And here, to give those
who are not familiar with, the process of digestion, a clear idea of that
important operation, and the effect produced when alcohol is taken with food,
we quote from the lecture of an English physician, Dr. Henry Monroe, on
"The Physiological Action of Alcohol." He says:
"Every kind of
substance employed by man as food consists of sugar, starch, oil, and glutinous
matters, mingled together in various proportions; these are designed for the
support of the animal frame. The glutinous principles of food fibrine, albumen
and casein are employed to build up the structure while the oil, starch and
sugar are chiefly used to generate heat in the body.
"The first step of
the digestive process is the breaking up of the food in the mouth utilizing the
jaws and teeth. On this being done, the saliva, a viscid liquor, is poured into
the mouth from the salivary glands, and as it mixes with the food, it performs
a very important part in the operation of digestion, rendering the starch of
the food soluble, and gradually changing it into a sort of sugar, after which
the other principles become more miscible with it. Nearly a pint of saliva is
furnished every twenty-four hours for the use of an adult. When the food has
been masticated and mixed with the saliva, it is then passed into the stomach,
where it is acted upon by a juice secreted by the filaments of that organ, and
poured into the stomach in large quantities whenever food comes in contact with
its mucous coats. It consists of a dilute acid known to the chemists as
hydrochloric acid, composed of hydrogen and chlorine, united together in
certain definite proportions. The gastric juice contains, also, a peculiar
organic-ferment or decomposing substance, containing nitrogen something of the
nature of yeast termed pepsin, which is easily soluble in the acid just named.
That gastric juice acts as a simple chemical solvent is proved by the fact
that, after death, it has been known to dissolve the stomach itself."
It is an error to
suppose that, after a good dinner, a glass of spirits or beer assists digestion
or that any liquor containing alcohol even bitter beer can in any way assist
digestion. Mix some bread and meat with gastric juice place them in a phial[a small cylindrical glass bottle, used for medical samples] and keep that phial in a sand-bath at the slow heat of 98
degrees, occasionally shaking briskly the contents to imitate the motion of the
stomach you will find, after six or eight hours, the whole contents blended
into one pultaceous mass. If to another phial of food and gastric juice,
treated in the same way, I add a glass of pale ale or a quantity of alcohol, at
the end of seven or eight hours, or even some days, the food is scarcely acted
upon at all. This is a fact and if you are led to ask why, I answer because
alcohol has the peculiar power of chemically affecting or decomposing the
gastric juice by precipitating one of its principal constituents, viz., pepsin,
rendering it is solvent properties much less efficacious. Hence alcohol can not
be considered either as food or as a solvent for food. Not as the latter certainly,
for it refuses to act with the gastric juice.
"'It is a
remarkable fact,' says Dr. Dundas Thompson, 'that alcohol, when added to the
digestive fluid, produces a white