FOOD AND POISON

BY MAX KASSOWITZ

Professor of Physiology, University of Vienna

Read before a Society of German Physicians, Carlsbad, September, 1902. Published in the Internationale Monatsschrift, November, 1902.

"ST

66 INCE food serves as heat material for the processes which go on in the body, upon the principle of transformation of energy, the theoretical deduction was made by an investigator named Mayer that alcohol must serve the function of a food since it burns in animal or human bodies. This deduction is not true unless foods simply burn in the body, and that they do has never been demonstrated. On the contrary, we know that food besides burning in the body serves also, at least in part, to build it up, and there is nothing to warrant our asserting that any food burns in the body without first having been used to build it up, that is, without having contributed to make protoplasm. The question now to be answered is whether the immediate destruction, direct burning, is possible before it has served to build up living, assimilative protoplasm. That alcohol is a narcotic poison and can destroy living protoplasm is an acknowledged fact. the view, dogmatically believed since the time of R. Mayer's experiments, that alcohol, which is a poison, is at the same time a food, we see a paradox which no one would think of asserting about any other poison. No true food destroys protoplasm as experiment will show.

"Chauveau tried recently certain experiments with a dog. He fed the dog on a specified diet and recorded how much work he could do every day. He found that during the experiment the dog gained in weight. Then the food of the dog was so altered that, while all else remained unchanged, a certain amount of car

bohydrate [starchy food] was replaced by alcohol which was equal to the starch omitted, upon the hypothesis that direct burning of food is possible in the body without a previous building up of tissue. If, then, the alcohol had been true food there would have been no change noted. However, the dog not only accomplished less in the time during which he was fed alcohol, which is to be accounted for by the narcotic effect of the alcohol, but he also grew thin. Yet with less work accomplished and equal nourishment he would of necessity have increased in weight. The experiment shows, therefore, that alcohol as poison can not feed the body, but only injure it. Knowing this, we ought to desist from attempting to strengthen the weak and sick with alcohol, and from spending for alcohol in hospitals large sums of money which could better be devoted to real improvement of the condition of the food.

"Science can go astray; and the proclamation that alcohol is food and a source of strength has been an error involving heavy consequences. But science itself in its progress will correct its errors, including the error in regard to alcohol."

In the discussion following the reading of this paper, Prof. Hueppe of Prague said that no such fundamental contrast exists, i. e., between a food and a poison, since the most important foods taken, in unsuitable form, are severe poi. sons; here belong peptones and fatty acids which nevertheless every one takes plenty of, daily. Theoretically it is true that the body can manage small quantities of alcohol as it can of peptone; practically, however, although it can in a measure take care of poison, it is not proper to make too much of a claim out for alcohol on that account, since the danger lies in not keeping within bounds and thereby allowing the poisonous action of alcohol to gain the front. The speaker said that he had noted that both he, himself, and other people can do more work when they abstain from alcohol.

Prof. Rosemann, of Greifswald, said that even though alcohol must be given a food function theoretically, practically it is no food, since, in the necessary quantities to make its food value appreciable, it acts primarily as a poison.

Dr. Lenzman, of Duisberg, said that there is a difference between materials like peptone and alcohol which ought to be explained. The body makes of peptone a substance which serves to build it up, but it makes no such of alcohol. Small quantities of alcohol injure undoubtedly, for example, not the coarser liver cells, but, in a very marked way, the most finely organized nerve cells of the brain.

Professor Kassowitz came back in his conclusion to the fundamental difference between

peptone and alcohol. Peptone is changed during the absorption in the digestive organs, in the blood there is no peptone; but alcohol is absorbed unchanged and so is in the blood as poison. His belief that nothing can be at the same time food and poison could not be overthrown by empirical statement.

EASTER PROMISES

BY CHARLES EUGENE BANKS

"There is no death," the flowers say, "In faith, we hide our souls away, While tempests desolate the earth, And patient wait the promised birth."

The south wind chants, "There is no death
I come and winter is a breath;
Against his falling walls I set
The snowdrop and the violet."

A PLEA FOR THE BIRDS

BY HON. GEORGE F. HOAR

To the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

WE

VE, the songbirds of Massachusetts and their playfellows, make this our humble petition. We know more about you than you think we do. We know how good you are. We have hopped around the roofs and looked in at the windows of the houses you have built for poor and sick and hungry people, and lame and deaf and blind children. We have built our nests in the trees and sung many a song as we flew about the gardens and parks you have made so beautiful for your own chil. dren, especially your poor children to play in.

Every year we fly a great way over the country, keeping all the time where the sun is bright

bird were not in the sky, alive, but in a shop window or under a glass case. If this goes on much longer all your song birds will be gone. Already, we are told, in some other countries that used to be full of birds, they are almost gone. Even the nightingales are being all killed in Italy.

Now we humbly pray that you will stop all this, and will save us from this sad fate. You have already made a law that no one shall kill a harmless song bird or destroy our nests and our eggs. Will you please to make another that no one shall wear our feathers, so that no one will kill us to get them. We are told that it is as easy for you to do it as for Blackbirds to whistle.

