NOT A FOOD, AND VERY LIMITED IN ITS RANGE AS A MEDICINE.
The use of alcohol as a medicine has been very large. If his patient was
weak and nervous, the physician too often ordered wine or ale; or, not
taking the trouble to refer his own case to a physician, the invalid
prescribed these articles for himself. If there was a failure of
appetite, its restoration was sought in the use of one or both of the
above-named forms of alcohol; or, perhaps, adopting a more heroic
treatment, the sufferer poured brandy or whisky into his weak and
sensitive stomach. Protection from cold was sought in a draught of some
alcoholic beverage, and relief from fatigue and exhaustion in the use of
the same deleterious substance. Indeed, there is scarcely any form of
bodily ailment or discomfort, or mental disturbance, for the relief of
which a resort was not had to alcohol in some one of its many forms.
It is fair to say that, as a medicine, its consumption has far exceeded
that of any other substance prescribed and taken for physical and mental
derangements.
The inquiry, then, as to the true remedial value of alcohol is one of
the gravest import; and it is of interest to know that for some years
past the medical profession has been giving this subject a careful and
thorough investigation. The result is to be found in the brief
declaration made by the Section on Medicine, of the
INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CONGRESS,
which met in Philadelphia in 1876. This body was composed of about six
hundred delegates, from Europe and America, among them, some of the
ablest men in the profession. Realizing the importance of some
expression in relation to the use of alcohol, medical and otherwise,
from this Congress, the National Temperance Society laid before it,
through its President, W.E. Dodge, and Secretary, J.N. Stearns, the
following memorial:
"The National Temperance Society sends greeting, and respectfully
invites from your distinguished body a public declaration to the effect
that alcohol should be classed with other powerful drugs; that, when,
prescribed medicinally, it should be with conscientious caution and a
sense of grave responsibility; that it is in no sense food to the human
system; that its improper use is productive of a large amount of
physical disease, tending to deteriorate the human race; and to
recommend, as representatives of enlightened science, to your several
nationalities, total abstinence from alcoholic beverages."
In response to this memorial, the president of the society received
from J. Ewing Mears, M.D., Secretary of the Section on Medicine,
International Congress, the following official letter, under date of
September 9th, 1876:
"DEAR SIR: I am instructed by the Section on Medicine, International
Medical Congress, of 1876, to transmit to you, as the action of the
Section, the following conclusions adopted by it with regard to the use
of alcohol in medicine, the same being in reply to the communication
sent by the National Temperance Society.
"1. Alcohol is not shown to have a definite food value by any of the
usual methods of chemical analysis or physiological investigation.
"2. Its use as a medicine is chiefly that of a cardiac stimulant, and
often admits of substitution.
"3. As a medicine, it is not well fitted for self-prescription by the
laity, and the medical profession is not accountable for such
administration, or for the enormous evils arising therefrom.
"4. The purity of alcoholic liquors is, in general, not as well assured
as that of articles used for medicine should be. The various mixtures,
when used as medicine, should have definite and known composition, and
should not be interchanged promiscuously."
The reader will see in this no hesitating or halfway speech. The
declaration is strong and clear, that, as a food, alcohol is not shown,
when subjected to the usual method of chemical or physiological
investigation, to have any food value; and that, as a medicine, its use
is chiefly confined to a cardiac stimulant, and often admits of
substitution.
A declaration like this, coming, as it does, from a body of medical men
representing the most advanced ideas held by the profession, must have
great weight with the people. But we do not propose resting on this
declaration alone. As it was based on the results of chemical and
physiological investigations, let us go back of the opinion expressed by
the Medical Congress, and examine these results, in order that the
ground of its opinion may become apparent.
There was presented to this Congress, by a distinguished physician of
New Jersey, Dr. Ezra M. Hunt, a paper on "Alcohol as a Food and
Medicine," in which the whole subject is examined in the light of the
most recent and carefully-conducted experiments of English, French,
German and American chemists and physiologists, and their conclusions,
as well as those of the author of the paper, set forth in the plainest
manner. This has since been published by the National Temperance
Society, and should be read and carefully studied by every one who is
seeking for accurate information on the important subject we are now
considering. It is impossible for us to more than glance at the evidence
brought forward in proof of the assertion that
ALCOHOL HAS NO FOOD VALUE,
and is exceedingly limited in its action as a remedial agent; and we,
therefore, urge upon all who are interested in this subject, to possess
themselves of Dr. Hunt's exhaustive treatise, and to study it carefully.
