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 directly in the blood and in the lymph, without intervening in the vital functions other than by the heat it produces. From the point of view of the energetic theory these are not real foods, because their potential energy is not transformed into any kind of vital energy, but passes at once to the thermal form. On the other hand, other physiologists look upon alcohol as really a food. According to them everything is called a food which is transformed in the organism with the production of heat; and they measure the nutritive value of a substance by the number of Calories it can give up to the organism. So that alcohol would be a better food than carbohydrated and nitrogenous substances. A definite quantity of alcohol, a gramme for instance, is equivalent from the thermal point of view to 1.66 grammes of sugar, 1.44 of albumen, or 0.73 of fat. These quantities would be isodynamic.

Experiment has not entirely decided for or against this theory. However, the first tests have not been very favourable to it. The researches of C. von Noorden and his pupils, Stammreich and Miura, have clearly and directly established that alcohol cannot be substituted in a maintenance ration for an exactly isodynamic quantity of carbohydrates. If the substitution is effected, a ration only just capable of maintaining the organism in equilibrium becomes insufficient. The animal decreases in weight. It loses more nitrogenous matter than it can recover from its diet, and this situation cannot be sustained for long. On the other hand, the celebrated researches of the American physiologist, Atwater, would plead, on the contrary, in favour of almost isodynamic substitution. Finally, Duclaux has shown that alcohol