CHAPTER XXVIII.

A scientific article on the effects of alcohol on the human system.  If any doctor should try to deceive you here is the proof of his malicious intent to drug you.

Liquor drinking in health and disease.

Report of the committee upon the progress made in medical science
in favor of temperance during the year ending June 1, 1902—­A.  W.
GUTRIDGE, chairman.  Read at the thirty-first annual convention
of the catholic total abstinence union of the archdiocese of st.
Paul, and ordered published by the convention.

In order to understand what progress has been made during the year, it is necessary to note the condition of affairs at the commencement of the period.

Long before this committee began work the leading physicians of every enlightened country, the men to whom the entire profession looks for guidance, had declared against the use of alcohol both in health and in disease.

          Isalcohol A drink!

One reason why all the greatest physicians believed it harmful was because it had been found that alcohol was not a drink.  The most abundant substance found in the human body, is water.  About 130 pounds of the weight of a 160-pound person is water, “Quite enough if rightly arranged to drown him.”  Man has been irreverently described as “about 30 pounds of solids set up in 13 gallons of water.”  So it is quite natural for us to hunger for water; “death by thirst is more rapid and distressing than by starvation.”  “It is through the medium of the water contained in the animal body that all its vital functions are carried on.”  Dr. W. B. Richardson of England has pointed out more than fifty characteristics of the action of a natural drink upon the system.  The action of alcohol is the opposite of these in every particular, and therefore it is not a real or natural drink.  Of course the water which is found in mixture in all alcoholic liquors serves to quench thirst, even though it is often foul water.

          Isit A food!

We also found, upon taking up the work imposed upon us, that alcohol had been demonstrated not to be a food.  Many classifications of foods have been made, but about the best is that which divides them broadly into two classes:  to use homely language, flesh formers and body warmers; those which build up or repair the bodily waste, and those which sustain the animal warmth.  The slow fire within us being necessary to life we hunger for that only which will