If the reader will refer to the quotation made by us in the second
chapter from Dr. Henry Monroe, where the food value of any article is
treated of, he will see it stated that "every kind of substance employed
by man as food consists of sugar, starch, oil and glutinous matter,
mingled together in various proportions; these are designed for the
support of the animal frame. The glutinous principles of food--fibrine,
albumen and casein--are employed to build up the structure; while the
oil, starch and sugar are chiefly used to generate heat in the body."
Now, it is clear, that if alcohol is a food, it will be found to contain
one or more of these substances. There must be in it either the
nitrogenous elements found chiefly in meats, eggs, milk, vegetables and
seeds, out of which animal tissue is built and waste repaired; or the
carbonaceous elements found in fat, starch and sugar, in the consumption
of which heat and force are evolved.
"The distinctness of these groups of foods," says Dr. Hunt, "and their
relations to the tissue-producing and heat-evolving capacities of man,
are so definite and so confirmed by experiments on animals and by
manifold tests of scientific, physiological and clinical experience,
that no attempt to discard the classification has prevailed. To draw so
straight a line of demarcation as to limit the one entirely to tissue or
cell production, and the other to heat and force production through
ordinary combustion, and to deny any power of interchangeability under
special demands or amid defective supply of one variety, is, indeed,
untenable. This does not in the least invalidate the fact that we are
able to use these as ascertained landmarks."
How these substances, when taken into the body, are assimilated, and how
they generate force, are well known to the chemist and physiologist, who
is able, in the light of well-ascertained laws, to determine whether
alcohol does or does not possess a food value. For years, the ablest men
in the medical profession have given this subject the most careful
study, 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-building foods. "We have never," says Dr. Hunt, "seen
but a single suggestion that it could so act, and this a promiscuous
guess. One writer (Hammond) thinks it possible that it may 'somehow'
enter into combination with the products of decay in tissues, and 'under
certain circumstances might yield _their_ nitrogen to the construction
of new tissues.' No parallel in organic chemistry, nor any evidence in
animal chemistry, can be found to surround this guess with the areola
of a possible hypothesis."
Dr. Richardson says: "Alcohol contains no nitrogen; it has none of the
qualities of structure-building foods; it is incapable of being
transformed into any of them; it is, therefore, not a food in any sense
of its being a constructive agent in building up the body." Dr. W.B.
Carpenter says: "Alcohol cannot supply anything which is 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, muscular fibre, or any part which is the seat
of the principle of life." Dr. Hammond, in his Tribune Lectures, in
which he advocates the use of alcohol in certain cases, says: "It is not
demonstrable that alcohol undergoes 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; and it has even been used in fevers as an
anti-pyretic. So uniform has been the testimony of physicians in Europe
and this country as to the cooling effects of alcohol, 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 Cyclopædia of the Practice
of Medicine, 1875, says: "I long since convinced myself, by direct
experiments, that alcohol, even in comparatively large doses, does not
elevate the temperature of the body in either well or sick people." So
well had this become known to Arctic voyagers, that, even before
physiologists had demonstrated the fact that alcohol reduced, instead of
increasing, the temperature of the body, they had learned that spirits
lessened their power to withstand extreme cold. "In the Northern
regions," says Edward Smith, "it was proved that the entire exclusion of
spirits was necessary, in order to retain heat under these unfavorable
conditions."
ALCOHOL DOES NOT GIVE STRENGTH.
If alcohol does not contain tissue-building material, nor give heat to
the body, it cannot possibly add to its strength. "Every kind of power
an animal can generate," says Dr. G. Budd, F.R.S., "the mechanical power
of the muscles, the chemical (or digestive) power of the stomach, the
intellectual power of the brain--accumulates _through the nutrition of
the organ_ on which it depends." Dr. F.R. Lees, of Edinburgh, after
discussing the question, and educing evidence, remarks: "From the very
nature of things, it will now be seen how _impossible_ it is that
alcohol can be strengthening food of either kind. Since it cannot become
a _part_ of the body, it cannot consequently contribute to its cohesive,
organic strength, or fixed power; and, since it comes out of the body
just as it went in, it cannot, by its decomposition, generate
_heat_-force."
