"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