PROGRESS DURING THE PAST YEAR.
Now as to the progress made during the past year. In June, 1901,
the American Medical Association met in St. Paul. The branch of it
giving special study to the temperance question held several sessions,
about one hundred of the most distinguished physicians in the country
attending. Much time was given to considering Dr. Atwater's teaching
to the effect that he had proved alcohol to be a food. During the previous
year he had published the details of his experiments, and at the convention
it was shown that his own experiments upset his conclusions. It
had been held that except in rare instances alcohol taken into the system
passed away from it as alcohol without change. Dr. Atwater's experiments
strengthened somewhat the position of those who held that change
is not infrequent, but he concluded that the portion broken up while in the
body served as a food. A closer examination of his own experiments
showed that the portion oxidized had gone to form other compounds in
the system which were possibly more harmful than if it had all passed
off unchanged. Dr. Max Kassowitz, professor in the University of Vienna,
said, after Dr. Atwater's statement had been published: "For the animal
and human organism, alcohol is not both a food and a poison, but a
poison only, which like other poisons is an irritant when taken in small
doses while in larger ones it produces paralysis.
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