Sir Benjamin Brodie says: "Stimulants do not create nervous power; they
merely enable you, as it were, to _use up_ that which is left, and then
they leave you more in need of rest than before."
Baron Liebig, so far back as 1843, in his "Animal Chemistry," pointed
out the fallacy of alcohol generating power. He says: "The circulation
will appear accelerated at the expense of the force available for
voluntary motion, but without the production of a greater amount of
mechanical force." In his later "Letters," he again says: "Wine is quite
superfluous to man, * * * it is constantly followed by the expenditure
of power"--whereas, the real function of food is to give power. He adds:
"These drinks promote the change of matter in the body, and are,
consequently, attended by an inward loss of power, which ceases to be
productive, because it is not employed in overcoming outward
difficulties--i.e., in working." In other words, this great chemist
asserts that alcohol abstracts the power of the system from doing useful
work in the field or workshop, in order to cleanse the house from the
defilement of alcohol itself.
The late Dr. W. Brinton, Physician to St. Thomas', in his great work on
Dietetics, says: "Careful observation leaves little doubt that a
moderate dose of beer or wine would, in most cases, at once diminish the
maximum weight which a healthy person could lift. Mental acuteness,
accuracy of perception and delicacy of the senses are all so far opposed
by alcohol, as that the maximum efforts of each are incompatible with
the ingestion of any moderate quantity of fermented liquid. A single
glass will often suffice to take the edge off both mind and body, and to
reduce their capacity to something below their perfection of work."
Dr. F.R. Lees, F.S.A., writing on the subject of alcohol as a food,
makes the following quotation from an essay on "Stimulating Drinks,"
published by Dr. H.R. Madden, as long ago as 1847: "Alcohol is not the
natural stimulus to any of our organs, and hence, functions performed in
consequence of its application, tend to debilitate the organ acted
upon.
"Alcohol is incapable of being assimilated or converted into any organic
proximate principle, and hence, cannot be considered nutritious.
"The strength experienced after the use of alcohol is not new strength
added to the system, but is manifested by calling into exercise the
nervous energy pre-existing.
"The ultimate exhausting effects of alcohol, owing to its stimulant
properties, produce an unnatural susceptibility to morbid action in all
the organs, and this, with the plethora superinduced, becomes a fertile
source of disease.
"A person who habitually exerts himself to such an extent as to require
the daily use of stimulants to ward off exhaustion, may be compared to a
machine working under high pressure. He will become much more obnoxious
to the causes of disease, and will certainly break down sooner than he
would have done under more favorable circumstances.
"The more frequently alcohol is had recourse to for the purpose of
overcoming feelings of debility, the more it will be required, and by
constant repetition a period is at length reached when it cannot be
foregone, unless reaction is simultaneously brought about by a temporary
total change of the habits of life.
"Owing to the above facts, I conclude that the DAILY USE OF STIMULANTS
IS INDEFENSIBLE UNDER ANY KNOWN CIRCUMSTANCES."
DRIVEN TO THE WALL.
Not finding that alcohol possesses any direct alimentary value, the
medical advocates of its use have been driven to the assumption that it
is a kind of secondary food, in that it has the power to delay the
metamorphosis of tissue. "By the metamorphosis of tissue is meant," says
Dr. Hunt, "that change which is constantly going on in the system which
involves a constant disintegration of material; a breaking up and
avoiding of that which is no longer aliment, making room for that new
supply which is to sustain life." Another medical writer, in referring
to this metamorphosis, says: "The importance of this process to the
maintenance of life is readily shown by the injurious effects which
follow upon its disturbance. If the discharge of the excrementitious
substances be in any way impeded or suspended, these substances
accumulate either in the blood or tissues, or both. In consequence of
this retention and accumulation they become poisonous, and rapidly
produce a derangement of the vital functions. Their influence is
principally exerted upon the nervous system, through which they produce
most frequent irritability, disturbance of the special senses, delirium,
insensibility, coma, and finally, death."
