Drunkenness and the physiological effect of alcohol / by Charles Mercier.

  • Mercier, Charles Arthur, 1852-1919.
Date:
[1908?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Drunkenness and the physiological effect of alcohol / by Charles Mercier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    be diminished. If, when we have reached the maximum crop that manure will produce, we give to our land, instead of manure, a dressing of lime, we get always an increase, some- times an enormous increase, in the yield. Why is this? Lime is not a food for most plants, any more than alcohol is a food for most men, but yet by the administration of lime we may add enormously to the energy of the growth of plants, and by the administration of alcohol we can add very largely to the output of energy by men. The adversaries of alcohol tell us, with an iteration and re-iteration that deserve Falstaff's epithet, that alcohol is not a food. They do not tell us that roast beef is neither clothing nor house room, yet the one statement is as good an argument against the use of roast beef as the other is against the use of alcohol. Lime is not itself a plant food except in special cases, but it unlocks and renders available to plants the store of food that exists in the soil, but is inaccessible to the plants, and that without the aid of lime would be locked up against them. Similarly, though alcohol is not itself a food, it does without the slightest doubt enable many people to assimilate and digest food that without its aid would be unavailable to them. I do not pretend that this is the most important function of alcohol. I am coming to that, but it is undisputably a function, and a useful function, and I shall not be convinced by any number of experiments in which alcohol has been administered to robust and unwearied guinea pigs, without increasing their weight, that a glass of wine will not assist the digestion of a harassed man of business at the end of a tiring day. However, this is rather by the way. The digestive value of alcohol is only one instance of its power of opening the store of energy and letting some go free. Let us take another illustration. You have, some of you, as I have reason to know, prepared yourselves for the ordeal that you are now undergoing, by taking a glass of champagne with your dinner; and others of you may have solaced yourselves with the more pungent but less effectual ginger beer. Those who have studied the manners and customs of these beverages know that, when first poured