ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 158, 13 October 1910, Page 3

ALCOHOLOGY.

ALCOHOL AND DIGESTION. (Published by Arrangement). While many are very much occupied in arguing the pros, and cons, of the laws proposed to regulate the use of alcohol, it is well quietly to consider the nature of the drug- and its effects on the human body, because that is the fundamental point —is it good, or is it bad, or is it indifferent? How, then, does it act on digestion or indigestion? Some imagine that a glass of beer or wine or a nip of whisky after a meal helps to digest. Let us hear what the latest science based on most accurate obseivation has to say on this. Everyone must know without'making a study of physiology that his internal and digestive organs are very delicate and very complicated, and therefore not to be trifled with. The man was not wise who ate certain kinds of food which he found by experience disagreed with him, and then took some patent medicine to get out of the difficulty. He would have been wiser had he just absolutely left alone the articles on the table that had on many former occasions caused him discomfort, and by that he must have known did 'him harm. It is a large subject this to cram into a short article, but let us notice briefly that alcohol has an effect on the food taikon and also on the organs of digestion intended to act OH, the food. Digestion, in short, fiieans into blood* or at least into a sUite in which it may be assimilated by the blood. Alcohol prevents that breaking down of the food in that it hardens every.article of food it comes in contact with. Wo cannot exactly watch the digestive processes in the human body, but Sir Wm. Roberts, M.D., etc., in his work cn "Digestion and Diet." gives the r:suits of his attempts in the laboratory to imitate as nearly as possible a man's digestive operations. lie tested 'food in specially-prepared digestive compojin(|s with varying quantities of alcoholic, liquors —wine, beer, spirits, in varying strengths —and found that as the alcoholic strength increased the time taken for digestion increased, and that "even minimum quantities of alcohol, wines, tea or coffee dkl not give the least assistance to the chemical process." The net result of all these investigations is certainly to show that all forms of alcoholic beverages seriously retard the chemical process of digestion. The above strikes at the root of"that fallacy: it is all right if taken with food, never take it without food. The only safe time to take alcohol is

NEVER. There is another way in which alcohol acts injuriously as to* digestion. It hinders the proper working—contraction and expansion of the stomach. Waking or sleeping our internal organs are working, and the stomach with them. It is of the greatest importance, from a digestive point- of view, that the vigor of the muscles of the stomach should be unimpaired. This vigor largely depends on the nerves which control these muscles, and as we know alcohol is a nerve depressant, we can see how in this way it acts injuriously by making the muscular action of the stomach slow and weak. Professor Pawlon, St. Petersburg, investigated this subject for ten years and found that the best stimulus to a flow of gastric juice, and consequently good digestion, was a normal healthy appetite naturally produced by exercise and patience ; and that drug stimulation was of little or no value. DR. BEAUMONT, OF CANADA, made some very useful observations on his servant, Alexis St. Martin. This man was seriously wounded in the stomach and only recovered after many months, and then the wound did not properly close. It was through this unclosed wound that the doctor observed the working of Alexis' stomach. This went on for many years; the man married and had a family, so it was no mere passing observation, but observation* carefully made and often repeated. Alexis, too, was fond of strong drink, wihich he sometimes took freely, and yet said he felt all right. However, when the doctor examined him at various time he could see i that the man's stomach was in a bad way and was being gradually destroyed by the alcohol. That he felt no serious discomfort only proves how the damage may be going on in a man's systemstomach, brain, nerve—without his aware of it, until the great break comes' perhaps an accident or some serious disease. Dr. Legrain, of Paris, says: "But it is, above all, by its action on the o-eu-eral nutrition that alcohol weakens* . . In the long run, and in consequence of very complex mechanism, it creates a poor nutrition with all its consequences." Or, as Horsley says: "Is it worth while, for the sake of a fleeting pleasure, to take a substance wihich is continually urging! the glands to secrete and which delays the operation of digestion?"