"This description," remarks Dr. Hunt, "seems almost intended for
alcohol." He then says: "To claim alcohol as a food because it delays
the metamorphosis of tissue, is to claim that it in some way suspends
the normal conduct of the laws of assimilation and nutrition, of waste
and repair. A leading advocate of alcohol (Hammond) thus illustrates it:
'Alcohol retards the destruction of the tissues. By this destruction,
force is generated, muscles contract, thoughts are developed, organs
secrete and excrete.' In other words, alcohol interferes with all these.
No wonder the author 'is not clear' how it does this, and we are not
clear how such delayed metamorphosis recuperates. To take an agent which
is
"NOT KNOWN TO BE IN ANY SENSE AN ORIGINATOR OF VITAL FORCE;
"which is not known to have any of the usual power of foods, and use it
on the double assumption that it delays metamorphosis of tissue, and
that such delay is conservative of health, is to pass outside of the
bounds of science into the land of remote possibilities, and 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, not having found it amenable to any of the evidences by which the
food-force of aliments is generally measured, it will not do for us to
talk of benefit by delay of regressive metamorphosis unless such process
is accompanied with something evidential of the fact--something
scientifically descriptive of its mode of accomplishment in the case at
hand, and unless it is shown to be practically desirable for
alimentation.
"There can be no doubt that alcohol does cause _defects_ in the
processes of elimination which are natural to the healthy body and which
even in disease are often conservative of health. In the pent-in evils
which pathology so often shows occurrent in the case of spirit-drinkers,
in the vascular, fatty and fibroid degenerations which take place, in
the accumulations of rheumatic and scrofulous tendencies, there is the
strongest evidence that
"ALCOHOL ACTS AS A DISTURBING ELEMENT
"and is very prone to initiate serious disturbances amid the normal
conduct both of organ and function.
"To assert that this interference is conservative in the midst of such a
fearful accumulation of evidence as to result in quite the other
direction, and that this kind of delay in tissue-change accumulates
vital force, is as unscientific as it is paradoxical.
"Dickinson, in his able expose of the effects of alcohol, (_Lancet_,
Nov., 1872,) confines himself to pathological facts. After recounting,
with accuracy, the structural changes which it initiates, and the
structural changes and consequent derangement and suspension of vital
functions which it involves, he aptly terms it the 'genius of
degeneration.'
"With abundant provision of indisputable foods, select that liquid which
has failed to command the general assent of experts that it is a food at
all, and because it is claimed to diminish some of the excretions, call
that a delay of metamorphosis of tissue conservative of health! The
ostrich may bury his head in the sand, but science will not close its
eyes before such impalpable dust."
Speaking of this desperate effort to claim alcohol as a food, Dr. N.S.
Davis well says: "It seems hardly possible that men of eminent
attainments in the profession should so far forget one of the most
fundamental and universally recognized laws of organic life as to
promulgate the fallacy here stated. The fundamental law to which we
allude is, that all vital phenomena are accompanied by, and dependent
on, molecular or atomic changes; and whatever retards these retards the
phenomena of life; whatever suspends these suspends life. Hence, to say
that an agent which retards tissue metamorphosis is in any sense a food,
is simply to pervert and misapply terms."
Well may the author of the paper from which we have quoted so freely,
exclaim: "Strangest of foods! most impalpable of aliments! defying all
the research of animal chemistry, tasking all the ingenuity of experts
in hypothetical explanations, registering its effects chiefly by
functional disturbance and organic lesions, causing its very defenders
as a food to stultify themselves when in fealty to facts they are
compelled to disclose its destructions, and to find the only defense in
that line of demarcation, more imaginary than the equator, more delusive
than the mirage, between use and abuse."
That alcohol is not a food in any sense, has been fully shown; and now,
WHAT IS ITS VALUE AS A MEDICINE?
