carbon by union with oxygen is the law, that heat is the product, and
that the legitimate result is force, while the result of the union of
the hydrogen of the foods with oxygen is water. If alcohol comes at all
under this class of foods, we rightly expect to find some of the
evidences which attach to the hydrocarbons."

What, then, is the result of experiments in this direction? They have
been conducted through long periods and with the greatest care, by men
of the highest attainments in chemistry and physiology, and the result
is given in these few words, by Dr. H.R. Wood, Jr., in his Materia
Medica. "No one has been able to detect in the blood any of the ordinary
results of its oxidation." That is, no one has been able to find that
alcohol has undergone combustion, like fat, or starch, or sugar, and so
given heat to the body. On the contrary, it is now known and admitted by
the medical profession that


ALCOHOL REDUCES THE TEMPERATURE OF THE BODY,

instead of increasing it; and it has even been used in fevers as an
anti-pyretic. So uniform has been the testimony of physicians in Europe
and this country as to the cooling effects of alcohol, that Dr. Wood
says, in his Materia Medica, "that it does not seem worth while to
occupy space with a discussion of the subject." Liebermeister, one of
the most learned contributors to Zeimssen's Cyclopædia of the Practice
of Medicine, 1875, says: "I long since convinced myself, by direct
experiments, that alcohol, even in comparatively large doses, does not
elevate the temperature of the body in either well or sick people." So
well had this become known to Arctic voyagers, that, even before
physiologists had demonstrated the fact that alcohol reduced, instead of