If you will, we know how to pay you a hundred times over. We will teach your children to keep themselves clean and neat. We will show them how to live together in peace and

and warm; and we know that whenever you do anything, other people all over this great land between the seas and the great lakes find it out, and pretty soon will try to do the same thing. We know; we know. We are Americans just as you are. Some of us, like some of you, came from across the great sea; but most of the birds like us have lived here a long while; and birds like us welcomed your fathers when they came here many years ago. Our fathers and mothers have always done their best to please your fathers and mothers.

Now we have a sad story to tell you. Thoughtless or bad people are trying to destroy us. They kill us because our feathers are beautiful. Even pretty and sweet girls, who we should think would be our best friends, kill our brothers and children so that they may wear their pretty plumage on their hats. Sometimes people hunt and kill us from mere wantonness. Cruel boys destroy our nests and steal our eggs and our young ones. People with guns and snares lie in wait to kill us, as if the place for a

love and to agree as we do in our nests. We will build pretty houses which you will like to see. We will play about your gardens and flower beds, ourselves like flowers on wings,without any cost to you. We will destroy the wicked insects and worms that spoil your cherries and currants and plums and apples and roses. We will give you our best songs, and make the spring more beautiful and the summer sweeter to you.

Every June morning when you go out into the field, Oriole and Blackbird and Bobolink will fly after you and make the day more delightful to you; and when you go home tired at sundown, Vesper Sparrow will tell how grateful we are. When you sit down on your porch after dark, Fife Bird and Hermit Thrush and Wood Thrush will sing to you; and even Whippoor-will will cheer up a little. We know where we are safe. In a little while all the birds will come to live in Massachusetts again, and everybody who loves music will like to make a summer home with you.

RESOLUTIONS

ADOPTED AT A MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF INEBRIETY, HELD IN BOSTON, MASS., DECEMBER 18, 1902

Resolved, That it is the sense of this association that the indiscriminate sale and use of

patent medicines and so-called “ cures " for the alcohol and opium habits are not infrequently the cause of the formation as well as the continuance of these habits.

Therefore be it resolved, That this association memorialize the proper authorities not to issue any patent or proprietary right to any one desiring said patent or right for any remedy or medicine or "cure or any compound whatever containing alcohol, opium, or other narcotic drug in which there is danger of habituation from its

use.

Resolved, That all proprietary or patent medicines for which a patent is issued have a label on which are distinctly printed the ingredients of said preparation; said label being placed or affixed to the bottle, box, or wrapper in which said preparation is dispensed; and furthermore, that a heavy penalty or fine, or imprisonment, or both, be imposed upon any one who may manufacture, prepare, buy, or sell, or have for sale in stock, all such preparations not duly patented and labeled under conditions specified.

Resolved, That we reaffirm and indorse a resolution passed at a meeting of this society. held March 23, 1893, in reference to the licensing and proper inspection of all institutions for the care and treatment of inebriates, morphia habitués, or other form of narcomania.

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be published in the medical and secular press.* *These resolutions were read by Dr. Crothers, seconded by Dr. Rodbaugh, and unanimously carried by vote of the association,

BOOK NOTICES

PLANTS AND THEIR CHILDREN, By Mrs. William Starr Dana, Author of How to Know the Wild Flowers, Illustrated by Alice Josephine Smith. American Book Company, New York.

Mrs. Dana says in her preface that "A child's reading book should secure for the child three things,-practice in the art of reading, amusement and instruction." "Plants and Their Children" fulfils these conditions and more, for it furnishes all the guidance that a teacher of lower grades needs for her classes in nature study. The arrangement of the book is admirable. The opening lessons are upon the fruits and seeds of autumn, while succeeding lessons advance with the seasons through a winter study of "Schoolroom Garden" products to the

buds and flowers of spring.

Mrs. Dana posses

ses the graceful faculty of being able to take the reader into her confidence in a way that delights the grown person as well as the child. As a reading book "Plants and Their Children " is well suited to intermediate grades.

SHORT STORIES OF OUR SHY NEIGHBORS, By Mrs. M. A. B. Kelly, Author of "A Volume of Poems," "Leaves from Nature's Story Book," etc. American Book Company.

This little supplementary reader contains between fifty and sixty lessons in Natural History told partly in prose and partly in verse. The stories are for the most part simple and interesting, though their value as natural history is slight. The book lacks a logical plan. The author treats of the frog, then the brown thrasher, next the "Vain Little Moth" and then the cray fish, without giving any clear impression of any one of these animals, or any reason for this peculiar sequence of subjects. Perhaps the book's faults are best summed up in the word "commonplace." The same material could be made into an equally interesting and far more instructive school book.

TEN COMMON TREES, By Susan Stokes, Department of Biology, High School, Salt Lake City. American Book Company.

With the good aim of giving children "a real acquaintance with common trees," the writer of this book shows in her first pages that she can not hold to the language adapted to little people; in fact her diction varies from the "once upon a time" type to such sentences as "The cherries are borne in umbels, or in racemes, that is, on an elongated axis." Such posers would phase the ordinary grown person who had not a botany at hand. Yet no attempt at explanation is made in this book for children.

The chapters on the oak and the evergreens are good, and the introduction of traditions adds interest. The book contains inaccuracies which children would be the first to detect; for instance the statement that "the flowers of the pear tree are without scent." The book as it stands must be taken with a pinch of salt and is therefore unfit to be placed in the hands of young children without revision.