ordinary combustion, and to deny any power of interchangeability under
special demands or amid defective supply of one variety, is, indeed,
untenable. This does not in the least invalidate the fact that we are
able to use these as ascertained landmarks."

How these substances, when taken into the body, are assimilated, and how
they generate force, are well known to the chemist and physiologist, who
is able, in the light of well-ascertained laws, to determine whether
alcohol does or does not possess a food value. For years, the ablest men
in the medical profession have given this subject the most careful
study, and have subjected alcohol to every known test and experiment,
and the result is that it has been, by common consent, excluded from the
class of tissue-building foods. "We have never," says Dr. Hunt, "seen
but a single suggestion that it could so act, and this a promiscuous
guess. One writer (Hammond) thinks it possible that it may 'somehow'
enter into combination with the products of decay in tissues, and 'under
certain circumstances might yield _their_ nitrogen to the construction
of new tissues.' No parallel in organic chemistry, nor any evidence in
animal chemistry, can be found to surround this guess with the areola
of a possible hypothesis."

Dr. Richardson says: "Alcohol contains no nitrogen; it has none of the
qualities of structure-building foods; it is incapable of being
transformed into any of them; it is, therefore, not a food in any sense
of its being a constructive agent in building up the body." Dr. W.B.
Carpenter says: "Alcohol cannot supply anything which is essential to
the true nutrition of the tissues." Dr. Liebig says: "Beer, wine,
spirits, etc., furnish no element capable of entering into the
composition of the blood, muscular fibre, or any part which is the seat
of the principle of life." Dr. Hammond, in his Tribune Lectures, in