Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/414

406 'Foods are Oxidized; Alcohol is Oxidized; therefore alcohol is a food.' But many difficulties appeared. A real food promotes muscular, glandular and nerve activity, and its oxidation maintains body temperature. But alcohol disturbs muscular, glandular, and nervous activity, and its oxidation does not maintain body temperature. When one eats a real food it is assimilated largely by muscle tissue and is oxidized for the purpose of liberating the life energy. When one ingests alcohol it is carried by the blood to the tissues, mostly to the liver, where it is oxidized, as any toxins would be, for the purpose of making it harmless. Its oxidation liberates heat energy but this energy cannot be utilized by the body even for the maintenance of body temperature. If a food is deemed as a substance which, taken into the body, is assimilated and used either to build or repair body structure, or to be oxidized in the tissues to liberate the energy used by the tissue in its normal activity, then alcohol is not a real food.

"But, if alcohol is not a real food, what is the significance of its oxidation? It has been long known that the liver produces oxidases and that it is the site of active oxidation of mid-products of katabolism of toxins and of other toxic substances. Alcohol, usually formed as an excretion of the yeast plant, is also found as a mid-product of tissue katabolism. On a priori grounds we should expect alcohol to be oxidized in the liver along with leucin, tyrosin, uric acid, xanthin bodies, and various amido bodies. There have recently appeared two most important papers based upon extended researches upon man and lower animals. These researches practically clear up this knotty question."

Dr. Hall then reviews the work of Dr. Reid Hunt and Dr. S. P. Beebe, and continues:—

"The value of this work can hardly be over-estimated. In the first place the rapid oxidation of the alcohol in the liver is explained. Alcohol itself being one of the toxic substances which reach the liver from the alimentary canal is at once attacked by the liver, and if the oncoming tide of