Alcohol goes largely to acid in its digestion, and this is the way it reduces the alkalinity of the blood. Sugar with alcohol increases its power of reducing the alkalinity of the blood; so beware! take your whiskey straight, not as a cocktail. The sugar in wine is apt to start indigestion by causing intestinal fermentation, etc. The tendency is now to dry wines, especially the champagnes. This is as it should be for health.

A recent writer, in the London Lancet, says it has now been established by several well-known classical researches that up to a certain point alcohol is a food and past that point it is a poison. To draw a sharp line of demarcation which shall define for all persons when its action as a food exactly ceases and when its effect as a poison exactly begins is barely possible. The tissues of different individuals differ greatly in regard to their oxidizing capacity, and it is a matter of common observation that there are persons who can tolerate more alcohol than others without apparent injury to health. Again, occupation and environment very materially affect the powers of the body to assimilate alcohol. Thus men who pursue an active life in the open air are able to indulge in alcohol more freely than are those who are engaged in sedentary occupations. It is all a question of functional activity, of the condition of the tissues to oxidize the combustible material presented to them.

It has been conjectured that the oxidizing power of the tissues, over alcohol in particular, must have steadily diminished since the time when our ancestors drank their three bottles of port with impunity. These were the times of George III., and before. Such a performance, at any rate, is seldom heard of nowadays. The quantity of alcohol imbibed in such an exploit must obviously be greatly in excess of the limit of the body's oxidizing capacity, as deduced from scientific experiment. When one has been drinking too much and is oppressed and heady, the cause is the inability to oxidize the excess of alcohol in the system. Go out into the fresh air and breathe in and out rapidly - let the expirations and inspirations be long, rapid, and deep. General oxidation in the system is increased, great relief soon comes to the sufferer, and the head gets level. One and one-half fluidounces of pure alcohol is the utmost quantity that can be completely utilized as food in the human body per diem, according to experimental observation. A quantity ingested additional to that amount therefore may escape oxidation, incomplete products of combustion, so to speak, may be formed, and toxic effects ensue. It is therefore interesting to consider what amounts of the ordinary alcoholic drinks contain this permissible allowance of alcohol - say, one and one-half fluidounces - which is assumed to be the extreme limit of the oxidizing power of the human body. Taking brandy and whiskey to contain 50 per cent. by volume of alcohol, three fluidounces, or six tablespoonfuls, of these spirits would contain the maximum allowable daily dose. This would be the equivalent of about two glasses of brandy or whiskey and water per diem, each containing three tablespoonfuls of spirit and a half-pint of water, to exceed which would be to risk a toxic result. Port and sherry, with their average of 20 per cent. of alcohol, would contain the permissible amount of alcohol in seven ounces, or a little over two wineglassfuls, assuming each to contain three fluidounces. The limit of white wines, claret, or champagne, with 10 per cent. of alcohol, would be fifteen fluidounces, while one and one-half fluidounces of alcohol represent about thirty fluidounces, or a pint and a half, - say three ordinary glasses in which it is served of lager beer, ale, or porter. The question is, however, complicated in the case of wines and beers, because these contain nutritive matters in addition. Apart from the fact that to avoid injury to health the amount of alcohol consumed per diem should be limited strictly to one and one-half fluidounces, it cannot be regarded for practical purposes as a food in the sense of a true reparative. It is at least a producer of heat and energy, and then frequently at the expense of healthy cellular activity, while its cost from the point of view of actual food value has been calculated to be eight times more than that of bread.

As to the use of alcohol as a beverage or as a medicine in the tropics we have a statement from Major Charles E. Woodruff, surgeon, U. S. A., which controverts preconceived opinions on this subject. When President Eliot of Harvard University addressed a group of teachers who were about to depart for the Philippines, he admonished them, among other things, to abstain from alcohol. Major Woodruff says that was bad advice.

In 1902, being impressed by the common assertion that alcohol was bad for our soldiers in the tropics, he made a study of the physical condition and physical habits of an infantry regiment that had been three years in the Philippines, and of a cavalry regiment that had been there fifteen months. He found, to his astonishment and somewhat to his confusion, says American Medicine, that 68 per cent. of the excessive drinkers retained their health,66 per cent. of the moderate drinkers, and 46 per cent of the abstainers. Of the excessives, 1 1//2 per cent. died; of the moderates, 4 per cent.; and of the abstainers, 9 per cent.

Major Woodruff's comment is: If these figures prove anything, they prove that in the terrible depressing, neurasthenic, anaemic conditions brought about by living in a tropical climate, against whose onslaughts we have no protection like the dark-skinned native, a white man who is not assisted by a little alcohol is more harmed by the climate than a man who does get it. Moreover, the damage done to these young men by occasional sprees is not so great as the damage done by the climate to the abstainers.

What a lot of misstatements have we received from our teachers, text-books, and authorities! As to the school-teachers, he relates that he was often called in to see them professionally, and that he never encountered a more horrible condition of health in any people as a class. Every woman among them whom he saw was in a wretched state.