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,