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NOTE.

[It is with great regret that we are obliged to announce that our usually accurate stenographic reporter engaged to report the debates of the Tenth National Temperance Convention, found he could not be present, and another was sent in his place, strongly endorsed, but who proved wholly incompetent for the service. This was not discovered till the Convention had adjourned, and too late to be remedied. The best that could be done under the circumstances has been done from his imperfect notes, with the debates.

The general proceedings and the official action of the Convention as given from the records of the Secretaries, will be found to be accurate.]

NOT RECEIVED.

The following papers. invited by the Committee of Arrangements, and promised, were not received, the writers having been unable to prepare them:

"The Prohibition Party, State and National," by A. A. Hopkins, Esq., New York. "Work Among the Children," by Mrs. Nellie H. Bradley, Washington, D. C. "Total Abstinence and the Working Masses," by T. V. Powderly, Esq., Pennsylvania. "The World's Fair and the Liquor Traffic," by Rev. Dr. P. S. Henson, Illinois.

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1.

21

ESSAYS.

The following Essays were written for the National Temperance Convention, Saratoga, July 15, 1891.

THE PRESENT TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE AS TO
ALCOHOL.

BY EZRA M. HUNT, M.D., LL.D.

By Alcohol we mean ethylic or common alcohol. It is necessary to specify this, as there are several alcohols. Some, like methylated spirits, are added in the falsification of liquors. Amylic alcohol, variously known as grain oil, fusel oil, etc., is very frequent in ethylic or common alcohol, because it is made in the usual manufacture of spirits from corn, potatoes, or the mash of grapes, and it is very difficult to separate it completely from the ethyl alcohol. Alcohol has long had its place among poisons, and the present testimony of science keeps it there. It is a toxic, and it intoxicates now as always. It is not the minute dose, but the full dose of an article that tests its physiological effects. Because a minute dose does no declarative harm, it is not thereby removed from the poison category, any more than are opium, belladonna, strychnine, or arsenic, because moderate doses are used as medicines.

We now ask definitely: What is the most recent testimony of science as to the use of alcohol as a food?

In order to determine this we properly inquire, "What constitutes a food?" The answer still stands that "The food employed for nourishment of the body must have the same, or nearly the same, chemical composition as the body itself. Our bodies and our foods consist of essentially the same

materials."

This is found to be the case not only with animal food, but vegetable albumen, fibrin, and casein are scarcely to be distinguished from the bodies of the same name extracted from blood and milk. These are variously called the nitrogenous, albuminoid, cell-forming, or protein compounds constituting the "plastic elements of nutrition" which afford nutrition by "tissue building," whether for growth or repair. These include the modern division of albuminoids, gelatinoids, and extractives, all of which contain nitrogen.

The answer also stands that the other division of foods is that of respiratory, or force and heat-producing foods, in which the starches, fats, and sugars produce a heat of vital force, which is to a great extent the measure of

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