Our reply to this question will be brief. The reader has, already, the
declaration of the International Medical Congress, that, as a medicine,
the range of alcohol is limited and doubtful, and that its
self-prescription by the laity should be utterly discountenanced by the
profession. No physician who has made himself thoroughly acquainted with
the effects of alcohol when introduced into the blood and brought in
contact with the membranes, nerves and organs of the human body, would
now venture to prescribe its free use to consumptives as was done a very
few years ago.
"In the whole management of lung diseases," remarks Dr. Hunt, "with the
exception of the few who can always be relied upon to befriend alcohol,
other remedies have largely superseded all spirituous liquors. Its
employment in stomach disease, once so popular, gets no encouragement,
from a careful examination of its local and constitutional effects, as
separated from the water, sugar and acids imbibed with it."
TYPHOID FEVER.
It is in typhoid fever that alcohol has been used, perhaps, most
frequently by the profession; but this use is now restricted, and the
administration made with great caution. Prof. A.L. Loomis, of New York
City, has published several lectures on the pathology and treatment of
typhoid fever. Referring thereto, Dr. Hunt says: "No one in our country
can speak more authoritatively, and as he has no radical views as to the
exclusion of alcohol, it is worth while to notice the place to which he
assigns it. In the milder cases he entirely excludes it. As a means of
reducing temperature, he does not mention it, but relies on cold,
quinine, and sometimes, digitalis and quinine." When, about the third
week, signs of failure of heart-power begin to manifest themselves, and
the use of some form of stimulant seems to be indicated, Dr. Loomis
gives the most guarded advice as to their employment. "Never," he says,
"give a patient stimulants simply because he has typhoid fever." And
again, "Where there is reasonable doubt as to the propriety of giving or
withholding stimulants, it is safer to withhold them." He then insists
that, if stimulants are administered, the patient should be visited
every two hours to watch their effects.
It will thus be seen how guarded has now become the use of alcohol as a
cardiac stimulant in typhoid fevers, where it was once employed with an
almost reckless freedom. Many practitioners have come to exclude it
altogether, and to rely wholly on ammonia, ether and foods.
In Cameron's "Hygiene" is this sentence: "In candor, it must be admitted
that many eminent physicians deny the efficacy of alcohol in the
treatment of any kind of disease, _and some assert that it is worse
than useless_."
ACCUMULATIVE TESTIMONY.
Dr. Arnold Lees, F.L.S., in a recent paper on the "Use and Action of
Alcohol in Disease," assumes "_that the old use of alcohol was not
science, but a grave blunder_." Prof. C.A. Parks says: "It is impossible
not to feel that, so far, the progress of physiological inquiry renders
the use of alcohol (in medicine) more and more doubtful." Dr. Anstie
says: "If alcohol is to be administered at all for the _relief_ of
neuralgia, it should be given with as much precision, as to dose, as we
should use in giving an acknowledged _deadly poison_." Dr. F.T. Roberts,
an eminent English physician, in advocating a guarded use of alcohol in
typhoid fever, says: "Alcoholic stimulants are, by no means, always
required, and their indiscriminate use may do a great deal of harm." In
Asiatic cholera, brandy was formerly administered freely to patients
when in the stage of collapse. The effect was injurious, instead of
beneficial. "Again and again," says Prof. G. Johnson, "have I seen a
patient grow colder, and his pulse diminish in volume and power, after a
dose of brandy, and, apparently, as a direct result of the brandy." And
Dr. Pidduck, of London, who used common salt in cholera treatment, says:
"Of eighty-six cases in the stage of collapse, sixteen only proved
fatal, and scarcely one would have died, _if I had been able to prevent
them from taking brandy and laudanum_." Dr. Collenette, of Guernsey,
says: "For more than thirty years I have abandoned the use of all kinds
of alcoholic drinks in my practice, and with such good results, that,
were I sick, _nothing_ would induce _me_ to have resource to them--_they
are but noxious depressants_."
As a non-professional writer, we cannot go beyond the medical testimony
which has been educed, and we now leave it with the reader. We could add
many pages to this testimony, but such cumulative evidence would add but
little to its force with the reader. If he is not yet convinced that
alcohol has no food value, and that, as a medicine, its range is
exceedingly limited, and always of doubtful administration, nothing
further that we might be able to cite or say could have any influence
with him.