts to alcohol to overcome feelings of debility, the more one needs it, and by dint of repeating it over and over again, one comes to a period when one cannot give it up, unless the reaction is brought about simultaneously by a total temporary change of habits of life. 

Pushed to the wall.

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Not finding that alcohol has any direct dietary value, medical advocates of its use have been led to assume that it is a kind of secondary food, in that it has the power to retard the metamorphosis of tissue. "By metamorphosis of tissues is meant," says Dr. Hunt, "the change which is constantly going on in the system, and which involves a constant disintegration of matter; the breaking up and shunning of that which is no longer food, to make room for the new supply which is to sustain life. Another medical author, speaking of this metamorphosis, says: "The importance of this process for the maintenance of life is easily demonstrated by the ill effects which follow its disruption. If the evacuation of excretory substances is hindered or suspended in any way, these substances accumulate either in the blood or in the tissues, or in both.

In consequence of this retention and accumulation, they become toxic and rapidly produce a derangement of the vital functions. Their influence is exerted chiefly upon the nervous system, by which they most frequently produce irritability, disturbance of the special senses, delirium, insensibility, coma, and finally death." 

"This description," remarks Dr. Hunt, "seems almost intended for alcohol." He goes on to say, "To assert that alcohol is a food because it retards the metamorphosis of tissues is to claim that it somehow suspends the normal course of the laws of assimilation and nutrition, of waste and repair. A great defender of alcohol (Hammond) illustrates it thus: Alcohol retards the destruction of tissue. Through this destruction, strength is generated, muscles contract, thoughts develop, organs secrete and excrete. In other words, alcohol interferes with all of this. No wonder the author "doesn't understand" how he does this, nor do we understand how such a late metamorphosis can be recovered.  

It is not the origin of the life force.

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which is not known to have any of the usual powers of food, and to use it on the double supposition that it retards the metamorphosis of tissues, and that such retardation is conservative of health, is to pass out of the bounds of science into the land of remote possibilities, and to confer the title of adjuster upon an agent whose agency is itself doubtful.  

Having failed to identify alcohol as a nitrogenous or non-nitrogenous food, having found it susceptible of any of the proofs by which the alimentary force of foods is generally measured, it will do us no good to speak of a benefit by the retardation of regressive metamorphosis, unless this process be accompanied by a proof of the fact, by a scientific description of its mode of accomplishment in the present case, and unless it be shown to be practically desirable for nutrition. 

There is no doubt that alcohol causes defects in the processes of elimination which are natural to the healthy organism and which, even in disease, are often conservative of health.